1.  The Long Distance Voyager

There was an empty space inside of him as he walked slowly down the road.

The sun was pounding at his neck, slowly blistering the burning skin, but he was only half-aware of it, the heat and sweat insulating him against thought and sensation in a smothering blanket of air. He could hear the creaking of the light leather satchel slung over his shoulder, but he wasn't conscious of it other than the raw feeling of his shoulder where the strap hung, the weight numbing and then straining the muscle. His hat, dusty and grey from the loose dirt that blew in the hot wind, shaded his face slightly so that he could look ahead, but his head was bowed, watching his feet. To look ahead into the vast desolation was numbing, heat shimmers bewitching in the distance. His clothes baked him, cooking in the afternoon light, and seemed hardly worth the protection they provided against burning. He supposed heat stroke took a while anyway and the breeze would occasionally cool him off, crusting dried sweat to his face.

The road scrolled by beneath his heavy feet as he strode along, watching the bleak cracked tarmac of the road with thoughtless disinterest. There were no words convey his thoughts or feelings because there were none, only a bland awareness of the black road before him, the hint of a shadow preceding him as the sun slowly sailed towards the horizon. Emotions did not flicker within him, nor did he muse upon plans, hopes or dreams to pass the time. There was only an endless quiet, like the desert around him, stifling in the heat of the day. Dead rock and soil, parched and lifeless. A scarred place long forgotten. It was a land he could understand, a world not unlike himself. Occasionally, the wind would rustle up near him, kicking up the ashy soil - moaning whirlwinds, spinning crazily across the desert on some dreadful purpose. Mindless spirits, perhaps, screaming their way across Hell in a fury of dirt and dust.

A bird screeched overhead, some type of desert scavenger he imagined, raising his head briefly to catch a glimpse out of curiosity. The movement was automatic, his burning blue eyes watering as they caught the light around him, sending lances of pain through his throbbing sick head. There was no sign of it and he did not pause to search the sky. He really doubted he could begin walking again if he did. It was too bright to see, the sky was merely a looming white blur of light above him, and his stomach turned fitfully from lifting his head. Closing his eyes, he walked along some more, ignoring the dizziness that spun through him, the watery nausea in his stomach, focusing on nothing. To think might drive him mad. To do any more than keep moving would stretch these silent hours longer. Lowering his gaze, he continued walking.

* * *

Night fell in this manner. The earth grew somewhat cooler once the sun had descended beneath the far away mountains, but the baking heat still radiated back off the road. The terrible heat of the day escaping back into the heavens, to the darkness that awaited above. He continued walking in the blackness of the barren desert, his aching eyes adjusting to the dark and guiding him along the road by starlight. The moon was absent tonight, and the winds gathered in the night and stroked his rough face with warm dry air. The dust storms, ghosts of the desert, whispered in his ears. He ignored them all, oblivious to the stirring nocturnal world until his weary eye caught sight of a collection of large boulders at the side of the road which he judged would provide sufficient shelter. Although there was no moon, he judged it to be near midnight and his legs were trembling from his ceaseless walking. Leisurely changing his course, paying his weakness no mind, he hiked to the rocks and selected one which sloped above into a natural shelter by which to rest. Not that he would rest, even if sleep came. Crossing the desert as he was, in the heat of the day without stopping, and with a scant few hours of sleep, was wearing him away to nothing. Still, in a vague way, the futility of traveling through the wasteland in this manner appealed to him. It defied reason. It defied nature.

Throwing his burden wearily by the rock, he removed his hat, still warm to the touch, and took in his surroundings in detail for the first time since morning. The boulders formed a rough circle in which he could build his meager fire, cook something to eat and sleep away the few hours until dawn. Tossing his hat on the ground by his pack, he took a moment to assess the damage he had done to his body with another day of walking. The feverish buzz in his head had abated for the moment, but would begin anew with morning, and even earlier than before. He examined his burned, lean arms dispassionately, noting only his gaunt appearance. There were no thoughts of pain or discomfort; he had long since become accustomed to the worn out, sickly feel of his body. His only thoughts were of this brief respite from the tortures of the day, and how much longer he could go on this way.

Stripping off his thin jacket, he tossed it upon his sack and pushed his hands exhaustedly through his long tangled hair. It was blonde, or had been. Like his faded blue eyes and light clothing, the sun had washed the color from his hair. If clean it may have been white by now, but it was dirty and unkempt and had been for a long time. Shaking it out somewhat, he tied it back behind him with a rough leather cord from his pack and promptly forgot about it. It would only be a distraction to him as he set about collecting the stunted grasses and other fuel he could glean from the surrounding land for his fire, and the shaking of his hands was distraction enough. He took his time, working methodically, paying his body no heed. There was no hurry, he had no destination. The emptiness took in all else and made his aches and pains meaningless. It did not matter that he delayed his own rest with his slow, casual motions or that he could barely see what he was doing in the gloom. It was merely a routine he had fallen into over the past few days. When he could no longer maintain it, it wouldn't matter either. It was even comforting in it's familiarity, and the now cooler air made it easier to do the simple chores of making the camp. Collect the fuel, build the fire, eat what was left, drink what was left, sleep.

Arranging what grasses and scrub he could find, he set about building his fire with steady patience and short, practical movements. There had been a time when he had not understood the value of patience, but it was long since past and there was no need to hurry towards a future he did not have. Patience was an invaluable tool which kept him sane, and which came wearily as a natural extension of his own aimlessness. There was always the road to follow the next day, if he chose, but he knew he wouldn't. There was no reason to stay, yet no reason to walk. He might exhaust his paltry supplies here or on the road, it made no difference. Something told him to wait here, some inner inertia that he readily obeyed. Why should he not? Perhaps he could finally gain a rest here, beneath these old rocks. Perhaps part of him found it to be an ideal place to die.

Glancing up at the glittering stars crossing the sky, he let go of the thoughts flitting across his tired mind, shuddering slightly as a cool breeze touched his baked skin. This was it. He would stay here until...

Until? In the desert nothing happens. Nothing changes.

He was empty. Waiting didn't matter. He could wait forever.

Until he died. If that could happen.

* * *

Lying back on the hard earth, his head propped up on the bulk of his satchel, he watched the stars as they slowly crept across the velvety sky above him, wearing on the night until dawn. He watched the constellations he could recognize and those he could not through drooping eyelids, feeling the lingering warmth of the day in the ground against his back, letting vague whispers of thoughts and memories pass through his mind. Tendrils of smoke curled thinly from his little fire, acrid smelling, like poison. It didn't matter, though. It was only there to keep him warm through the cool night, nothing more. Nothing more...

Nothing more to this life. He could feel it coming like a hunger, lying still all alone, and the first glimmers of fear in all the years since played within him. An entire empty existence, burning out in the sun's heat on a silent road leading to nowhere. And here he remained, with nothing more to do, placidly waiting for it. And a thousand dimly remembered dreams of a more comprehensible world would do nothing. You are a shell. Less than a ghost.

Just words.

They didn't mean anything to him, but they did.

Grunting, he forced his attention back to the moment. Always the moment, the past was done with, the future meaningless. Pulsing through his veins he could feel the burning in his body, a weary sickness eating away at him as if it were a mere extension of the emptiness, gnawing at him. His body demanded rest, his mind craved the silence that came with it. He'd done the best he could for both, finishing the remnants of his tasteless rations and tepid, foul-smelling water. All he had, nothing more, and still it wasn't enough. That was fine, he decided, he had prolonged it enough. Only because he had waited dutifully for something else to come into his life had he come his far, but all his misguided efforts had left him here, scarred and dying under the stars. Finally, rest.

And such beautiful stars. Over all the miles, he had gone to sleep looking at them, never really seeing anything. Automaton like, he had traveled his stretch of land for the day and then shut off. The routine was better than thinking, and harsh enough to drive all else from his mind. But now he examined them, even with the nauseous throbbing behind his eyes, feeling his body shutting down on him of it's own accord. So many stars, and so much darkness in which they swam. If only they were there for him, instead of spinning above him in silent indifference. He could almost be a ghost now, a spirit rustling the dirt under a faded sky. Nothing more...

2. The Shadow and the Storm

A groan escaped his cracked lips, his eyes fluttering as he pushed himself out of the deep darkness he had fallen into, away from the thick, grotesque images which moved sluggishly through his sleeping mind. Away from the safety of descending silence and back towards the raw pain of consciousness. Sounds began to reach him as he thrashed through the black mists of sleep, aware of the struggle it took to take each small step back to awareness. Explosions, groans, water rushing by. No, another dream, a war somewhere in his mind. It's immediacy made him tremble, despairing that it could not be real. And the cold was impossible, coursing through his worn out body in electric currents of pain and pleasure. A relief from the deathly heat and stillness of walking, always walking, but so cold...

Something wet touched his lips and he forced his dry, burning eyes open with a hoarse breath of confusion, trembling with the cold. The return to waking hit him like a blow as the thousand shocks of his battered flesh returned to him, and he realized that he could not remember how long he had lay here, huddled beneath the lip of a boulder. There had only been dreams, bizarre and fearful, lost in the sluggish passage of time. A heavy wet mist was blowing over him in the moaning wind, and he lifted his head weakly from the ground as rivulets of rainwater gurgled past him. His threadbare clothes were soaked and sticking to him, and he groaned at the harshness of the cold wind and rain on his skin. It could almost be another dream, this madness of cold water in the desert, but his sickness and disorientation felt all to real, looking about in bemused shock, trembling as deafening thunder spent it's fury around him. The rain spattered his face, forcing him to blink into the driving wind as it rushed over him, his mane of curls dripping and muddy as it plastered itself to his skull. Momentarily overwhelmed, his reeling mind began to operate once more, and he fought to push himself up on his elbows, glancing about his muddy encampment and the desert around him. It was bewildering for his desperate, slowly building consciousness to comprehend the world around him, lost in the gloom and sheets of rain one moment, ablaze in light and thunder the next.

Cautiously taking inventory of his memory and physical condition, the man flopped about with his hand in the mud in search of his hat, pulling it down onto his head roughly once he discovered it crumpled beneath his satchel. It did little to shield his eyes from the chill wind and mist but it's presence was reassuring, the rain drumming on the soaking wet brim. His difficulty in rousing himself brought his condition sharply into focus, and he understood dimly that he must have become finally succumbed to his weakness and exhaustion, his sleep deepening into oblivion. How long could he have lain here, dreaming his way towards death? One day? Two? He could remember nothing but stars and a woman's laughter in some heady dream.

Sitting up painfully, he lolled his head back and opened his mouth to catch some of the rain. He could only guess if it was safe to drink or not, but it wouldn't matter either way. It was cool enough, and revived him somewhat as it slid down his throat, watering his parched insides. Gazing blearily at the chaos around him, he crawled closer to the boulder and dug in against it's base for protection against the wind. As an afterthought, he dragged his soaked bag around with him and dug into it's sparse contents, pulling out an old plastic water jug and a canteen, setting them out where he hoped they might catch enough of the rain to last him for a time. Trembling, cold and drenched, he mused darkly on the cruel irony of his situation, pulling his knees up hard against his chest, hugging himself for warmth. He was half-dead already with exhaustion and the desert heat and he knew it, but now it was the cold and the damp which accosted him.

Why don't you just let me die, he muttered to himself, shivering, catching a drink from the heavens now and then if he felt himself beginning to drift. It was difficult to remain awake, even in the din of the storm. The strobing lightning, the cry of the wind, it was all too eerie and bizarre to seem real. The sharpness of the cold kept him clear, however, as it clung to him through his wet clothes, rendering him even more wretched and ill than the heat had.

Shuddering, he pushed himself along the boulder's edge as streamlets crept closer to his little spot. His eyes roamed over his nightmarish surroundings, finding himself whether by sickness or hopelessness unaffected by the frenzy around him, perhaps vaguely curious about the intensity of the storm so deep into the desert. In the distance he could make out the rough, rolling shape of hills and low, flat-topped mountains. A flash of light and he could make out depth to the dim shapes, although he found it difficult to focus for very long. His vision would inevitably blur after a few moments as his eyes began to burn. It was like treading water to him, a constant effort to hold himself above the beckoning sleep that pulled at him with cold hands. And for what reason? To watch the elements ripping at him?

And then, he saw the man again.

Only for a moment, out of the corner of his eye, but the momentary flash of recognition sent him into a spasm of shock and terror, turning to look back out into the dark and find him again. He couldn't see anything! The pain in his eyes was too great to search, no matter how he turned his head this way and that to look. Squeezing his eyes shut, he rose falteringly to his feet, leaning heavily against the rock, to look again. Still he could see nothing, even by the brightest flares of lightning. Only rain, mud and rocks.

Then his eye caught on a black silhouette of a man, leaping and prancing atop a low ridge, fully in the opposite direction from where he had first imagined seeing him. The shape danced and cavorted atop the ledge like some sort of animal in a delirium, twisting in wrenching, oddly choreographed directions through the driving rain. Breathing a confused sigh, he lost the shadow as it dove from the height of the ridge, disappearing into the blackness of the desert floor around him.

Shaking, straying from the support of the boulder a few steps, he glanced about. The cold sense of dread sank through him, water running down his face as the rain spattered him. Another ghost was here with him, sharing the desert night, and he was fearful that he knew what it meant, that the hollowness inside him was soon to swallow him whole.

With shaking, leaden legs he pushed himself up away from the boulder into some semblance of a standing position, leaning against the side of the stone as the wind and rain battered at him ferociously. His shirt was transparent and sticky with moisture, snapping about loosely in the strong wind. His hat, fortune had it, he could and did fix upon his head with a thin cord of string that dug into the skin of his neck from being pulled too tightly. He didn't notice. His eyes, his entire attention was thrown out along the winds in search of that contorted figure dancing by the lightning flashes, the shade of an atavistic creature in this numbing fury of the storm. Releasing the boulder, he took a few steps ahead into the streaming mud. Loose earth and topsoil carried away in a flush of rainwater, drenching his boots and ancient dungarees. And then a few steps farther ahead, peering, probing the night for a sign

And then it was there, not twenty yards away, and at first all he was aware of was the thing's teeth gleaming bright and perfectly white in the explosion of lightning. It was running at him in a hobbling, jittery fashion, and all his thoughts shut down in an instant as he reeled back at this fearsome apparition, splashing into a pool of liquid mud as he collapsed backwards onto his haunches. The rest of his mind caught up a heartbeat later, just as the flare of the light was snatched away, and the thing became clear to him. As clear as his fevered mind could capture details. They were nonsensical thoughts, flashes of the figure half-seen in the too brief light. But the monster - if it was a monster - had been rushing him, and he cried out, tight and worn vocal chords turning the sound into more of a cough. Lying in the mud, the water pouring past and underneath him, he glared wildly into the wind to find it. Fresh lightning showed nothing but the dreary alien landscape.

There was a sound, however, which he tried to find and follow through the din of the storm. It crept through his disoriented mind to be understood only as a jabbering, guttural laughing sound. Even this couldn't conceive of the noise's real nature. It all at once seemed to be a grunting, laughing, and a stream of endless words which meant nothing. The ravings of a lunatic, primitive mind it seemed to him. And yet it wasn't. It was alive, it crawled. If he could not make sense of it, he could at least perceive a glimmer of the mind from which it sprang. It seemed like laughter, almost, cruel and mocking him here. It could have been the mind of the Sheol, and spoke thus into his broken, wildly confused thoughts: Welcome to the Outlands, the desert of ghosts.

Or it meant nothing at all. But it was there, scratching at him as a cat batters a mouse before the kill.

Turning his head, he uttered a startled yelp to see that the creature had perched itself upon the boulder mere feet above him. It clung to the stone like a gargoyle, clinging to the side of the rock without handholds, defying all rhyme and reason, with its hands planted between crouching legs as if it would spring. It looked like a man now, but it was still a creature to him, a tanned and spindly figure leering at him with vicious white teeth from a face that was weirdly contorted. The angles of the face, the swoop and precision of red eyebrows, were too sharp, like a harshly exaggerated devil's mask. But the thing was pulsing and breathing like a living thing, almost bestial, staring down at him with the predatory gleam of a hunter. He could find no hint of humanity in the eyes, but there was a cold intelligence in it's face as it loomed there nonsensically on the boulder. Flapping off beside him like a banner was a brilliant scarlet cloak, cracking and snapping in the hard winds as a whip would. It seemed to be a part of the clothing the thing wore, which he could discern only as a loose red garment like a robe.

He was terrified, frozen in a half-crouch in the gurgling mud as this thing hung over him in anticipation, that jibbering sound continuing to bubble out of it like a giggle. It was the first true terror he had known in the years spent plodding across the dusty nowhere he had set out for. Wind tugged at the thing's wild, unkempt hair, rain spattering against it's cheek. Having come out here to die, having obeyed the deep grounding urge which had held him at this forgotten roadside, the man felt the oppressive weight of fate pressing him down into the mud. Kicking, driving him down into the earth to be crushed underfoot. The Red Man is there! Look at him!

When the thing suddenly broke it's panting, predatorial stance, he only barely caught the cry that arose in his hoarse throat. It paid him no heed, only outstretched one of its lean arms out and pointed over his head into the deeper darkness of the desert, towards the rolling hills and rocky knolls where he had first seen the thing twisting in its eerie dance. He half turned his head to look, and the apparition's gnashing teeth, fixed in a ferocious animal grin, stopped their grinding motion. All at once, the awful laughter - or whatever it was - ceased and he turned back to it in surprise, his stomach turning with watery, dreamlike dread. His expression seemed to delight the monstrosity and it broke into a jagged howl of a laugh, snapping its head up and back to glare at him with fixed gleaming eyes. The Adam's apple of the thing bobbed up and down for a moment, and it uttered a thick, strangled string of syllables as if speaking were all but beyond its ability. Vide cor tuum.

Opening his mouth, he coughed out a short sound of bewilderment. That laugh returned as the creature thrashed its head back, a dream monster against the glow of lightning through the torrents of rain. With gliding, slow movements it crawled down the side of the boulder and stepped down onto the flowing earth. It crept down like a spider, the red cape dancing in the razor sharp winds, and the man pushed himself away from it, kicking and crawling through the mud. At least, standing upright, it appeared more human. Cringing and shivering in the cold mud, the water sluicing by under him, he stared up at this ghastly apparition as it strode barefoot through the mud to stand over him. It straightened as it loomed over him with only the eerily luminescent clouds hung beyond it, looking down at him with its mass of tangled red curls falling forward, sodden and dripping. He raised his arm, either to ward off this dark shape or to shield his eyes from the rain - he himself knew not which - and caught the baleful stare of the shadowed eyes above him. Once, the eyes flicked away from him pointedly, towards the horizon to which it had gestured. He could feel the rainwater dripping from the figure's hair falling onto his face and neck, shuddering and gasping at the wretched cold and wet. It was no longer a lunatic animal holding his eyes, and yet it remained inhuman, dreamlike. The awful intelligence in its harsh, narrow face, knowing and promising, radiated like ripples of heat from its body. A single slow tear escaped his eye, looking into that half-shadowed face, to be lost amongst the rain unnoticed. Nodding, shaking, he closed his eyes and lost himself to the cold watery sickness in his head, and the comfort of darkness that it brought, rather than look into those eyes any longer.

In the thin grey light of morning, he awoke to stabbing pains in his hands and legs, a dry, hacking cough emerging from his rusty throat. His hands stung as if attacked by a swarm of hornets, but the thick leaden feeling in his head drowned out most of the pain, reducing it to a simple background burning amid a bleary world of aches and pains in the rest of his body. His throat and mouth were parched, grinding painfully as more coughs followed, and a weary rattle of a sigh. It was bitterly ironic, he noted vaguely, that the rest of him remained drenched and shivering in the still cool breezes which wafted over him. He was lying on a steep slope of sharp gravel he could not remember falling upon, his clothes battered and torn. The cuts in his hands sizzled with pain as he flexed them cautiously, opening the mud-spattered wounds again. More blood oozing from his palms like some sardonic Stigmata. There were more cuts on his knees and legs, but his hands were the worst. He ignored the pain and the blood dribbling from the sores on his hands and assessed his situation. His chin had been rubbed raw by the coarse drawstring of the hat, which he had lost sometime he could not remember, during a nighttime walk of which he had no recollection. His matted hair, perhaps a little cleaner now for all the rain, hung about his face in a wretched mop. Panting, gritting his teeth at the hurt in his body, he saw that it was white and was slightly pleased by this. The color had gone out of it as it had everything else.

His shoulder ached as he glanced around for his bag, catching sight of it a few yards down the hill, having tumbled over the jagged stones. There were gashes in it to match the ones in his flesh, and he wondered dimly if he had lost anything from it. He didn't pause to ponder on it, however, closing his eyes in the face of a stiff gust of wind. It came from the south, and was warmer. It tasted like dust. Overhead, the endless sky spun sickeningly, causing his stomach to lurch at the sight of it, and he groaned, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes, never mind the pain, and fought off a headache. It felt like a worm burrowing into his skull. His body was weak and still sick, trembling curiously, and he lay there for an unknown time longer wishing without knowing it that he would simply die. Gone, like a breeze . . .

* * *

When he next lifted his head, it was warmer and the sky had cleared to a pale, faded blue that matched his eyes. The buzz in his head had receded somewhat, for which he was slightly thankful, and the winds coming from over the desert had blown him almost dry and dusty. Fluttering white hair tickled his cheek in the wind and he grunted faintly at the dull aches throughout his body. The lancing pain of the cuts had muted some and that, combined with the lessening of the fever in his veins, allowed him to feel for what seemed to be the first time an unfamiliar sensation. It hooked its claws into his belly and squeezed it into a tight ball, threatening to shred. Hunger. If he could find his bottles, he might have water to slake the thirst that glued his throat shut, but he had finished off his paltry food supply...a day ago? Days? Weeks? He could no longer remember. There was only -

There is the Red Man!

- the clenching pain in his stomach to remind him that it had all gone. It didn't matter, of course. The pain could be endured. He had, after all, come out here to die. And now, although illness seemed to have given him a respite, it seemed that hunger would finish the job given time.

In the meantime?

Walk.

Yes, walk. That was the only thing. He had trudged far enough from the road to have lost sight of it, so any direction would have done to occupy the hours. Dying, he thought, would come on its own, but walking might hurry it up a little. And besides, simply waiting for it did not appeal to his character. He had to chase it, walk it down on the miserable gravel and dust that lay around him and bring it to a close. All of it. Death was a prize animal, and this was his hunt.

Picking himself off the rocks grimly, without further hesitation, he scrambled down the slope awkwardly, a willowy trembling in his legs threatening him to be cautious, which he ignored. His bag, a muddy heap lying amid a scattering of pebbles that resembled teeth pulled from some ancient monster, sat wretchedly on the ground. It looked like an animal whose guts had been slit open and had crawled away to die. He nudged it with his foot, half expecting the scavengers to flee from the belly of the kill, but it merely slid across the stones with a dry, dusty sigh. It was too harsh in this wilderness even for the parasites, apparently. Grunting, he knelt down, a faint wince all that betrayed the strain he felt in his legs, and rolled the satchel over to dig through its contents, ignoring the dirty white hair blowing in the hot breath of the desert. He didn't carry much, but he discovered most of it intact. A pair of old boots he had found by the side of the road leagues back, his old and travel-worn coat which had long since faded from its original elegant black to grey - he didn't know why he carried it anymore out here, having long since decided to let himself freeze should it come to that - one of his water jugs, more or less full of somewhat yellow rainwater, and a leather pouch in which he stashed some minor items. Undoing the drawstring, he dug out his leather cord, tying his hair back and out of his way. He stowed the bag away in the folds of the coat where it wouldn't fall out. He shouldn't need these things to go out into the desert and face down death, but he packed them anyway. It was habit, it was the rhythm his life had always been. And it was as necessary to be done, for irrational and unknown reasons, as his heartbeat. Peering about gravely at the earth around him, he spied his other water bottle smashed upon a jumble of rocks. The cap had come loose and, more importantly, it was punctured in several places just as he was. Promptly, he forgot about it. A useless item didn't matter much to him. Why the useful ones did was a mystery, even unto himself.

And one more thing, catching his eye where it gleamed in the sun, brought a bitter upward twist of his lips. Rising creakily to his feet, he strolled over and squatted down to examine it. Better that he had lost it forever, he thought, but the little silver snub-nosed pistol had managed to stay with him for as long as he could remember. It gleamed too brightly in the sun, the only thing he carried which remained new-looking, and he touched the wooden handle thoughtfully. Even that was neither pitted nor scarred by his traveling, or the fall. It had been used only once, if he believed in his memory. He had thought about it, thought of using it again, but he didn't know whether it would fire at all anymore. Somehow, though, he suspected it would work just fine, each and every bullet in the shiny revolver happy to oblige. He had wished more often that he would simply throw it away, but he kept it, like he kept his coat, without knowing just why. It disturbed him vaguely, this polished metal machine. In the beginning, he had carried it because it had felt purposeful, heavy in his hand. And then because it offered a simple way to end everything if he wanted to. It's only purpose to kill him if the world couldn't bring itself to do it for him. But now, it only sat there, and he was still alive after all that had been said and done. He was hollow, he should have been dead a long time ago if God were good, and everything about him but his body had died already.

It's there, he thought, Why not use it now?

Lifting it by the handle, he turned and aimed it towards himself, looking down the clean and dark barrel, as if to ask it whether it would fire itself and have done with it. His hand trembled, he did half expect it to go off of its own free will, and had an absurd fear that when it did, it would never stop firing, like a mad and twisted little animal clawing at everything in sight. It merely sat there, squat and heavy in his hand, so he carried it back to the bag and shoved it deep inside again. As long as he used the coat to pad the rest, the satchel was usable. Dusting his hands off, he slung it over his raw, burning shoulder and gazed up at the rocky slope again. He thought, if he looked hard enough, he could see where his blood had stained the rocks. But, it was probably his imagination.

It was a struggle to maintain his footing as gravel shifted and slid out from beneath him as he forced his way up the hill. Some unknown time ago, he knew - or thought he knew - that just such a climb had sent him tumbling into a fall, broken and insensible on the rocks. It could happen again for all he cared, but somehow he found his way up the stones, cutting his hands even more in the attempt, and mounted the top of the hill.

He paused, squinting against the glare of the pale sky, and looked down upon a town.

Town was a grander name for what he saw than it deserved, but he saw that once it had been a real place, which had now slipped away to become a hazy dream in the desert, a ramshackle mess of old buildings dotting the landscape in a rough circle. The heart of the place was to the west, on a flat and powdery depression where he could make out an actual street lined with discarded relics of buildings. The street seemed to go nowhere, it simply divided two halves of the town and abruptly stopped once it pushed a marginal way into the desert. The entire town looked as if it had been plucked from some far away land - somewhere with history for the buildings looked antiquated and puritanical - and dropped into this deathly place. It could have been miles away, he couldn't guess properly, the clearness of everything and the ache in his body made it difficult to judge the distance. There were no figures anywhere, no shadows of people skittering across the dust of their town on fantasy lives. But there would be ghosts. He knew this, he was a ghost himself. The world was littered with them.

In the distance, far removed from the town proper like an unwanted reminder of better times, was a quaint building which he identified from its tall sloping roof and tilting wrought-iron crucifix as a church. It was surprisingly white and gleaming, unlike the wretched artifacts which clustered like drunkards along the street farther off. It's paint was peeling roughly in places but it continued to shine in the sun, a picturesque reminder of old sights from a past he couldn't clearly recall. Only a name, Stonegate, which stirred memories of that jittering creature, dancing to and fro along the hills, and the Acolyte in the velvet robe. His head spun for his mind to remember such things and he pushed them far back into a corner of his mind. The church, he saw, guarded a smallish cemetery marked off by leaning wood fences, falling to pieces in many places. The entire sight seemed blatantly out of place amid the antiseptic sterility of the hardpan, glowing white under the pale blue of the sky where thin streaks of clouds hung motionless far far overhead. He thought he had been numbed to strange sights and surprises, they had been cooked right out of him by the unblinking eye of the sun, and yet this lingered here before his eyes, refusing to be dismissed as dream or hallucination. An artifact, madcap and lunatic in its unwavering solidity. And yet, deeper down in the hollow in him, it was not a surprise. It was preordained, it was the word of God almost. Vide cor tuum.

It seemed a good omen, too. What better place to die and rest than a cemetery?

4.Desolation

It was a hard scramble down the side of the rocky slope and down onto the hardpan which stretched out before him, stumbling at first before regaining some unfounded strength to press on. One leg swung out languidly in front of the other, each in turn, the ceaseless rhythm of his flickering existence. Hard to remember, impossible to follow, it lulled him half to sleep again, in that baking empty state of consciousness that merged him with the land around him. Dry, dusty dead. And impenetrably quiet. Even the wind made no noise as it stirred the rough, forgotten white hair that brushed at his forehead above eyes which stared resolutely at the ground. His satchel creaked petulantly now and then, ignored, the bounce and jostle of the thing wearing against his hip. The strap cutting his shoulder as it always did. Up ahead there was the chalky trail that passed for a road, arising out of the desert from nowhere to creep along its stretch of space and then terminate just as abruptly. That was the way of the world, half-thoughts easily begun and quickly abandoned. Perhaps, he thought in his unfocused, crawling manner, it was a joke the universe had sprung for him. Its absurdity might have made him laugh, but it didn't touch him. It was only a raw sensation coupled with a dim comprehension of meaning.

The light faded somewhat into a dull white glare above him, sunlight marred and diffused by high clouds invisible and unimaginable. His shadow disappeared beneath him as he walked on, as if it had grown weary and would go no farther, left behind at some nameless, unidentifiable point of this journey. More likely, he thought, his body had given up the ghost back there somewhere in the hazy brightness, and now he walked on, a zombie, even more desiccated than before. He wished it well, and a fitful smile crinkled his lips like a grimace, that deeply mad illness inside his head bubbling up like red foam. Oh, but he wished it well. His soul had long since ceased to be a part of him. Now it was apart. How he wanted to rave, to extinguish this insanity and furor against the rocks and let the sun mummify him here, howling at the rocks. Maybe that is what the creature had been -

there had been such a grotesque thing, hadn't there? He'd seen it, hadn't he?

- another husk of a creature, demented beyond humanity. What a curious thing that seemed, that the mad had more life and vigor in them. The monsters come from within, of course, he'd heard that somewhere. What a cradle for monsters the desert was. He could feel its hot, stinging hooks burrowing into his brain and shredding what thoughts were there. Oh, what a world, what a world.

He nearly crushed the skull underfoot amid his whirling, sandblasted thoughts. Drawing up short, he was only minimally surprised at the clammy feeling of his skin, dry and without a trace of sweat here in the desert, and he gazed down at the worn, cracked skull blankly. Its jawbone was long since gone, perhaps by predators, although he couldn't remember ever seeing an animal of any kind in all these years, couldn't even recall, despite the effort it required to sink down into the decaying recesses of his memory, what kind of animal might live here. Empty eye sockets questioned him dumbly, as if wondering what business he had coming across it out here. It seemed not offended so much as bemused, even hopeful, staring out with vacant panic. He dared not kneel down to examine it, and saw no reason to besides, but it did almost seem to beg his help.

The blonde man wondered whether this was his fate. Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him only too well.

He stepped over it and walked on, kicking up a trace of dust now with his tired boots, thinking he had forgotten about the pleading eyes of the skull, but he hadn't. It was the first sign of life he had seen in an eternity.

After a time he came to the side of the road, perhaps a few hundred yards from where it suddenly began out of nothing, and turned to look off ahead down the white line of the road towards the town. It seemed nearer now, and beyond it he could make out the distinct beginnings of foothills, and the fuzzy shapes of mountains and a plateau on the horizon. Everything was indistinct, the town itself almost lost into the blurry glow of the sky. Shrugging back his satchel, he moved to walk down the road, following the dusty artery into town.

For a moment, however, he stopped and remained there on the edge of the line surrounded by an endless expanse of hard, merciless earth, scanning the entire vista around him. In every direction the same: hardpan, white sky. And underneath the insect-like buzzing and numbness in his head, the sheer silence of the world bore down upon him in a terrible weight. The notion even broke into his consciousness of returning to that lonely skull back along his trail and crush it, extinguish whatever semblance of life it had left. Something about those terribly empty holes staring in stark terror at a desert that never changed horrified him, straining his silent, deathly composure once again with the threat of sheer madness. He thought a broken grunt of a cry pushed out of him, but it was gone before he could hear it. Clutching the uneven strap of his satchel, it felt like barbed wire in his palm, he stared into the glare of the sky. It seemed to grow brighter, hotter, a searing light that tore at his eyes. He screamed hoarsely, furious, his hand writhing against the strap as he swayed and contorted, ripping his voice out of his throat.

Pain erupted in his throat and he choked, wheezing, coughing, trembling on the side of the road. He tried to scream once again, but it was just a dusty gurgle, and the pain cut worse. Thinking of the skull's missing jawbone, he wanted to collapse into lunatic laughter, but his chest heaved for breath as his throat ground painfully. He felt faint and hot again, as if his flesh would catch fire, and he sank down on one knee. The sky glared down at him with total indifference.

Water might placate his throat, he knew, but he left his satchel at his side. He had come out here to die and he felt sure this was the beginning of it, or a kind of release at least. If his mind broke apart now, so much the better, his body could tick away the remaining time in the sun without him. The man waited and waited for the moment to come, for lunacy or illness to devour his brain.

Nothing happened. Staring down at the dirt, he merely calmed, even as the broiling heat enveloped him. And so, after a while, he stood up and kept walking, thoughtless and as unsteady as before.

5.Ghost Town

He fell down twice before he reached the outskirts of the town, wondering in each instance why he pushed himself back to his feet, but once on his way paying it little thought as he followed the path set out before him in the white dust. It was nearing dusk as he neared the first of the squat buildings that stretched ahead along the road on either side. The road had descended into a low area in which the town was set, becoming a line of powdery white stones that crumbled underneath his feet. The solid rock of the desert floor gave way here to a dull brown soil, more sand than anything else, which stirred and blew down the lane with the breezes. The buildings were encrusted with sand, portions of them disintegrating into soil themselves, others crystallizing in sheltered locations to become stone. Nearer now, he could make out the white gleam of the church on its hill outside town, and he could only wonder in his sickened mind what might be there. The wind stirred through the town, whispering and moaning, and the wooden buildings creaked on their ancient foundations as they rotted away. Dead, grey facades stood opposite each other, their antique architecture both quaint and eerily unnerving. He had never seen anything like this foreboding cluster of buildings. It quelled the raging madness inside of him with a heavy, hot knot of anxiety. Ghosts and whirlwinds seemed to dance and stare at him from every black pit of a window, talking amongst themselves about the intruder, as they always had back in the greener lands. The stillness itself was menacing, and he was surprised at the dread that sat in his stomach, cold and nauseating. Surprised that anything could have an effect anymore. But for all of this, that lone white church in the distance held his gaze, away from even the voices that he knew he could hear coming from the buildings around him, ancient and rasping. Its sentinel structure glowing as the light was beginning to fade, magical and haunted. Whatever wraiths crawled through the town, he knew something claimed that place as its home, and it watched from afar.

The sand blew and puffed onto his boots as he tread slowly down the chalky lane through the town, inspecting the structures that looked down on him like weathered faces. Most were unrecognizable, many were simply too deteriorated to even guess at their shape, let alone their former function. One in particular, which might have been two levels high, had collapsed in upon itself and hunkered down in the dirt like a crab with its back broken. A few seemed to be houses, reasonably intact, and his scattered mind noted them, vestigial curiosity piqued. As he neared the end of the line of buildings, and thus the end of town, where he could spy the road press on nonsensically before halting, he turned to his left purely at random, on whim, and approached what he guessed might have once been a bar or saloon. It sagged before him as he neared and those voices on the wind seemed to pick up distinctly. He realized then, flatly and without another thought, that the church could be seen from almost everywhere in the town. It pulled the eye towards it seductively, dominating his thoughts. Behind him, the sun was setting in the hazy sky, the feeble light beginning to grime with dust and darkness.

There was no door to the building, only a warped and fragile wooden porch which barely seemed to support his weight. Support beams which seemed woefully thin, like matchsticks, braced the leaning face of the building and the porch roof. Once the church was blocked from his sight by the building, he felt a tired faintness which he thought must be relief. His footfalls thudded on the dilapidated boards as he stepped up to the entrance, a gaping hole in the building's face, like a mouth. He didn't fear the building's collapse - would have welcomed it, likely - but those voices tickled his sour, withered mind, distracting. And yet they made no sound at all.

There was little light to see by as he peered in the doorway, and the grey shaft of illumination from the dull sky behind him proceeded only hesitantly inside, drying up quickly. There was a staircase of some kind winding its way up to what might have been a second floor overlooking the first, but the floor had fallen away in large sections, gathered in a heap against the wall. A few doors dotted the wall on the upper level where the floor had dropped. One tapped mindlessly in its frame as a breath of wind stirred the air, swaying back and forth as it rapped out its message in Morse Code. Closed for repairs perhaps, or Come on in. A faint glimmer in the dimness might have been a mirror on the wall, the back of a bar or some such. He could make out shards of glass amid the rubble and wondered disinterestedly whether anyone had been crushed when the upper floor had collapsed or if it had fallen after the building had been left as a ruin. Taking a few steps further inside, he glanced around at the sterile, musty darkness. Whatever ghosts used this building had retreated from the room, apparently, leaving it merely an empty shell. But they were still there, peeking out from behind doors or from other buildings. He could feel them more than he felt anything inside of himself.

Laying beside a mound of rubble and debris was a half-buried splotch of color, which he strode towards, leaving the darkening patch of light from the doorway to investigate unhurriedly. It appeared to be a book, old and hardbound in leather or hide, with a flaking gold etching on the front which might have once been a design. Lifting it out from underneath a scattering of glass, he saw that it was now a meaningless garble of flakes that clung on still. He half expected it to crumble in his hands, but it held together, yellowed paper looking brittle and coarse on the sides. Carrying it into the remaining light, he stretched it open, and sheaves of paper spilled out loosely where the spine had broken or decayed. Glancing down at them, he stepped away and carried the remainder of the book into the shaft of light from the door to examine it. It seemed odd, enigmatic. The last book he had seen had been the maddening Acolyte's, but it had held luster. This book was rotting, forgotten and . . .

Empty. Every page, discolored and blank. On one he found scratchy indentations from what might have been a pen, but they were nonsense and unreadable. His throat ground painfully as he grunted and tossed it aside, sending more pages flying free. It skittered across the dusty floor and dislodged a small shower of plaster and debris.

Resting against the doorframe, the man swallowed dryly past the soreness in his throat and stared down at his feet. Even the town's ghosts were settling in for the night, the wind quieting down as the light failed. The routine in him, mechanized and instinctual, called for building the fire, drinking some water and waiting the night out again. Another little rest in prelude to the real one. His eyes drifted toward one of the buildings, thinking distantly of shelter. Without the voices the silence was overwhelming but for the buzzing in his head and the roar of his own blood in his ears as sickness began to creep through his veins again, poison.

Let me go, he asked of no one in particular.

6.Alone in the Dark

It was roasting even within the dark recess of the building, night having swept across the world in its peculiar way, without encroachment, only a sudden darkness. The floorboards felt splintered and cruel against his tender, baked skin. Waves of heat emanated from his skin, his clothes, low and dry like a dying coal. No movement. No, none. Only the thick, stifling air and the dusty senselessness of slowly dying thoughts, drifting toward sleep.

Without, amid the squat and disintegrating buildings which made up the corpse of the desiccated town, a low fitful wind drifted, batting at loose shutters, nudging crumbling wood toward breaking, to rot back into the earth. Secretive sounds sprinkled the night, the creak and tremble of old structures teetering near collapse. He tried to push each out of his way, drowning deep into the well of black water where sleep lay, with death beyond. Whether illness or the heat of the day, the pulsing warmth made his head swim. Fits of nausea and dizziness crawled through his insides, like a strong fist pushing up from his gut. He had retched once, dryly, until he couldn't breathe, and his throat lanced with pain.

Quieter, quieter. Such things began to drift from him, sinking like debris about him in the dense air, the black water. Imagine there's no heaven. Molasses thoughts, pushing through the cluttered passages of his mind. Imagine. Images. Deathly things crawling in the earth, black and hard, alien. Did they crawl in him, in his dark recesses? Would they? When he was part of the soil, perhaps. Perhaps.

Noises now, fretting about. Distant, at first, merely the door above him swinging open and closed in the warm, tasteless wind. It found its way into his mind. He thought he knew now what the message had been, that eerily thoughtful tapping. The old plea, evoking dim, greyish images of pleading faces and white, cold hands flopping against waves. Save our souls. Save our souls . . . save us . . .

please

Laughter nearby, dry and practiced, muffled by wind and walls. Nonsense sound, out here, part of his fragmented mind. His hair ruffled against his sweaty brow, felt grimy. Save our souls.

You're dead, he thought grimly, inwardly, his jaw clenching, You have none.

Save us, save us.

His entire body felt singed, raw, pulsing with the heat of endless days in search of death, of rest. It felt heavy and unmovable, a useless hulk his weak and failing muscles could do little with. But it was those voices, still whispering now on the wind, that wormed into his skull, picking away at his frayed mind. Pressing the heel of his palm against his throbbing forehead, he released a long, painful breath, hovering somewhere above the depths of that deep sleep. The man could almost look down into those still, black waters and see the bloated bodies of the drowned, their lips moving. Save us. There were thoughts of the statue people, glazed eyes that could have been skillfully carved and not real, in that far away place, and what it would have been like for them to suddenly move, or to look at him with those dead faces. Knowing, but mindless.

His stomach clenched tightly, a ball of pain, and he coughed burning air. Once, he had possessed clarity and intensity, but it was now so difficult to remember, his brain had been cooked inside of his head and ravaged by fever and madness. The only strong desire that remained was for it all to cease. No more pain, no more emptiness. It was his curse to be empty, nothing, but to live and be conscious of this and of suffering. Less than a ghost. How we wanted to delve into those black, cold waters and let them close above his head. To still the fever, to abandon awareness. The faces of the drowned beckoned, pleaded, and his head swam in a swirl. It was so difficult to think, but it didn't end. The fever still poisoned his mind, and that was alright. One day he hoped it would wipe it out.

His pulse throbbed in his head as he lingered above sleep, his breathing slow and ragged. Above him in the darkness, the door creaked - the wind - as it had off and on throughout the empty night, so much so that he had come to ignore it and the rest of the decrepitude about him, shaking and groaning in the wind. There was no fear of it caving in on him, imprisoning him - dead or alive. It would make no difference at all. It was an end, and a quicker one than that which he sought in the desert. And then there was a shuffle, a grind of a sound on the boards above - or around? - him. A tired, half-hearted sound. It repeated, and the door creaked again in its nerve wracking swing, the mincing sound of dragging metal. He let his mind drift, sinking towards sleep, welcome escape.

He became aware of a faint light against his closed lids, from the askance doorway, tilting with the sag of the building, through which the wind occasionally intruded. Against this he put his hand, covering his face, not surprised by the lack of odor or taste to his skin. His flesh felt like yellowed parchment, his mind equally brittle. His hand ached now, threatening a stab of pain from the scabs on his palms, but his weary mind as closing down, the surface of that dark pool so close. Something seemed to slither through the debris behind him, in the recesses of the building. It was a slight sound, but it found its way through his deadened senses to be dismissed He knew it wasn't there. There was nothing alive here in these husks of ruins. But the next rustle felt closer, and his hackles stood up slowly as his sluggish brain felt something breathing against his neck.

Wind. He put it out of his mind. Wind or ghosts. And no ghosts had ever disturbed him. They lingered throughout this abandoned part of the world, insensible and alone. Once, in a fever dream, he had come across a phantom traveler sharing the road with him, head bowed and truly silent, who had dissolved into the wind. They were deaf and dumb, stupid remnants of lives. They were as aware of him as they were of being dead.

Something brushed against his skin, very slowly, and his body condensed, paralyzed, as it stroked his neck curiously.

Will you -

NO, he spat out, jerking himself away, twisting to look into the deep darkness that stared back at him. Absolutely quiet for a moment, his fingertips grazing the rough wood. His hair was coming free of the leather knot with which he'd bound it, and he ran his burnt fingers over it. Sitting up slightly, a knot of watery pain sank inside of him at the movement, and he groaned, rubbing his face. This must be how it happens, he thought drunkenly, and jitteringly laughed, the pain inside him cold. Imagine. Maybe it was. He tried to think of a twisted rag of a corpse, or his skeleton clad in rotting clothes, staring up at the ceiling of this place forever. And when it collapsed, staring at nothing. He started to laugh again, painfully and faintly frightened, and his whole body shivered with the threat of mania. Did he go mad, too, before a skull was all that was left?

Madness. Save my soul.

Laughter died and he trembled in the weak grey light that seeped in through the crooked doorway. He just wanted it to end. The Hell of eternal awareness was maddening, terrifying. He tried to save me, the man reflected darkly, pressing his palms against his eyes. This was what he meant. The Acolyte and his wisdom of passion, the sole escape.

Footsteps echoed on wood above him, and he held still, trying to push such things out of his mind. He should go out, into the street, but he knew that they would be there, too. Drowned faces staring at him from darkened windows, imploring. Besides, they were harmless, their presence and their mindless murmuring merely playing with his half-conscious, ill mind, fueling his mania. Was he a novelty to them? Did they even know he was here?

They were walking in the darkness now in slow, unhurried steps. Some were silent - older - but they were there, footfalls scuffing on the dirt-covered floor. Gathering strength with the night. And with his presence here as well? His shoulders twitched as something tinkled behind him, his eyes affixed to the dark in front of him, and he felt his body tensing. Something glass. At the bar, perhaps, something falling. Pieces of the mirror.

Dry laughter again, humorless. Bloodless, tired, but closer. He clenched his fists, the muscles weary and strained, and tried to hold himself in as he felt them moving around him in the dark. He could feel their blank, vacant stares crawling over his skin, imagine their blue, drowned faces swimming through the dark, mouths slack and mumbling. Screams were tearing at his insides, drowning out the mad laughter from before as he felt something brush against him, like cloth, as something passed. He turned his head slowly, feeling them watching, knowing they could see him, and fixed his eyes on the grey light from the door. He wanted to bolt, to tear himself apart. The town was coming weakly to a shamble of life around him, perhaps because of him. Perhaps word had spread, and they were coming from all around now, closing in. Distantly, quavering on the thread of the wind, he heard what might have been the tiresome melody of a piano. It would start on a piece and quickly descend into a deathly dirge and choke to a stop. When the wind returned, it began again on an unfamiliar, off-key tune, only to die again. Their weak voices and movements quieted somewhat, and he thought they were listening, too.

The door above him creaked open again, and then swung shut with a bang. Tensely frozen, he refused to react, to betray his notice of it. There was a childish thought that stuck itself into his mind, to lay back down on the hard, rough wood, eyes squeezed shut, to make them go away. He glanced around slowly in the darkness, listening to the intermittent sounds, thinking of stories that teased the limits of his memory. Mindless spirits repeating the same things over and over, trapped in their own ignorance of their deaths. His eyes were blurring, becoming unfocused from exhaustion and heat. It hurt to stare so long into the blackness with nothing but the shapeless blind forms to be found. Something was scratching away out there, and heavy footfalls clocking on the wood to his right.

He heard the voices again, and stopped.

They seemed to carry on the wind, like the crazed dirge of the piano, growing stronger before suddenly receding. No. Not the wind. They were moving around him in their shuffling, fitful way, teasing. One would come close enough almost to whisper in his ear, and then pull back. But the words were only jumbles, unintelligible. A string of words thrown together with no understanding of their meaning. He thought of a man he'd seen on the edge of the desert, one of the last inhabitants of a shabby smattering of buildings, who had sang songs to himself in a low, furtive voice as he watched the horizon. Rolling, almost lovely, tunes. Only when he'd come close had he found it to be nonsense, words following each other in a babbling flood with only snatches of coherence.

The doorway beckoned with its flimsy pale glow. Not safety but respite. Fine powder and dust fogged the empty street outside, beyond the deteriorated porch.

The voices were running together as he listened. They were very quiet, but seemed to be speaking at a normal tone, as if they were at a distance. Now and then one voice would rise over the others before sinking down again. A cold feeling began to descend over him, making his skin crawl, and he felt more than heard something close to him. He didn't dare move, or invite its attention further. He knew it was behind him, there was a gathering chill against his back that rippled across his spine. But the others were still around him, formless shadows staring more knowingly now. He thought he could make out the shape of shoulders against one wall, hunched. And creeping close to the edge of the door, just outside the light, he thought a head turned to look his way. He could even see the faintest glisten of eyes there, catching the light, and they were so hard. The scratching continued in the dark close by and then, as it suddenly stopped, a sheet of parchment skittered by on the wind, going out the door. A muffled thump came from outside, and the piano rolled to a faint, tuneless crescendo before falling silent. It was then that he felt the fingers on his back and neck again, touching and feeling him, and his body refused to move.

Someone laughed at him from very close behind.

His entire body spasmed at the loud sound and he twisted, cold, and stared back behind him in the dark towards the deeper recesses of the building where unexplored rooms lay, crypt-like and frigid. A murky brown shape was hovering close to the ground, noticeable in the gloom only from the faint light from the doorway. It moved and seemed to look at him, very close, and it seemed to have a face, but it was only a deformed smear. He was moaning, he could hear himself, but he wasn't moving. His body felt stiff and he felt a crazed gush of panic at the thought that his body was dead or drying, of inhabiting a corpse. But no, he was trembling as the brown shape grew larger, as if moving closer. It had a vague outline, what might have been shoulders and a head, but they blended together, dirty and filmy.

Will you stay? asked a warped voice. It sounded like a child's, but slowed down to an inhuman growl. It was getting closer, or larger. It filled his vision. And it was touching him again, but he refused to look and see those shapeless brown tendrils caressing his skin. They felt like fingertips, smooth and soft, but cold. They leeched warmth from his skin, cold down to his bones. Please please please, it said, We want you. The words were sweet, innocent, but they wanted to pull him down. Drown, he thought.

There were other things around him now, less hesitant, and they were beginning to touch him as well. No shades or shapes identified them, but they were drifting around him like cold breaths of wind, his eyes fixed on the darkening brown shape before him, and the horrible smear of eyes and mouth that were trying to form into the real thing, unsuccessfully. It was becoming opaque, his whole body trembling violently as its melted face swam close to him. Unseen fingers were testing their limits, touching his hair, becoming more insistent with each attempt.

Please stay, breathed a hoarse woman's voice in his ear. It was touching his face.

A scream tore its way through his paralysis and he scrambled backwards, spitting nonsense curses and panic cries at them, pushing himself back over the floor with his palms and heels. The brown shadow lurched upwards with the sound of rustling leaves and loomed heavily over him like a tattered curtain, a black stain stretching over its twisted visage in what might have been a mouth. His mind had shattered, his throat was ripping itself up with screams as he scrambled frantically back towards the door.

It was only after he had pushed himself out onto the dirt street running through the dead town outside that he realized he was free, his chest heaving, and more screams bubbling up inside of him. He knew they were looking at him from the door, unwilling or unable to venture out, and he thought he caught the merest glimpse of that distorted brown face looming in the dark. His heart was racing and his head thudding painfully with it, deafening, and each breath through his raw throat demanded pain in return. He hardly noticed the blood on his hands from where his wounds had reopened and new ones cut.

Shaking, he glared about fearfully, filling with hatred now that he was free, and roared angrily at the murky shapes in the door, and at the other eyes and faces which lurked in windows and shadows, unseen. GO!! GO AWAY!! YOU'RE DEAD!

The sudden release of their pressure startled him, and he shivered in the breeze as their presence withdrew. The lunatic thought of returning for his satchel made him fall into a fit of coughing laughter that wracked him with pain. Catching his breath, he rasped at the throbbing pain in his chest and throat, and screamed at them again, without words, before collapsing back into the dust of the road. Above him, the night sky, void of stars. Absolutely empty.

* * *

A dream or momentary waking :

He was shivering in the cool desert breeze, dusted by the grey powder that it carried. It was only the briefest moment, but he could see the pale figure in the door across from him as before, only more distinctly, and its smile was not the dumb, vacant smile of a ghost. It was slim, macabre, knowing, framed in red velvet.

I see you.

That day had been green, as they all had been then, in that place that everyone knew was the Heartlands, even if no one called it that. No one had ever given the land a name, for there had never been a need. People for the most part remained where they found themselves and that was simply that, and travelers were a strange crazy breed who brought with them ludicrous stories which no one believed and ideas in their heads that were too fanciful to be true. But there were also the quiet ones, the pilgrims who went from place to place with calm eyes half-hidden under the shade of hat or cowl. He was one of those, although he hadn't always been. In those days he could remember a life besides walking, cutting a path across the world that people thought they knew from the patch they inhabited. But those memories were lies and meant nothing, and it was eating him up inside like acid. Still, there was enough anger left in him to make him dangerous and unpredictable, and that was what people saw in him from the first glance. The Loner.

The town had a name, or a nickname actually, which it gained from the marvelous brick arch which had been constructed over the road leading through the heart of the town. No one remembered who had built the arch or why, for there wasn't much of a town to justify such a lavish creation, but it stood there still and people regarded it with respect for it was a wonder, a beautiful thing of the imagination. It was a silly thing, really, this arch. It stood apart, with bright red brick stretching out on either side in the beginnings of walls, like a fort, only they stopped just yards out from the road. Perhaps there had been a wall and it had fallen down. Or perhaps the dreamer who erected this marvel had abandoned them as inconsequential ideas, unnecessary, and they had never been built at all. It was a sketch, colossal but unfinished. They were fond of it nonetheless, because it stood out and because it was different, and so they named the town Stonegate.

It had been Spring and the world was green and sparkling under a softer, more compassionate sun. The hills rolled like waves on the sea in all directions around the town, with gnarled but growing trees mounting their sides like leisurely walkers out to see the scenery. There were trees in the town as well, growing carefully along the road, and were kept well trimmed. No one knew who trimmed them, perhaps they groomed themselves with a modest, secretive vanity. And the grass was thick and alive everywhere, colors bright and friendly, and it cushioned his footfalls as he strode across the town. His hair had been blonde then, and long as always, and it held luster. The eyes had been a deeper blue. Once they had been kind, now they were cold. He didn't see colors as he walked, only shades of grey as the world bled to death of color. The only color he might have seen was red, the color of anger, of blood.

Eyes shied away from him as he passed. Simple people with quiet, retiring lives, enjoying a Spring day, troubled by the presence of the Loner but not concerned enough to break the peace of the day. Given time the travelers left, even the quiet ones. They were the restless spirits in this world, and this was a place of waiting, and patience. He made a strikingly elegant figure as he moved, however, languid and graceful. Long legs carrying him across the road in swift double-quick time. Long blonde hair streaming out behind him, loose white shirt rippling in the breeze, bright jeans and boots flowing into his walk. To some he looked like an angel on a mission, to others a madman. It was all a matter of perspective.

He cut through town, staring down his objective, which was a small, flattish building near the edge of the town. It was a seedy place amid all of this green, and it was something of a sore that grew on the side of the little town. Decent souls didn't go there, and as they watched this striking, vengeful figure with furtive, distasteful looks, it only seemed natural that one such as he would. It was the bar, what passed for a home to the wanderers who came through the gate with their delirious minds and nonsense words, where the drunkards and the failures went to numb their pains hour after hour after hour. Until nothing hurt, and nothing was felt, and they were like wooden Indians staring at the walls with painted faces set into grim, frozen masks of sorrow. People paused in their tracks as he swept along, they gave him passage. No one got in his way, no one looked at him long. As soon as he was out of sight, he was all but forgotten, except as a feeling. The drifters brought with them many strange things, but they always brought a change to the serenity of the town. They stirred ripples in the water, and their intrusion could be sensed, almost tasted. He tasted of poison and pain.

A man was braced against the dull brick facade of the building as he approached, his head bowed and his hands dangling limply like dead spiders between his legs. Atlas, he seemed, holding up the wall of the dank hive within. Those in the town pitied him. The blonde man felt nothing, not even disdain, hardly even noticed him in fact. He'd seen men like him hundreds of times, but the when of these memories was beginning to ebb from his mind. Hadn't it always? There were always the disconsolate, the shells of men collapsed and unaware, empty of everything but drink or misery. More ghosts.

The bar had no door, only a dingy arch open upon a humid blackness into which light never ventured. It was through this doorway that he plunged through, out of the warmth and vibrancy of the Spring town and into a cave - damp, dark, bustling with half-seen shapes that hovered around the edges of his dazzled vision. He squinted through the darkness, cursing it as he groped nearly blind through the squalor. There were others here, men mostly, or something shaped like men, but they made little noise. The dry rustle of cloth alerted him to their presence, or the sound of glasses being moved about, and drinks poured, but little talk. There was nothing to say. A few eyes moved imperceptibly to glance at him before floating away in their owners' eye sockets, back to stare at the walls. Some of the men were statues, seated at their table as if they had petrified into the wood, cracked stone. Perhaps they weren't really there, only an echo of them, an afterthought memory.

You came, announced a rich baritone voice simply, but the words rolled out heartily, almost gleeful, and he turned to search out the owner of the voice. Shapes were clearer now, but not details, but the other made himself known to him immediately. There was a vigor to him, his movements, and even from across the room he could feel him. Those in the bar who moved did so in slow motion, but this one was alive, he almost seemed to writhe in his seat, buried back in the farthest corner of the bar where it smelled of mildew, eternal night. Yes, I'm here, the voice called again, teasing, and he wound his way carefully through the scattered patrons in their stone silence. The voice was too smooth for the depths it reached, deep and sonorous. It should have broken, or been coarser, but it rang out in a cultured fashion, an ancient bell. The tone one of a man with a secret. It troubled and fascinated him at once. As he neared the speaker, his arm collided with the head of a grey haired man, thin with hollow cheeks. He didn't offer an apology, the man never complained.

As the blonde neared he saw that it was clearly he, the pilgrim he had met along the road. His bristling, bushy black beard protruded from the cowl of his velvet robes, lush and purple as the twilight sky. His eyes were hidden in the empty blackness of the bar, shaded further by his hood, but the blonde caught their gleam, like mercury, liquid. He was quite a large man, powerfully built but rotund, huge slabby arms stretching out onto the splintery ancient wood of the table, hairy and pale, one huge fist gripping a glass pitcher as he poured another drink. Sit, the voice commanded, and there was laughter in the word.

The blonde obeyed sullenly, his vision sharpening now, picking out the swarthy texture of the Acolyte's skin. This enormous man knew something which he did not and it insulted him. And he held power over him as well, and had since they had encountered one another on the old road. He didn't believe in coincidence, refused to believe in fate, but the man had tied a noose around his neck from the very beginning with his vague intimations, and had led him here by it, by the promise of more. Drink, the man ordered, and although the smile was hidden beneath his beard, he knew it was there. Still, he took the glass which was nudged to him with a beefy finger, and held it in both hands, watching him. I'm here, he murmured hoarsely, with the unspoken demand for answers. It was not a voice that saw much use.

Drink. The voice was fatherly, slightly mocking. Feel better. Dull some of that hate.

So he drank, fulfilling his obligations, and the liquor was bitter, pungent in his mouth. He grimaced, but drank all of it, setting the glass down on the hard wood. It tasted like acid, but he felt none of his anger and frustration fade. Indeed, he wondered whether the phantom men at their tables, blank looks on their faces, felt any better. Or if they felt anything at all.

That's the point, the Acolyte rumbled patiently, as if to himself. Something is better than nothing, don't you think?

He didn't think anything, just waited, staring at him impatiently. But where else did he have to go?

I knew you would come, the Acolyte intimated, his bearded jowls rippling slightly as a soigné, polished laugh. Ones like you are rarities.

The blonde stared, simmering, jealous in ways he could not admit to himself. Something forceful emanated from this fat man, a personality disconcertingly real and solid, dancing playfully on his nerves like the trickster of the world. He barely moved, his eyes frozen as the other shifted in his seat like a great beast seeking a comfortable wallow. Out of the corner of his eye a man moved, lifting a glass filmed with grit to his brown lips with such slowness that he thought his mind would crack open right there. The Acolyte was focusing on him, and gave a slight, disdainful nod towards the rest of the room. You're looking at the future there. When the wise men of old wrote of death they were enraptured by the beauty and ecstasy of it, the religious transfiguration which awaited. The blonde's hand was twitching, he couldn't stop it except by clutching his seat. The Acolyte's velvet robes shimmered like spider webs and that deep, coiling voice crawled around his skull with words too smooth to be believed. That broad, shadowy face, hidden by cowl and beard, nodded pedantically. But wise men know nothing of life and death. Even the atheist believes in the glory of death, you know. Nothingness has an awesome majesty all its own.

He took a drink, the beer frothing in the mug. The sound itself jarred the blonde - wet, precious fluid flowing in a parchment world - and he curled his fingers into the wood, his throat dry. What was this impenetrable helplessness wrapping him in? Splinters burrowed into his palm. They felt alive underneath the skin.

They flee, the Acolyte continued dryly, sloshing his drink as he refilled his tankard, In terror. Building monuments and mountains of paper and gold to bury their own fear. Oh, but it has a beauty, you see. They believe one cannot survive sane past the irrevocable and so they hide from it. Death is a cripple, you see. He is a skull who stares out, still knowing the world. To them, it is a moment, something of wonder or triviality.

Slowly, the glass was lowered from dry lips.

It is not, intoned the Acolyte gravely, For this is death, and it is eternal.

8.Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

The sun shone crazily like a halo around the faded, rust encrusted iron cross which perched at an awkward angle on the highest point of the church's roof. It cast a hazy, watery shadow upon the ground in front of him, white dust stirring and sifting around his feet like wisps of fog. There were no footprints behind him to mark his travel here - the slow, unhurried pace he maintained always, ignoring the sun's heat pounding on his head - and, were it not for the cuts he could have believed he had never walked here at all. That he had, in fact, always been here at the door to the church like a penitent hoping for refuge, fearing refusal. Purgatory was the doorstep of Heaven.

Day had come as a jarring shock, cut off from the disjointed events of the night, and he had felt no fear or alarm to discover himself in the grey dust of the town's single, barren lane. Only the puzzlement, replaced by settling calm, at how distant the night terrors seemed in the building heat of the day. The tangle of fears, anger and exhaustion had drained away into the deep emptiness that was devouring the rest of him, leaving him with the pain in his beaten body and the familiar inner stillness. But for the thin moaning of the wind through the buildings, darkened windows facing him like eyes, he might have imagined it a dream. One of the rare, fragmented dreams that came to him in the desert and was usually lost from his memory upon waking. But he knew they were still there, watching, cold.

Overcoming the lingering revulsion within him, he had ventured back into the sinking building and retrieved his bag, casting grim glares at the shadows about him. He could sense the thin, weak shapes there, but even the voices were silent now. His sluggish, dazed mind suspected that the night made it easier for them to come, when they could stalk him needfully without taxing whatever strength they possessed by venturing into light. Deeper in the building, from within those inner chambers, he could feel them staring at him.

Resentment coiled within him somewhere, that he didn't know why he had come to this place when all he had been seeking was death, peace. Standing in the hot sun again, feeling ill and weak, he thought it might be nearer than ever. Once this might have pleased him, now it was merely a fact, though not unwelcome. And yet, something was changed. A nauseating ripple of a chill passed through him as he recalled the faceless shape and other fragments of the night before.

Swaying unsteadily, the resentment had burnt out to be replaced with a vague despair. As dim and unreal as the night had seemed under the sun, he had no intention of remaining in this place. The habit to move on was so ingrained in him as to be almost an urge, but it stirred what felt like doubt, even dread. He thought of the Acolyte and his mocking sermons, his eyes drifting toward the doorway where he had seen - or imagined? - the creature with the baleful smile, the memory garbled like the rest. That hateful smile carved into stone.

Dragging his eyes from the shade of the doorway, he turned toward the endless sea of desert that lay past the end of the dirt road, following the swirl of sand and dust in the air. Even now he was thoroughly dusted with it, his skin powdered with grey, his hair dull. His gaze was drawn inexorably upwards, just outside of the hulk of the town, to the gleaming church, poised silently on the hill. It held his eye, beckoning him with its serene but watchful beauty. He felt the allure of curiosity for it once again, the presence that he felt from it, different from the enervating feel of the ghosts in the town, and wondered again in his distant way about how he had come to be here.

Vide cor tuum.

Resting his chin on his chest for a moment, his legs feeling willowy and untrustworthy underneath him, he struggled wearily through the building sickness in his head before looking back up to the church. He felt an inner pull toward it, an inexplicable need to go that was senseless, purposeless. But it had captured his eye and his thoughts, warring with the weariness in his body, the desire to sink back down and let the elements claim him, and he allowed himself - after a moment - to be drawn toward it.

He saw to the cemetery first, before all else, making the trek from town slowly and unsteadily. It fascinated him, he couldn't remember seeing one ever, although surely he must have, he recognized it. It was all nonsense, the thoughts that jumbled for space in his skull, and so he paid little heed. Other thoughts crowded it out for room, pushing through his mind with difficulty. This was all so strange to him, the course of his thoughts, usually barren and silent as the desert.

Strolling from grave to grave, invisible beneath the hard-packed earth. They were only known to him by the markers, some of which were sandstone, some concrete, one had been marble. There were empty spaces dotted throughout the square marked by the derelict fence, the headstones popping up like weeds in an untended garden. Perhaps they were empties. Perhaps their headstones had been wood and blown or rotten away to become nothing. Forgotten graves for forgotten dead. Forgotten names as well, for he had found nothing legible on any of the headstones that remained. All writing had been weathered away by the ages, by the grit and stones which blew in the desert wind. Only the marble slab, pitted and cracked, had held out real words to him and they had meant nothing. Perhaps they were really a random series of markings made by sand and weather over unfathomable time, which formed what he thought were words, nature's eulogy written in erosion for the body below in the impenetrable earth: we'll see you again

Without knowing why, only following the moment, the words that spoke without speaking in his head, he had slumped down onto one of the bare patches of hard earth and lay there, eyes closed, trying it out. His body grew leaden and it had seemed mightily comfortable at first, that rest. He could close his eyes and lose himself in the heat washing over his body. There was a peace to be found there, on the warm earth. But then, it occurred to him that he could hear - subliminally, more like feel - some parched and mummified stranger with no name beating hard with dry fleshless fists against the hard earth in which he had been packed. Earth as solid as stone, a tomb, the resting place for ghosts. Calling out to him above on the raw scab of earth upon which he lay. He had climbed back onto his feet and wondered, which was an unusual thing for him. He didn't know what he had thought, only that he had stared long and hard at that yellowish patch of ground and contemplated it. He had even put his ear to the ground, listening for the pounding again, but of course he heard nothing. There were no dead here, only ghosts, which was not the same. And this was as perfect a place for them as any.

A dull dread arose within him, doubt. Not for the first time he wondered, after all this time, if he could even die.

He did not sweat as he followed the perimeter of the fence, although he was hot and feverish, the drumming in his head as his blood pounded through it had begun again, quietly, building, but he ignored it. Once, he kicked one of the disintegrating plank boards, held together with red nails hidden under a crust of sand, and toppled an entire section of fence. He supposed it would all be that way eventually. The wood would either fossilize or blow away into dust. And in time, the headstones themselves would wash out with the desert, more than just names forgotten. The immensity of time loomed before him in a way it rarely did in his intense focus on the moment, on death. In the full, awesome expanse of eternity, wiping out everything, both his insignificance and the prospect of enduring it weighed heavily on him. Looking down at the hard soil, he wished that he were there in the earth as well, ignorant to eons and the dreadful inevitability of it all. Death had been his mission for as long as he could remember now, escape from everything, since he had entered the desert, since . . . forever. He was hollow, an empty spot in the world with only that tenuous grasp on consciousness to bind him here.

A ghost. He wondered if the wretched wraiths in the town below envied those who had been buried here as much as he did.

Weary, he swung back around through the hole in the fence he assumed was meant to be the entrance - or perhaps it was just a gap where the boards had gone - and strolled around the side of the church. Against the decay of the cemetery, it appeared bold and determined to last through the end of time. It was losing paint in huge dull flakes, but much of it was intact and bright. Not fresh, but still strong. He had the notion that when everything else was lost to time, it would still be here in an endless sea of dust, the mountains worn away to nothing, bright and faithful as the day it was built. And so he had stood for a long time, watching its pristine white facade, at first watching for signs of ruination. For the slightest hint that the elements worked upon it as they had everything else. Even the falling paint and the tired tilt of the crucifix were signs more of inactivity than forebodings of decay. The building was asleep, what it stood for - if anything - was asleep, and he sensed meaning in its defiance of the inevitable. After a time he simply regarded it without much thought, beginning to admit to the rueful admiration he felt for it. It was reassuring, actually, indomitable. It stood stark and declared that not everything had to be lost. There was the sudden irrational thought as he stared at it, his head swimming now from the heat and hunger, that at any moment the parishioners would stream out through those doors in their Sunday finest and breeze past him back towards town. The women would be wearing bright summer dresses in whites and a myriad of colors, the men in their severe but respectful suits. Children would play. And no one would ever see him, the ghost with the white hair.

He felt as if he would sink to his knees and cry at the thought of it. Such a bizarre thing it would be to do, though, out here in the scouring desert wind. We'll see you again, the rock had said mystically, and maybe, he thought, we would. Maybe so.

He hadn't noticed the sun crossing the sky before, and now that he noted its position as it dipped lower behind the cross, it seemed that someone had cut out a piece of time, the jump was so sudden. He wasn't startled by this, it seemed natural. Life is but a dream. Hunkering down in the shadow of the white church, he dug out his water bottle from the shredded bag hanging from his shoulder. The stitching on the side, where it wasn't torn, said Nike, and he chuckled dryly, a coarse, strained sound. It was such an absurd word. Unscrewing the cap on the bottle, he took thin, experimental sips from the jug, as if it were fine wine. It was yellow in the bottle, but it was as tasteless as everything else here. As tasteless and warm as the air, so that it was like breathing, the water merely a concoction of his fevered mind. Maybe it was at that. He didn't know how long ago the rain had come, when that feral man-shape had coughed out that awful laughter, but there was no sign of it here. Perhaps he had slept a century after falling down on those rocks, perhaps it had never happened. He couldn't remember. He dealt with life one dream at a time, waiting for it to stop.

He looked down at his hands as he squatted, they were trembling slightly, and he felt powerless for the moment to get up. Perhaps he would tumble over here like the fence, and that would be that. Weak as he was, he did not think that would happen yet and so he drank more water. It occurred to him as it slid down and sat hard and heavy in his stomach, clenched and coiling inside of him, that there was no reason to carry the water at all. And surely there was no reason to drink it, he was chasing down death on two feet, and felt that he would catch him soon. If at all. Water gave him a running start, kept him farther ahead, not out of reach but just far enough away to continue the chase for days or weeks longer. Why then?

He turned and held the jug out before him, meaning to pour the water away into the dust and watch it disappear into the rock, sucked up by the greedy earth. Only a turn of his wrist would do it. He could then feel confident that the end was nigh. It would be the moment, he could settle everything. Except, he didn't. It was like circles of boulders or this church, or lying on a grave, or carrying the pistol that always looked brand new. It was just meant to be that way, not inevitable, but it would happen because it had no reason not to.

No, he thought, for the first time he could recall, because he had to, perhaps even wanted to. It was his part, he didn't have a choice, it was assigned by almighty God, or the stars, or just his own unchangeable place in the engine of life. Perhaps it was his nature. So, he put the lid back on the bottle and returned it to his bag without another thought. The water sad leaden in his stomach, gnawing in the hungry emptiness, and it made him nauseous. It brought a thin, satisfied smile to his parched lips that it was so. Like the sunburn on his arms, the fever in his head and all else, it was bearable. It didn't matter.

Because he was empty, or because there was something else?

He wanted to lie down in the dirt and die, but he got up instead, although his legs shook badly and he didn't think they would hold him up. Once he made it up, however, his stomach lurched with the dead weight of water. For a moment he thought he would vomit it up onto the hard hot ground, sizzling in front of his eyes as he bent over, and that would have been a great irony for a man who had chosen not to pour out his supply of water. But the sickness passed, even if the maddening buzz in his head had come back strong and disorienting, and he slung the bag back onto his shoulder. The dizziness only grew worse. There was a bee somewhere inside of his head, the buzz echoing in his hollow body, and he thought it might be trying to sting him from the inside.

He took a drunken step towards the church and stopped, for the world was lurching quite badly now, as if he had unbalanced the earth where it sat precariously on it's pedestal. Another step and he was completely inside the shadow of the building, where the sun couldn't stab its awful light into his eyes. They sunk closed anyway in that blessed shadow and he swayed on his feet for a long time, waiting for when he would fall down. Perhaps Death had paused to let him catch up after all.

And then, like that, it passed. The droning in his mind settled down into a more conversational murmur and the world straightened itself out for him. Someone had joined him on the see-saw apparently, to balance his universe out. His gummy eyes opened and he looked at the door of the church, which looked magically close. He imagined it not opening when he tried, and him turning away towards town when it did not. Probably that's what people had done in ages past - the beggars, the penitents looking for absolution, or the faithful come looking for a God who was out to lunch. It wasn't like being turned away, but that no one was home to care.

But of course it opened, as he always knew it would. Someone was home, someone who balanced the world out.

"The Long Distance Voyager" is an odd story for me, grim and blunt in a way my writing and personality rarely is. Still, it contains some of my best writing.

The story began years ago, during my first year at college, and has evolved over time. It's a story which unnerves and upsets me. As such, it developed in fits and starts, with new chapters written during periods of insomnia or sadness. Originally, I intended it as a novel, then condensed it down into a short story for my creative writing seminar, but the original has the epic, seeking feel and darkness the short story version was lacking.

"The Long Distance Voyager" is copyrighted (c) 1999 Dana Hughes. No commercial distribution or reproduction is permitted.