Morning found me huddled against the dying light of the lantern in my room. Exhaustion weighed heavily on me, and though I did not feel up to the task, I knew I had to get ready to face my patients. My descent of the stairs was accompanied by the feeling that I had spent the night wandering through some feverish dream. The events beside the pond seemed absurd now that the breaking of dawn had come. The boots, the knocks, and the long and frozen night seemed less dreadful under the pale morning sun. I found the innkeeper busy preparing breakfast for the miners that weren’t already deep beneath the earth. His skin had taken on an unhealthy pallor, and the dark circles beneath his eyes had deepened. He seemed to have lost some of his color overnight, and there was a tiredness about his movements that read as more than simple fatigue. 

“Morning, doctor.” He said as I passed.

“You look worse than you did last night,” I remarked. “You really should let me take a look at it later.”

He gave a restrained cough into his fist. “Look, I'm fine. Just do what you came here to do, then get the fuck out of Bellview.”

“I promise you, I have no intention of making a home here.” I raised an eyebrow at him. “But I also have no intention of abandoning people that need my help. Though, if you don’t mind my asking, why didn’t the previous physician help the men?”

The innkeeper snorted. “He left.”

“What do you mean, ‘he left’?”

“I said what I said. He was just gone one morning. Left all of his stuff, seen neither hide nor hair of him since.”

“Without seeing to the men?” I asked incredulously.

“I guess not,” the man shrugged.

I stared at him for a moment, awaiting some further explanation. When it became clear that I would get no further explanation from the man, I continued my walk to the table. There was something about his manner that irritated me, though I could not say precisely why. Perhaps it was merely the man's disposition. He had struck me as an unpleasant fellow from the moment I first laid eyes upon him, and illness had done little to improve his temperament.

Still, his answer troubled me. A physician abandoning several sick patients with no explanation was not something I could reconcile with the profession as I knew it. I pushed the thought aside, eating the simple breakfast that was laid out before me. 

Once I finished my breakfast, I gathered my medical case and stepped outside. Morning had finally come to Bellview, but the light did little to soften the rough edges that had made their impression upon me the evening before. The sun had risen over the sharp peaks of the stone giants that guarded the town, yet its light reached us with reluctance, spilling weakly over the huddled buildings and leaving the streets between them in long, cold shadows. Snow that had once been white had been reduced to a gray slush, darkened by dirt, manure, and whatever other filth had been brought into the streets by the town's denizens.

Bellview had been up for some time, though there was little cheer in its waking. Men emerged from brothels and boardinghouses, their coats pulled tightly around them against the cold. Many made their way toward the mine, while the rest lingered in doorways, nursing the remnants of the previous night's drinking. The air was thick with the smells of coal smoke, horse manure, stale liquor, and the less agreeable remnants of human vice.

I noticed, too, that people seemed to notice me. A few men looked up as I passed them; one followed me with his eyes until I had gone several yards beyond him. A woman standing in the doorway of a boardinghouse stopped speaking to the person beside her and watched me cross the street. Even the men heading toward the mine occasionally glanced in my direction. I suppose I ought not have been surprised; I was, after all, a stranger in a town where strangers were uncommon, and my medical case made my purpose rather obvious. They had likely heard that the physician had arrived, and curiosity is a difficult thing to suppress in a place as isolated as Bellview. Yet as I continued down the street, that feeling of being watched became more and more oppressive. The town itself seemed to amplify the sensation. Bellview was small; it had been built tightly into the valley, with its buildings crowded close together wherever the uneven ground allowed. There was little room between the shops, boardinghouses, and homes, and the narrow streets seemed to turn upon themselves rather than lead anywhere beyond the town. A man could cross from one end of Bellview to the other in little more than a few minutes.

Beyond it there was nowhere to look but the mountains. They rose immediately beyond the last buildings, their dark pines climbing the slopes until the trees gave way to snow and stone. From the middle of town, they seemed to press inward from every direction, leaving Bellview tucked away in a narrow pocket of wilderness. I began to feel, quite irrationally, as though I were being watched from every direction. A look around told me that I was being foolish; a lack of sleep and the events of the previous night had left my nerves totally wracked. The mind is a curious thing; left unrested, it finds significance in the ordinary and the patterns that lie beneath chaos. 

My musings had finally brought me to the door of the physician’s office. The building stood in stark contrast to those that surrounded it; its cleanliness and well-maintained facade surprised me. Evidently, my predecessor had cared for the building to such an extent that it made the slovenly hovels around it seem downright primitive by comparison. It was a modest, four-story, wooden house, painted white with dark shutters and a narrow porch running along the front. The windows were clean, and the paint had been kept in good repair; even the steps had been swept clear of snow and mud. It was not an impressive building by any measure, but compared with the structures surrounding it, it looked refined.

I was two steps into the sparsely furnished front office when a voice greeted me from upstairs.

“You’re late.” I looked toward the stairs as an older woman descended them. She appeared to be in her late fifties, though the weathering of her countenance made it difficult to judge her age with any accuracy. Her dark hair, streaked with gray and white, was pulled back into a severe but practical bun, and she wore a simple black dress with a white, blood-stained apron.

“I beg your pardon?” I replied.

“It is nearly nine in the morning, and you’re just now showing up.” She said, her tone making it clear she would brook no argument. 

“My apologies,” I conceded. “The letter had not specified I was to show up at an exact hour.” 

She gave me a stern look. “Hmph, well, I suppose the blame isn’t fully yours then. Close the door; you’re letting the cold air in.” I turned and shut the door behind me.

“You may call me Ms. Lafayette. Now, hang your coat, and then come with me. We have no time to waste.” She turned and walked back up the stairs, leaving me to scramble after her. 

“How many are there?” I asked after I had finally caught up.

“Seven.” She pulled on gloves without stopping, watching her fingers flex as she tested the fit.

“And how long have they been sick for?” 

“The first one came to us almost a week ago now.” She replied. “The rest followed shortly after.” 

“And the previous physician? He didn’t try to treat them, or at the very least diagnose them?”

“He was working on it but then just left one day.”

I frowned; that was the same thing the innkeeper had told me. “Did he leave any instructions?”

“He did not.” Her answer was short and clipped. It was very apparent that Ms. Lafayette had no wish to discuss the matter further. As we reached the landing of the third floor, she stopped and turned to me, her expression softening.

“I must warn you. I have been a nurse for the better part of thirty years now; I have seen all manner of things that would turn the stomach of those with anything less than an iron gut, and I have buried more than a few who thought themselves too strong to die from illness.” She glanced at the door that stood in ominous shadow at the end of the hall. “But I have never seen anything like what sits behind that door.” 

Her warning sharpened my curiosity. “Is it contagious?” 

She studied me for a moment. “It doesn’t appear to be. You are young, but I imagine you’ve seen a fair share of illnesses in your time as a doctor?” The calmness in her voice set off alarm bells in my head. What could possibly have been grotesque enough that would cause such a strong reaction? 

I thought, at the time, that I was prepared for whatever awaited me behind that door. I had seen men torn apart by machinery, children ravaged by fever, and women brought to the very edge of death by childbirth. I had witnessed wounds and afflictions that would turn the stomach of a less experienced physician, and I believed myself sufficiently acquainted with the uglier aspects of my profession.

I was entirely mistaken.

If you have come this far expecting the usual account of sickness and suffering, I would advise you to prepare yourself better than I did. What I saw in that room was unlike anything I had encountered in my brief career, and even now, after all these years, I find certain details difficult to commit to paper.

Ms. Lafayette opened the door, and I was struck with a foul and suffocating odor. It was the smell of blood, feces, vomit, and something rotting and sweet. A metallic smell, one that clung to the back of your throat and never left, no matter how many times you swallowed. The room had been shuttered against the cold winter air, and that had served to make the cloying more oppressive. Someone, likely Lafayette, had attempted to combat the stench with carbolic acid, but that had done nothing more than add a sharp medical edge to the smell of bodily fluids.

I stopped dead in the doorway and stared at the six men who occupied the room. I had treated men injured in mine collapses and machinery accidents. I had seen limbs crushed beyond saving, burns that left the flesh blackened and peeling, and wounds so grievous that I had wondered how the unfortunate soul had survived long enough to reach my care. Ms. Lafayette was right; this was unlike anything I had seen before. 

The first man sat hunched on the edge of his bed, resting his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. He was somehow gaunt and swollen simultaneously; the flesh around his eyes was dark and bloated, while his cheekbones ran along his face. His lips were split and bleeding in one continuous festering wound, and his fingernails had turned black with thin streams of blood seeping out from under them. His skin had a gray pallor beneath the feverish flush of his cheeks, and beads of sweat gathered along his brow despite the chill that lingered in the room. One eye was swollen nearly shut, while the other stared vacantly at the floor between his boots, and the whites of both were webbed with tiny ruptured vessels, giving them a raw and bloodshot appearance.

I noticed that his breathing was shallow. Every few seconds, he would pause, as though the simple act of drawing air into his lungs had become an effort requiring conscious thought. Then he would take a sudden, desperate breath through his mouth. There were darkened patches along his neck, which extended beneath the collar of his shirt. I took them for bruising, but the discoloration was too diffuse and irregular for any injury I could recognize. It seemed to spread beneath the skin in branching patterns. His fingers were swollen and discolored, and the flesh around his nails had begun to split. The nails themselves were black from coagulated blood, and I could see the discoloration continuing into the flesh below them. Thin lines of blood had collected beneath each nail and slowly trickled down his fingers.

He lifted his head when he heard me approach. “Doctor?” The man’s voice was little more than a rasp.

“Yes?”

He looked at me for several seconds before lowering his gaze again. “Can you make it stop?”

“I… I will do what I can.” I had not yet fully examined him, but already I was beginning to doubt that I could do anything for him. I stopped closer, wrapping my hand around his wrist to take his pulse. It was dangerously fast, beating at such a rate that he should’ve been dead by this time. His skin was clammy and damp beneath my fingers, slicked with sweat and blood.

“Does it hurt to breathe?” I asked the man. 

No words came, only the slight nodding of his head before returning it to his hands. I placed the back of my hand to take his temperature; the man was on fire. I didn’t even need to touch his skin to feel it. “How long have you had the fever?” 

“Don’t know.”

“Days?” I asked. 

“Maybe.” 

“Have you been vomiting?”

“Yes.”

“How often?”

“Every few hours. I can hardly keep anything down.”

“And your bowels? How often are you relieving yourself?”

“A lot. Though it’s mostly blood.”

I frowned at his answer, cross-referencing what he had told me with what experience I had, but I came up empty-handed. Vomiting, fever, bloody stools, trouble breathing, weakness, and hemorrhaging beneath the skin—each symptom was concerning enough on its own, but taken together they suggested no single illness with which I was familiar. 

I glanced back at Ms. Lafayette. “Have they all been like this?”

“To one extent or another, yes.” 

I looked around at the other five men. They were not all in quite the same condition. One lay motionless beneath his blankets, his face flushed with fever. Another sat beside his bed with a basin between his knees, breathing heavily through his nose. A third had wrapped both hands in strips of cloth, though dark stains had already begun to seep through the material. The remaining two watched me in silence.

“You said there were seven men?” 

"Yes," Ms. Lafayette replied. 

“But I only see six men here.”

“Yes, well, the first one is… far worse than these men. We had him isolated.” 

“Where at?” I inquired. 

“Just down the hall.” 

“Show me.” Ms. Lafayette opened the door and led me out and down the hallway to the large pine door that sat in the darkness at the end. The opening of the door greeted me with a nauseating smell, similar to that of the ward we just left, but in a far heavier concentration. It was darker too; with the curtain having been drawn and the fire dying, there was barely any light save for the rays that snuck through the edges of the window.

The man upon the bed before me could hardly have been called human in his present state. What little skin was not covered by bandages had taken on a waxy, grayish color, with great portions beginning to peel away and expose the damaged flesh beneath. Along his arms and shoulders, the outer layers had blistered and sloughed away in broad, wet sheets, leaving raw and inflamed tissue exposed beneath. Dark patches of deadened flesh marked his chest, neck, and scalp.

Blood had dried around his mouth and nostrils, and his lips were so swollen and damaged that they could scarcely be distinguished from the surrounding skin. His eyes were half closed,  clouded with fever, and tiny vessels had ruptured across the whites, leaving them webbed with red.

He stirred as I took a step into the room.

A low sound escaped his throat, one that resembled a dying animal—not a word, but a deep, guttural moan that sent a shiver up my spine.

“Is he conscious?” I asked as I reached his bed.

“I… I do not know.” I could hear a sliver of horror in Ms. Lafayette’s voice.

“Am I safe in assuming he cannot speak?”

“Correct,” the nurse replied.

I turned back to the mound of flesh and bandages that could scarcely be called human.

“If you can hear me in there, sir, I cannot imagine what sort of pain you must be in right now. But I give you my word; I will do everything within my power to get you through this.”

I looked up at Ms. Lafayette. “Have you been giving him sedatives?”

“I am, though there is no way of knowing whether they are working. The poor man cannot speak, after all.”
 
I nodded and turned my head back to the figure. For a few seconds he sat perfectly still, then I saw his hand move. It was a weak, trembling motion, one that could easily be mistaken for nothing more than a simple twitch under the bandages. I thought at first that it was involuntary but when it happened for a second and then a third time, I realized that he was beckoning me closer. 

“Sir?” I leaned down, bringing my ear to hover right above the man’s mouth. His lips parted, and for a few seconds, I heard nothing but a faint wet rasp. I nearly had to ask him to repeat himself when a sentence that could’ve been mistaken for a feather-light breeze escaped his lips.

“Did you see the boots too?” 

I felt a cascade of ice pour down the back of my neck. Every hair upon my arms stood on end, and something deep within me recoiled before I had even understood why. My heart gave a violent beat against my ribs as, for one terrible instant, I felt an almost primal urge to flee. The silence, which mere moments ago had seemed comforting, was now crawling over my skin; it wormed its way into my ears and made my breathing unbearably loud. I became acutely aware of the doorway and the darkness behind Ms. Lafayette; I turned to see if it was met by the dimly lit corridor, with most of its length swallowed by shadow. I could just make out the wooden walls and the stairs descending toward the floor below. 

Something caught my eye as I looked away. 

Right at the edge of my vision was a figure cloaked in darkness; it was tall and humanoid and did not have a face that I could make out. It appeared less like a human and more like the darkness in the corner had taken on a form that resembled something with life. I blinked, and the figure was gone.

“Doctor?” Ms. Lafayette’s voice broke through the silence. “Are you alright?” 

"I—uh, yes, yes, quite, thank you.” I furrowed my brow and shook my head. “Just a passing dizzy spell, I suppose.” I knew the words as I spoke them were not convincing Ms. Lafayette of anything. She had a gaze that could pierce even the toughest of metals, and there was no way she fell for such a lie. My eyes strayed back to the corner in which I had seen the figure, but there was nothing there.

“Perhaps you should eat something.” She said at last. “I can’t imagine you’ve had much more than bread and cheese since you’ve been here.”

I nodded my head in silence. 

“Then come, you’ll do no one any good if you collapse before the day is out.” I followed her out of the sickroom and down the corridor. Giving one last glance to the corner of darkness as we passed it, I could not shake the pinprick feeling of eyes burrowing into the back of my neck. 

The sitting room on the second floor I found myself in was considerably warmer than those of the third floor, almost suffocatingly so.

“You must like it warm.” I gave a half-hearted chuckle to lighten the mood. “Are you from the tropics?”

“No.” The answer came with no further explanation. She then directed my attention to a large and comfortable-looking sofa, replete with deep cushions and blankets to keep the warmth in.

"Sit," she said with a voice that was used to being obeyed. So I sat. Before me, she placed a cup of strong black coffee and a plate of fruit, cheese, and cold meat. For an older woman who had, I presumed, spent most of the morning on her feet, she was remarkably unfatigued. I took a mouthful of the coffee and immediately regretted it.

“My word,” I almost spat the drink out. “Is it supposed to taste like this?” 

“Like what?” She asked.

“Like something you scraped off the bottom of a miner’s boot.” 

“Young man, if you speak to me like that again, I will box your ears. That is not a threat, but a promise.” Her eyes told me she meant it, so I stopped talking and started wolfing down the plate of food. I was nearly done when I finally decided on how to broach the subject that had been on my mind since last night.

“Ms. Lafayette, may I ask you something about my predecessor?” 

“You may.” 

“You said he was working to determine the nature of the men’s illnesses before he left, correct?” 

“He was. Though he did leave all of his stuff up in his office. He was a methodical man, one who kept a close eye on all of his patients and anything else he thought worth keeping an eye on. I had no reason to disturb them, so they’re still here.” 

I could’ve kissed Ms. Lafayette right then and there. The man’s notes could prove to be a treasure trove of information. “May I look through them?”

“Have at them.”

I considered her words before turning back to my coffee. “I have one more thing I was curious about. Last night I experienced something very strange. I woke to a knocking; when I went to investigate, as I thought it was someone at my door, the sounds led me to a pond outside of the town, to where all the waste from the mine goes.”

“Hmmm…” Ms. Lafayette set her cup of coffee down. “There are stories that the miners tell, ones of mischievous spirits that steal equipment and like playing jokes with the men. Many of the workers leave food out for them, and they are often considered somewhat benevolent as they warn the miners away from dangerous parts of the mine by knocking.” 

“Spirits? I did not think you were a believer in the supernatural, Ms. Lafayette. 

“I am not. But the tales find their way into all parts of conversation among the men. And the men talk. A lot. A good portion of the workers believe that they are the spirits of those who died in the mine.” 

“Do you believe these stories?” I asked as I turned the cup in my hands.

“I believe that the men who sacrifice their lives to work that far under the earth are liable to come up with anything to make them feel better about spending hours in near darkness.” She paused.

I looked at her closely. “And what would you say about the knocking that led me to the pond?”

“I don’t know.” 

I considered her words for a moment before setting the cup back down. “Well, I believe a talk with the mining company might be in order. The men were clearly exposed to something down there, and if I am going to do my job properly, then I should like to know what they were doing when they fell ill.” 

Her expression hardened. “You would be wise to leave the company out of this, doctor.” 

“And why is that?” 

“Dixon Mining keeps the town alive. Without them, none of us would be here. And Mr. Dixon won’t take kindly to strangers asking questions that might cause him trouble.” 

I raised an eyebrow. “I assure you, I have no ill intent. I am a physician, after all, not a detective. I simply wish to understand what has made the men in my care so sick.”

“Then I suggest that you limit yourself to treating the men when you can, and nothing else.” 

I couldn’t help but smile at her bluntness. “I’m afraid my curiosity is rather hard to put a damper on, Ms. Lafayette. 

“It seems so.” She gave me a stern look. “Just be careful of what questions you ask and to whom you ask them. There are plenty of people here who would rather you don’t go poking your nose in places it doesn’t belong. Plenty of people with plenty to hide.”

“Thank you for the word of caution,” I said as I rose from my chair. “But I need to get to the bottom of this. Otherwise those men up there are going to suffer and die while I sit back and do nothing. 

Ms. Lafayette gave me a sad look. “Your stubbornness, while admirable, will be the death of you one day, doctor.” 

“Perhaps,” I replied, reaching for my coat. “But I have a lot of work to do before that day comes.” I had scarcely made it two steps down the staircase when Ms. Lafayette called out:

“If Mr. Dixon asks about what you’ve seen here, tell him nothing.” 

I regarded her with surprise. “Surely he is entitled to know what condition his men are in, is he not?” 

“He can know that they are ill and that you are working on them. Nothing else.” 

“May I ask why?” 

Ms. Lafayette turned and looked out the window, where the pale morning light scattered through the frost-covered window, “there are a number of people here in Bellview that have spent a good deal of time and money to make certain that things remain the way they are.” It was a curious answer, and one that did little to satisfy my questions.

“Ms. Lafayette, I appreciate your concern, but I cannot very well treat the men if I am kept blind to what happened to them. If their illness is indeed a result of something in the mine, then the company has a responsibility to see to it that the men are, at the very least, kept comfortable in their final days.” 

She gave a short and humorless laugh. Responsibility. That's a fine word, doctor. You’ll find it has very little meaning here in Bellview.” 

Having no response, I thanked her for the meal and counsel, neither of which had been particularly pleasant, and made my way out of the office. The cold outside greeted me with all the warmth of an unwelcome creditor, and, wrapping myself in my coat and keeping my head down, I made my way into the whipping wind.

Growing up I always had trouble with playing outdoors. Most of the year I would play

with my toy cars, trains, tractors and trucks inside. The problem was, whether it was

insects constantly swarming my peach fuzzed arms and legs or my abundance of

allergies, anything that could, would set off my asthma. It’s for those reasons that at

even such a young age, my favorite seasons of the year were Fall and Winter. These

were the times where my imagination could be unbridled and free to expand and

explore the depths of our backyard without fear of being dotted head to toe in itchy,

swollen welts caused by the warmer months bug biting.

One Autumn brought more than just the usual joys of make believe with small dust

devils whipping and whirling vibrant leaves around me. The year prior I discovered a

wild persimmon tree in the wood situated just behind our cul-de-sac. It was with this

newfound knowledge I had been eagerly anticipating the next time that all those trees

mighty branches would shed their leaves, and return to being barren except, of course,

for the one that bore that sweet orange fruit.

This was the Autumn that I trekked into the forest, leaves softly crunching under foot as

I retraced my steps, to find that natural treasure waiting, seemingly just for me. I vividly

recall the cool Autumn air rushing me by as I reached that trunk holding high the goal of

my journey. The gust didn’t just stir up some leafage strewn about but it also knocked

free a couple of extra ripe persimmons falling to my feet. Had I not been around they

would surely have spoiled in no time at all.

The leaf covered forest floor wasn’t the only thing that came alive on that crisp and cool

Autumn Day, there was the faint sound of a swift moving whistle. The kind that came

from an old steam train, echoing distant and trailing far and wide. The sound left me as

quick as it came, its doppler effect whipping my head around like a top whipped of its

chord. With the following silence I steadied myself, realizing the chill hanging about after

I took in a deep breath then pocketed the few small spoils the wind had gifted me.

The walk back home felt much longer than my walk out. It was dusk when I finally

reached familiar territory. I pulled the screen door open and the heavy spring on it

slammed it shut behind me as I blew into my freezing hands and kicked off my boots. I

gave my mother the sweet fruits of my labor, and she washed and cleaned them in the

sink for me. She even offered to serve them up with a couple scoops of vanilla bean ice

scream if I cleaned my dinner plate. Although the offer was enticing, especially for my

sweet tooth, I didn’t have much of an appetite at dinner time, and I admitted it when I

saw her noticing me vacantly poking and prodding my fork at my carrots and peas.

My mother agreed when I asked if she would put them in the freezer to keep them from

spoiling and maybe I’d have them the following night. Nodding with a smile, she added,

“If you find more tomorrow, we can bake something like that apple crumble your father

loves so much but just for you and your persimmons instead”, then she gave me a

warm smile and hug as I nodded gladly to the suggestion. With a pat on the head and

ruffling of my hair she sent me to wash up for bedtime, adding, “The ice cream isn’t

going anywhere so you’ll get a side of that still too, kiddo.”

After my bath and brushing my teeth, I returned to my bedroom. I could see the trees

outside swaying slowly in the cold wind. I always slept better bundled deep under the

covers in the cold months, so without a second thought I opened the window just

enough to let in enough air to feel it without turning the space into an icebox. Taking a

deep breath, I settled into my covers and closed my eyes listening to the sounds of the

outdoors just beyond the windowpane. I could hear the boughs of branches bending,

and leaves swirling, colliding and whipping away. All of this to the undercurrent of the

wind whistling through the sill a cold repeating elongated one note lullaby.

Off in the distance I heard another call of in the night. It was the unmistakable sound of

a train whistle being carried along the breeze like notes along a music sheet. Calling to

me right into my bedroom, a call which suddenly chilled me to the bone. The whistle

rang out so crisp and clearly to me it was almost as if a caboose were parked right in

our yard. Sitting up startled, I grabbed my mittens from on my nightstand, and quickly

grabbed my puffer jacket. As much as I hated looking like a dwarfed Bibendum, I knew

the night air held a chill far colder than what greeted me in the daylight. Fully dressed, I

grabbed my flashlight, and slipped out the backdoor. Not wanting to wake my overly

protective parents, I was extra careful to close the screen as quietly as I could.

As if on cue, the whistle blew again, beckoning me once more. Its sound so clear, I was

certain this train was a brief walk away. I pointed my light forward as I pressed through

the bushes and saplings that greeted me at the woods’ edge, all the while trying my

best to follow my previous trail but the winds seemed to have whirled an entirely fresh

set of leaves behind since I was here. The best I could do is carefully walk forward as I

heed what my beam of light revealed before me.

Continuing deeper in the wood I slowed my pace while listening intently for another

blast of that ethereal locomotive. Instead, there was another noise. Suddenly, footsteps

made by shoes larger than mine were behind me, and it sounded like leaves crunching

louder and louder than my own, growing closer to me than I was to the train. Before I

could ponder what was following me, a sudden distant howl became my signal to ...

Run.

The cold evening air felt like ice-cubes in my lungs, and froze my respiratory system. My

chest tightened as I heaved forward slowing yet trying desperately to move. Lunging

ahead of my legs as if my mind had more say than the rest of my body on what it could

do and would do. I didn’t care. Because I knew what I needed to do. Drawing only on

the will to outpace my pursuers just long enough to reach the other end of the forest, I

kept going forward. While it went deep, I knew there lay a highway above an

embankment on the side opposite our neighborhood.

“Just a little further. Just another breath. Keep breathing. Keep running. Whatever you

do, don’t stop. Don’t look back.”

Soon the only thing I could hear was the sound of my heartbeat in my throbbing, chilled

ears and my icy breath puffing ahead of my face every stumbled step. That was until I

reached the tree-line but where was the embankment? There was no familiar raised

road ahead only strange, unfamiliar tracks. As I slowed down to look at the tracks, I

heard the sound of whatever beasts chasing me come from the brush to my left. I

turned as quickly as I could to my right broke into a sprint my body could hardly bear, or

as much of a sprint as I could muster. Cursing myself I realized I left my asthma inhaler

back in my other, lighter jacket.

Through the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of what was running after me. The

looked like streaks of shadow leaping and bounding silently in and out of the brush, not

a huff among them. The sound of their relentless pursuit engulfing the forest around me,

as they went Leaping and bounding like salmon spawning up river, the beasts crunched

and snapped foliage frenetically as their energy boiled hotter and closer as they dipped

back and forth in the underbrush. My feet felt like hot lead weighing me down with each

belabored step as I could no longer keep the pace of my frenzied run, suddenly a sound

came roaring down the tracks. The roar of the train horn reverberated throughout my

whole being as a steam train drew towards me. It slowed down and kept pace with me,

chugging along to my left as the trees zipped by to my right. As the headlight lit up the

night in front of it, I could clearly see innumerable sets of eyes glinting bright in the

shadows it cast.

As the train slowed, I reached out to grab the nearest cabin door. Feeling the cold steel

in my hand, I turned the handle, lost my balance and began to fall forward. As I turned

the handle, suddenly I felt it turning by itself, as though it were opening for me.

Suddenly the door opened, and revealed a shapeless form casting a shadow from the

light of the inside of the train car. The form reached down grabbing my hand and pulled

me into the train car The entrance closed swiftly behind as the train just as suddenly

came to a screeching halt. I slumped back against the door, mind and body still racing

as my eyes adjusted to the bright lights inside the train. As I looked around, figures

came into view as I realized I was aboard a passenger car. Although the car I was in

was full, there was room for more patrons in each row. There were adults of differing

ages, some my parents age others looked far older. I looked down at my hands, my

fingers white with fingernails blue.

Feeling my heart pound, I realized I was having a full-fledged attack from running for my

life. I felt my esophagus closing tighter and tighter still as I attempted to level my head.

A panic attack would only make the asthma symptoms worse.

As I slumped to the floor my vision began to blur and I felt like I was losing

consciousness. The in the distance, I could hear a final howl from the forest, and one

final sound just outside the door. It wasn’t an exhale, but a strangled, gasping inhale.

Whatever feral fiend it was, it sounded as if it could have had its lungs punctured by a

hundred hunter’s arrows. A frigid chill spread throughout my back and along my lungs

as that presence froze me to my very core. As I felt my eyes close, I felt a warmth

suddenly radiate around me. Coughing a bit, I sipped down more of the liquid life

pouring back into me. It had a slight hint of fruit to it as well, I didn’t know then but now I

can recall a sweet bitterness like pomegranate. The heat of the tea coursing through my

veins and soothing my throat to opening wider again.

When my vision finally came to full awareness again, I realized I was now seated in one

of the rows, and many passengers standing around me. They were watching with

concern and all taking a breath of relief when they saw me settle and my alertness

return to me. As the figures in the car went back to their seats, I realized the only person

truly in focus was the closest to the door.

His features muddied as if my mind couldn’t comprehend fully who or what was

appearing before me, aside from the outline of that conductor attire. “Coming or going?

Nothing in between young man” the form beside stated, as he gestured toward the door.

I peered outside the cabin window and realized we were outside my home. Slowly, I

walked to the door; with eyes closed and a nod I disembarked.

-WOOSSSHHHHHH – the train let out a massive belch of steam, as I turned to face my

house and the cold again. Suddenly, my eyes opened to the sound of steam rushing

through my ears. As my eyes adjusted to the night, my vision cleared enough for me to

recognize my bedroom ceiling. Rolling to my side I found my parents running the

humidifier and having shut the windows as well.

“There was a cold snap and the icy air gave you an attack in your sleep. Thank God

you’re coming around, your face looked blue before we came and checked on you.” My

mother exclaimed.

My father rustled the hair on my head and give me an uneasy smile, “You gave us a real

start, kiddo. Glad you got the color back.”

I didn’t try and explain any of the earlier events of the night to my parents and after

some soft hugs and pats on my back and another hit of my inhaler I was tucked back in

bed. My eyes growing heavier and heavier still, I heard the wind whip past my bedroom

window. Recognizing just how thankful I was not only to my parents but that with that

wind a howl of something darker, colder, followed with a warm, welcoming whistle. All

calling out to those lost in the night. To find your way home and beyond.

Operation Loose Ends. The Tsemukhe Road and the Upper Suchan, January 1919

Premise. The War to End All Wars ended on 11 Nov 1918 at 1100AM. The war did not end. The last Bakanov-Babbage engine is running in a hidden station in the Sikhote-Alin, calculating a door for Ithaqua. A Rasputinite cult inside the White Russian supply apparatus has chosen doomsday over defeat. The team must cross a civil war in which every faction wants them dead or useful, recruit a Red artillery general who is only partly sane, and shut the engine without breaking it, because breaking it is exactly what Dr. General Alexi Vladimirovich Bakanov wants.

The volley went over the trucks a yard high. Every pine along the road let go of its snow at once. It came down on the canvas in loads, on the hoods, on the roof of the cab over Adams's head, and the headlamps went white with it, and for a while there was nothing in the world but falling snow and the gramophone still playing somewhere in the dark.

Then somebody laughed. It was a big laugh. It went on until it turned into a cough, and the cough went on until somebody beat the man on the back, and then the laugh came again.

Adams had the trench sweeper across the wheel and his thumb on the safety. He left his thumb where it was. In the bed of the second truck Muldoon had her rifle laid across the cab roof. He did not have to look to know where it pointed.

A man walked into the headlamps.

He was the possibly the biggest man Adams had ever seen. He wore a Tsarist general's greatcoat with the shoulder boards cut away, and the cloth where they had been was darker than the rest. A red armband. A sheepskin hat. A black beard with ice in it. He stopped ten yards from the radiator and spread his arms, and the snow kept coming down on him out of the trees.

"Americans, that was warning!" he shouted. "Russian warning! Very polite! Next one is not warning!"

He looked past the lights at the second truck. At the rifle on the cab roof. He looked at it a long moment. Then he unbuttoned the top two buttons of his greatcoat with great care and tapped the third with one gloved finger.

"Here, mademoiselle? Yes?"
"Yes," Muldoon said.

He bowed to her from the waist. It brought the snow off his hat.

"Dragonov," he said. "General. Commanding Revolutionary Forces of Upper Suchan, and of Tsemukhe, and of the other river, I forget the name, it is very small." He peered at the cabs. "Which is the colonel?"

Quarterburn opened the door of the second truck and got down into the snow.

"I am."

"Good. Come. Is cold. We decide indoors whether to shoot you."

At the edge of the light a small man in a long coat sat on an ammunition box with a lantern at his feet and a ledger open on his knees. A gray scarf was wound up over his mouth and nose. He was writing. He did not look up at the snow or the trucks or the general. He wrote while the general talked, and he went on writing after the general stopped.

"Commissar Zhuk," Dragonov said. “Commissars write down everything." He shrugged and laughed, and coughed. "Come."

#

The partisans wintered in a village of Old Believers whose people had gone deeper into the hills when the war came, the way they always went, carrying their icons and their beards and leaving the houses. Dragonov had taken the prayer house. The stove roared. The icons too large to carry still hung on the log walls, long brown saints giving their blessing with two fingers in the old way, and under them on a trestle table lay a map, a pistol, a samovar, a barrel of pickled mushrooms, and a gramophone with a horn the size of a washtub.

Outside in the yard four long shapes lay on sledges under tarpaulins. Adams had seen a muzzle when the wind lifted a corner. Six-inch, out of the fortress at Vladivostok.

The partisans crowded the back of the room and stood along the walls. Suchan miners black to the knuckles. Koreans in quilted coats. A Chinese boy with a Japanese rifle. Old soldiers of the Tsar with their medals hidden inside their coats. Adams looked for breath. Every one of them had it. 

Zhuk sat by the door, as far from the stove as the room allowed, his scarf stayed up, his weasel eyes scanned as his pencil moved across his notebook.

"So," Dragonov said. He sat on the edge of the table. "Americans guard Admiral Kolchak's railway. You are Americans. So you are Kolchak's. So I think I should shoot you, that would make Zhuk happy."

"We are not guarding the railway," Quarterburn said.

"Then why are you here? If you do not guard railway, you are spies. Then I should shoot you also. That would also make Zhuk happy."

"We are hunters."

"Hunting what?"

"Not what ,who, Doctor General Bakanov."

Dragonov took a mushroom out of the barrel with his fingers and ate it and thought.

"This," he said, "would not make Zhuk happy."

At that moment Wang Che came forward unwrapping his face from his scarf. He smiled, then in Russian “when last I saw you in ‘05 you were a Colonel.”

Dragonov looked, squinted “It cannot be, Wang Che?”

“The one and only.”

Dragonov laughed and grabbed the small Chinese man in a great bear hug. “I still have the guns you sold me.”

When he let go Wang Che gasped for breath. 

Adams leaned to Wang Che. "You didn’t say you knew the General. Or that you sold him guns."

"I sold guns to everyone," Wang Che said. "That is what neutrality is."

"What's he writing?"Wang Che had passed behind Zhuk on the way in. 

"Three columns. Comrades, Useful people and Enemies of the people."

"Where are we?"

"I’m thinking the middle, though Zhuk may not."

Dragonov looked over the crowd, “And not all Americans” he noticed Higgins and his pinned sleeve. "Where?" he said to Higgins.

"Loos."

"Ah. A terrible battle." Dragonov nodded. Then he traced the  long scar on his face that ran temple to jaw. "The Prippet Marshes. No one has escaped these years without scars.” Dragonov waved at a Cossack orderly “Vodka!” The Orderly poured vodka into tea glasses for all in the room except Zhuk.  They stood, “to scars!” They drank.

Dragonov drew a watch out of his coat. Gold, enameled blue, thin as an eggshell, with a little crown at the stem. He opened it and showed Quarterburn the face. "Now that we have drink, we talk."

Adams had his own watch out before he thought about it, the Hamilton he had set by the Navy Yard clock in Seattle and by the Teesta's chronometer every noon since. He held it beside the general's.

"Your watch is fast, General. Seven minutes."

Dragonov shut his watch and put it away.

"No, Sergeant," he said. "The world is seven minutes slow."

Thorpe had sat through all of it in her black, with her hands in her lap. Now she drew a chair up to the table across from the general and spoke to him in French. An officer's language, and a lady's.

"Mon général. Can you help us?"

Adams followed it. He had learned his French in Jeddah and Bucharest from men who wanted to sell him things, and it served.

Dragonov's face changed. He answered her in French, low.

“When I was of the Tsar’s army it would be unchivalric of me to not help a lady. In our new world order, the Bolshevik does not know chivalry,” he glanced a Zhuk, “or French.”

 Thorpe laid the punched card on the map. 

Dragonov looked at the card a long time.

Then he crossed himself, two fingers, the old way.

Adam’s watched as Zhuk wrote that down. Though he had no French. Adams had watched his pencil stop when the French began and then start again. He was writing anyway.

I may help you, if you can help me. I know this card, and of this Bakanov, I know what he has done. And I fear he is up to his old tricks. I have lost men, eleven since the Nativity. One at a time, on the river and in the hills. Each time a storm came down a valley, white, out of a clear sky, with the barometer standing still. Each time, when it lifted, there was one man fewer and no tracks just snow . My men say it is the wind," he said. "I tell them the Revolution does not believe in the wind."

"There is a station," Thorpe said. "A machine."

"Where?"

"That is what we are here to find out."

Dragonov got up and went to the window. Outside in the dark the tarpaulins lay over the guns with snow on them. He put his palm flat on the frosted glass.

"Find him, then signal. I have American wireless. You send message" he said in English. "With proof something I can show to him." He jerked a thumb at Zhuk without turning. "Then I bring guns."

He stood with his hand on the glass.

"You find Bakanov," he said. "I burn down his house."

Then he went to the gramophone and wound it and set the needle down, and the horns began to climb out of the washtub horn, and the drum came in under them, and Dragonov stood in the middle of the prayer house with his eyes shut and conducted with a pickled mushroom held between his thumb and finger.

"What's that one?" Talbot said.

"Thus Spake Zarathustra," Muldoon said. "Strauss."

"Who's Zarathustra?" Adams said.

"A prophet," Thorpe said. "He announced that God was dead."

Adams looked up at the long brown saints on the walls with their two fingers raised.

"Not in here he ain't," he said.

#

They left Tsemukhe at first light with a partisan boy riding the running board of the lead truck to take them around the Japanese and Admiral Kolchak’s checkpoints. At the first ridge the boy stepped off without a word and walked home.

At thirty below the Fords did not want to live. Each dawn the oil had gone to tar in the crankcases, and each dawn they built fires under the engines and lay on their backs in the snow feeding the fires with sticks, until the trucks ticked and steamed and caught at last, and the radiators breathed vodka out over the camp. Adams called it the courtship. The chains went on the tires and came off and went on again. The steering froze. Chavez drove the fourth truck with a blanket over his knees and changed hands on the wheel every mile, the whole hand and then the three-fingered one, each in turn inside his coat.

The Japanese held the crossing where the road met the Suchan branch line: a sandbagged hut, a barrier pole, a flag hanging stiff with frost, and six men in fur caps who came out with their rifles at the port. Their lieutenant had a list. He looked at the list and at the trucks and at the list.

"No Americans," he said. "Order of General Otani."

Higgins got down from the cab. He walked to the barrier with a sheaf of papers in his one hand, stamped in four colors and signed in three countries, and gave them to the lieutenant.

”British, my good man.” 

The barrier pole went up.

"What did you show him?" Quarterburn said, when Higgins had climbed back in.

"Inter-Allied authority. Transport of Allied property, all very proper, and British."

"Is it genuine?"

"Genuine enough." Higgins tucked the rug around his knees. 

Past the railway the road became a logging track, and the logging track became a sledge track, and the sledge track went down onto the river and stopped being anything at all. The river was the road. The maps Fontaine provided had the route drawn in blue pencil with the passes in red, and they drove up the middle of it between pushing through banks of light snow high as the running boards, with Johansson out ahead on skis sounding the ice with a pole. On the third day they came to the Udege.

A bark lodge stood on the bank with its smoke going straight up in the still air. Drying racks, empty. A sledge, eight dogs in the traces, and an old man in a fur robe loading the sledge, who stopped loading when he heard the engines.

Wang Che climbed the bank and spoke to him in Chinese. The old man answered shortly. He looked north up the valley, the way they were going. Then he looked at the trucks for a long while.

"He says the hunting is finished here," Wang Che said.

"Ask him what's up the valley."

Wang Che asked. The old man did not answer at first.  Then he simply stated “wind, snow, death.”

That night they camped in a bend of the river under a cliff, out of the wind. The fire burned with a hard bright flame and gave almost no heat. Hunt wrote his letter. Sheehan sat close in. Adams watched the breath come out of him small and thin, a wisp, while everyone else's stood out in front of their faces in clouds. Nobody said anything. Johansson looked. Chavez looked. Then they looked at the fire.

"In the Mora," Chavez said, "we have La Llorona. She drowned her children in the river. Now she walks the river at night crying for them, and any child she finds, she takes." He turned the stick he held in the coals. "My grandmother said, if you hear her crying close, she is far. If you hear her far, she is close."

"That's a hell of a rule," Adams said.

"It is a good rule. You can never be sure."

Adams spat into the fire. "Up home in Tucker County, Granny said if you're out in the woods of a night and you hear somebody call your name, you don't answer. Don't matter whose voice. Your mama's. Your brother's. You don't answer."

"Why not?"

"The haints know your name. They heard your mama holler you in to supper. They been listening since you were born." He put a stick on the fire. "You answer, you tell 'em where you are."

From inside two blankets Higgins said that his nanny had told him much the same about the Inland Revenue.

Adams had the second watch. The fire was down to coals. After midnight the wind came up high in the pines along the cliff, a long sound that rose and fell and rose again, and now and then the river ice split somewhere along its length with a crack Adams felt in his back teeth.

Adams listened. He heard the wind. Only the wind. Adams sat a long while with the trench gun across his knees. 

#

Dispatch of J. M. Talbot III, Special Correspondent, The Times-Picayune. Filed Vladivostok, 19 January 1919. Returned to the correspondent with the compliments of three censors.
VLADIVOSTOK, Jan. 19. On this feast of the Russian Epiphany the faithful of this frozen city went down by thousands onto the harbor ice, where [DELETED, U.S. ARMY CENSOR] on motor patrol into Siberia [DELETED] [DELETED, IMPERIAL JAPANESE ARMY] [DELETED, CZECHOSLOVAK CORPS] with your correspondent's own eyes [DELETED] [DELETED] [DELETED]. Relations among the Allies here remain most cordial.

Field journal, Lt. Col. A. Quarterburn, USMC. Upper Suchan, 23 January 1919. In pencil; the ink has frozen in the pen.
Minus thirty-one degrees Fahrenheit at 0600 by Mr. Talbot's thermometer, which he warrants accurate. He warrants his photographs also. Fingers inspected at reveille, all hands. Mr. Wang's left ear doubtful; rubbed with snow over his protests and against Miss Thorpe's advice. Four trucks running. 

#

They heard it at nine.

The day had come up clear and cold, the sky pale as skimmed milk and the river white and level between its banks, the four Fords strung out along the ice at fifty yards with their exhaust standing straight up behind them. Then over their engines there was another engine. Higher. Behind them, from the south.

Higgins put his head out of the cab and looked back and said a word the Royal Navy keeps for special occasions.

"Sopwith," he said. "Two-seater. We sold those to the Tsar."

"Whose is it now?"

"Whoever is paying for the petrol."

It came up the valley at the height of the trees, in place of landing gear it had skis, and they could see the two heads in the cockpits and the ring around the rear one and the gun on the ring. 

Adams stood on the brake. "Out! Off the ice! Get to the bank!"

In a well practiced move the four Fords broke left and right.

The forward gun opened before it was in range of anything. The rounds walked up the river toward them in a line of white spurts, and where they struck, the ice starred and split and the cracks ran out from each one. The line went past the first truck. Past the second. Under the third, the ice gave way along the cracks.

The trailing Ford tipped back on its rear wheels and slid in. Smith was at the wheel. The cab went under to the windscreen with Smith in it, and Hunt was off the tailboard of the second truck and across the ice on his belly before anyone told him, he tossed a line to Smith and hauled, and Smith came out of the cab onto the ice streaming black water and swearing in Italian. The truck went down behind him with its headlamps lit. Adams watched the two lamps go down green through the water and grow small and go out.

Most of the food had been in that truck.

The machine went over them. The observer stood up at his ring and raked the bank where they lay, and snow and bark flew, and then it was past and climbing and banking away north to come around again.

Smith's coat was freezing on him before he reached the bank. It went stiff at the elbows and then at the shoulders, and his hair stood up white. Hunt and Sheehan stripped him in the snow and rolled him in two blankets and Higgins's greatcoat, and Johansson knelt up out of the snow and emptied a drum from the Annihilator after it. At that range he might as well have thrown the drum. Chavez fired the Browning automatic rifle in bursts, leading it. Muldoon did not fire. She was watching it bank.

"He'll come back down the river," she said. "Same line. He wants the trucks."

Adams lay in the snow and watched the machine turn small and black against the hills, and he thought about Luzon. The Wakwak coming down out of the dark in '02. The Lieutenant with his signal flare, and the bird breaking off to chase the light, and all of them alive because of it. 

Quarterburn was down in the snow beside him with his right hand inside his coat.

"You have something," the colonel said.

"Maybe."

"Gunny. Go."

"LaFontain!"

The Frenchman was already beside him with his carbine and the steel cup on its muzzle.

"How many grenades you got?"

"Five."

"Can you make 'em burn white?"

LaFontain looked at him. Then he looked at the second truck, at the crate lashed behind the cab. Barclay's crate. Adams watched him understand.

They broke it open on the tailboard. LaFontain unscrewed the grenade bodies and knocked the charges out of them into the snow, and Adams took his knife to Barclay's slugs, one after another, and poured the gray powder out of each. Magnesium, silver nitrate, salt. One slug. Two. Five. Eight. Eleven. LaFontain packed each body down with his thumb and screwed it shut.

"The fuse is eight seconds," LaFontain said. "I cannot change it. You tell me when he is eight seconds away."

"Every flare pistol in this outfit!" Adams shouted. "On my word, straight up in his face. Not before!"

There were six. Talbot had one, and Thorpe, and Higgins, and Dunn, and Sheehan, and Wang Che, who had bought his own in Vladivostok for a reason he declined to give.

The machine came around. It came down the river at the trees with the forward gun going, and Muldoon stood up on the bank and put the rifle to her shoulder and swung with it, and fired, and worked the lever, and fired. The observer was standing at his ring. He sat down. Then he fell forward over his gun, and the gun swung up and pointed at the sky, and the plane went over them with a dead man riding in the back.

It went north. It banked. It came around.

"He's alone now," Muldoon said. "He'll come lower."

He came lower.

Adams walked out into the middle of the river.

He had a railway fusee in his left fist. He struck it on the ice and it caught and burned red, and he held it up over his head, and the pilot saw it. Adams watched him see it. The nose came around a degree and settled on him.

"Doc always said magnesium does the trick," Adams said, to nobody.

The machine came on. The skis. The wings. The forward gun starting, the white spurts walking up the ice toward him. Adams counted off the dead larch on the left bank, the gravel bar, the second larch, the way he had counted grouse off a ridge in Tucker County when he was nine.

"Now!"

LaFontain fired. The grenade went up out of the cup with a flat bang and turned over in the air. He loaded and fired. Loaded and fired.

"Volley!"

Six pistols went off together and six stars went up red and green and white into the pilot's face, and LaFontain's first grenade burst in front of the propeller with a light that took the color out of the whole valley, and the second burst, and the third, a white wall going up across the river at the height of the trees, magnesium burning in the air, snow and pines and wings and the man in the cockpit all turned to bone by it, and through the middle of it the machine came on out of the light with the pilot's arm thrown up across his eyes.

On the bank Higgins emptied his Webley at it one-handed. No one could see that he hit anything.

The pilot could not see at all. The right wing dipped. The tip caught the pines on the bank and the machine went over on it and cartwheeled into the trees, wing over wing, and the snow came down off every branch for a hundred yards. The engine raced. Then there was no sound.

Adams stood in the middle of the river with the fusee burned down to his glove. The glove was smoking. He dropped the fusee and pushed his hand into the snow.
Then he walked back to the second truck and lifted the lid of Barclay's crate and counted what was left with one finger, row by row. He closed the lid. He sat on it.

"How many, Gunny?" Johansson said.

"Enough," Adams said.

#
The plane lay on its back in the pines with one wing folded under it and the other standing up into the branches. The engine had torn half out of its bearers. Petrol ran out of the tank into the snow, and the stink of it hung in the trees.

The observer hung upside down in his harness in the rear cockpit with Muldoon's bullet in him.

The pilot was alive.

He lay half out of the forward cockpit with the fuselage across his legs. He was young, twenty perhaps, with a fair mustache and a leather helmet trimmed in fur, and his goggles were pushed up and his eyes were burned red from the light. He was laughing. Not loud. He lay in the snow and laughed up at the branches, and the laugh came out of his mouth with nothing on it. No cloud. No steam. Thirty below, and his breath did not show.

Adams knelt and opened the flying coat.

In the breast pocket was a flight order, typed, on good paper. The top of the sheet had been torn off along a ruler, neatly, where a letterhead would be. At the bottom was a wax seal in dark red, pressed with a device Adams did not know, a key with three curled lines rising off it, and under the seal a single word in Russian.

Wang Che read it. "'Steward,'" he said. "It is signed, 'the Steward.'"

"Steward of what?"

Wang Che shook his head.

There was a map too, in pencil on squared paper: the river they had come up, the branches above it, and a saddle between two peaks with a cross on it. Dunn held Barclay's box beside the map. The needle pointed at the cross.

Talbot photographed the order and the seal and the map laid out on the pilot's chest, three plates, kneeling in the snow, and the pilot laughed at him the whole time.

"Ask him who sent him," Quarterburn said.

Wang Che asked in Russian. The pilot stopped laughing. He looked at Wang Che and at the colonel, and he answered in a perfectly reasonable voice, three sentences.

"He says he was sent by the one who owns the wind," Wang Che said. "He says you are too late. He says the one who owns the wind is already here."

Higgins was scratching at his empty sleeve.

Adams saw the frost first. It came across the metal of the cowling in front of his face in ferns, white, branching, faster than frost had any business growing, out across the metal and down the struts and over the dead observer's goggles.

Then the wind stopped.

It did not die down. It stopped. The pines stood still. The snow blowing off the branches hung in the air and came straight down. LaFontain stood up from the wreck with his face gone gray and his hands open at his sides.

Then Adams smelled it. Ammonia, sharp, a stable not mucked out all winter, and under it wet fur, heavy and close.

"What?" Dunn said. He was looking from face to face. "What is it? What do you smell?"

The white out came down the slope.

It came through the pines above the wreck a hundred yards wide and taller than the trees, a wall of snow turning in on itself, and it made no sound at all, and where it touched the pines they went white and were gone. Adams got Dunn by the coat and threw him down the bank and went after him. Somebody was shouting. The white came over the wreck.

For a moment there was nothing. White in his eyes and his mouth. Cold that stopped his heart in his chest and started it again. He heard metal tear.

Then the pilot screamed, and the scream went up. Not away into the trees. Up.
Adams saw a shape in the white above the wreck. A horn. The curve of a back. Legs, and more legs than that, folding.

Then the white went away down the valley and the wind came back all at once and the pines were moving again.

The side of the fuselage was open from the cockpit to the tail, the fabric torn outward and the longerons broken out through it. The pilot was gone. His helmet lay in the snow. His goggles hung from a strut by one strap and turned in the wind.

There were tracks around the wreck in the new snow. Adams went around them twice. Two prints, each as big as a dinner plate. Then four. Then something that was more than four, and he could not make it come out to a number. Then the tracks went up the slope into the pines, and he did not follow them.

Talbot sat in the snow with the camera in his lap. He had got one plate off. He held it up to the light. It was white, and a gray smear in the white, and something darker in the smear that might have been a horn.

"Blurred," he said. "Again." He put it inside his coat. "Still beats anything New Orleans ever had on the Père Malfait."

#

That night they drew the three trucks into a ring with the fire in the middle, and Adams walked the outside of the ring with the salt bag and poured a line all the way around, gray on white, and closed it, and walked it again.

The white came back after midnight.

It did not come in. It went around them. They could hear it walking the circle outside the trucks in the dark, a wind with no weather in it, around and around, and the canvas on the trucks bellied in and out, and the snow hissed along the salt line and stopped there. Inside the ring the air hardly moved. The fire burned straight up.

The others slept, or lay still. Adams and Muldoon had the watch. She sat by the lantern with her sketchbook on her knee and her rifle against her shoulder, drawing.

Adams watched the dark go around. After a while he looked over at the page.

She had drawn the camp from above. The three trucks in their ring. The fire. The salt line, a thin gray circle. Every bedroll with a shape in it, and every shape a person he knew. Hunt with his letter. Sheehan curled small. The colonel on the far side of the fire with his face to the trucks.

Behind the colonel's bedroll, inside the ring, she had drawn something standing. Pale. Taller than the trucks.

And behind it, in the salt line, a gap the width of a boot.

Muldoon's charcoal stopped.

"I don't remember drawing that," she said.

Adams did not turn around. He watched her face.

She looked up, past his shoulder, at the colonel's bedroll.
###

He paused inside the modest narthex until his eyes adjusted to the dimness. His nose was lavished before they did. The air was thickly florodorous, the roses drowning out everything beneath them until he searched for it. Behind the settled sweetness breathed the damp and waxen notes of the church itself. Flowers raised in glasshouses, undoubtedly, but they had lost the tidy fragrance of careful cultivation in such profusion. Shut together in the space, they smelled luxuriant and almost wild. Ilya inhaled again and walked into them.

The nave was crowded. Bunches of roses lay across the narrow pews, some bound with string or ribbon. More were in jars, bottles, pitchers and metal cups on the floor. Diverse sprigs had been tucked among them. Several bunches hung upside down from pegs and nails along the walls. Endless petals covered the floorboards. The congregation had come to commemorate spring, leaving its bounty behind.

Ilya moved quietly between the benches. The day’s candles had mostly burned down. Yellow candle stubs crowded the sand trays, their wicks curled black. Two tiny lights still lived, giving the faded faces above them a reddish movement. The paintings were much older than those he knew from Nagarvan or any printed household icons. Here they had browned with the boards on which they were painted. Their eyes had dimmed; their green robes had become sage and mud. Gold survived in opaque islands across the nimbi and attributes.

The pitiful iconostasis drew him forward. There were twelve principal divisions, but each held its complement, the Saints paired and opposed around the central doors. Together they formed the familiar Nychthemeral circuit: twelve times two Mensal Saints arranged around the passage beyond. Lush Marcelin stood among the rightward Saints, corresponding to the third hour on the clock. A faunish brown face, the faded green of his vestment and fragments of old gold around his head. His attribute, a virescent branch, sprouted from his palm. The Saints following him in the circuit were obscured by his votive blossoms.

Saint Marcelin regarded him through several centuries of smoke. Today, of all days. Ilya knelt, placing the binoculars and flashlight at his sides. He hesitated before beginning, suddenly self-conscious among all the efflorescence. Then his hand rose to his forehead – left shoulder – down to the lower chest – right shoulder – complete at the forehead. “Saint Marcelin,” he whispered. “Please save my mother.”

Childish, he thought and closed his eyes. “She has been sick for a long time so please help her get better this spring. Grant her renewal – more life – after such a long winter of sickness.” He fell silent for a while. “Grant it to all the guiltless,” he added. “Not just her.”

Ilya lowered his head. “And forgive me for making her worry. And for lying to her about where I was going. And many other things. And if this is sacrilege, what I am doing, forgive that too.” His prayer became harder to formulate. “We didn’t mean to hurt the dead,” he whispered finally. “We’re only taking a small amount of what it secretes, to aid the living… I’m not doing this just for money…”

One of the candles sputtered, and only then did Ilya think of lighting a few more. He spread the flame to two other wicks. The renewed light revealed more of the Saints, their cracks and pallor. Marcelin in particular. Ilya leaned closer.

What originally appeared to be a painted crease was actually a fissure in the iconostasis, running from Marcelin’s shoulder to his navel. It revealed a slit of the sanctuary’s darkness on the other side. Ilya shifted his head, drew closer. Through the Saint’s tear he saw shadowy green and bits of red. Several thin stems crossed one another in the sanctuary beyond, bearing fresh leaves and tight buds. They disappeared beside a wall-aumbry whose warped wooden door stood ajar. He could see only fragments through the damaged panel, but farther along another crack showed more of them. He followed them to the central doors of the iconostasis.

A wooden seat creaked and Ilya spun around. A robed figure stirred among the piled flowers and struggled upright on a pew. “She must be very sick,” the dusty voice said, “for you to be here at this hour.” The man straightened, revealing a black cassock faded almost to brown. The face above it was extraordinarily old, haggard and hedged with white hair. He saw that Ilya was watching the door nervously. “You should not go out yet.” He tapped the floorboards gently with his walking cane.

Ilya swallowed and lowered the flashlight. “You’re not going to call them?”

“No. They have done enough here already.” He coughed into his hand, almost disappearing beneath the flowers as the cough racked him. “You pray poorly,” he said. “Didn’t your mother teach you?”

“Did you hear all of it?” asked Ilya, reluctant to help him. “Are you the priest here?”

“Father Avankh.”

“Were you sitting there the whole time?”

“I was sleeping, until you woke me.”

“Here?”

“It is my church. Is that so odd? I came to pray, but then I was too tired to leave.”

Ilya relaxed slightly. “What were you praying for?”

“That my sins, carelessness foremost, do not weigh my soul down in death.” Avankh rubbed one knee through the cassock. “You were facing Saint Marcelin. Do you accept the Mystery of Resurrection?”

Ilya scoffed. “I don’t believe in miracles. Not until I see one.”

“Mystery,” Avankh corrected. “Not miracle.”

Ilya hesitated. “Why don’t you want the police here?”

“They dig up my flock. Cut them away. Without understanding the beauty of what they pillage. Much like you and your friends.” Avankh shuffled toward the iconostasis, settling at the same spot Ilya had knelt at earlier. “The yard has required more of me lately,” he said. “More than I can give it. Things grow where they should not. More than they should. I have been neglectful. Come, we will pray for your mother together. To Marcelin and the others.” He extended his stiff arm to Ilya, wrinkled palm beckoning.

Ilya did not move. “I don’t really believe in any of that. I only prayed because...” Ilya struggled for the reason. “I felt bad and wanted to say something to someone. I’ll help my mother myself.”

Avankh laughed quietly. “You think faith and religion are the same thing?” He regarded Marcelin. “Faith comes and goes. People lose it, recover it, argue over it. I have never considered it particularly reliable.”

Ilya scoffed. “Yet you are a priest. What do you do if not believe?”

“Tend, trim, feed, care – day after day… Simple acts make a man religious, not faith.” He placed his palm over the fissure in Marcelin’s robe. “They require us to be gardeners, not believers.” Avankh completed the circle over himself. “Come. Pray with me.” His hand beckoned. “If not, help me up.”

Ilya came closer. As soon as he lowered himself to help Avankh, his forearm was seized with considerable strength. Avankh examined it, his umber thumbnail pressing into the wound on Ilya’s fingertip. “Oh,” he said. “You’ve already taken communion. They have not rejected you.”

Ilya jerked free and rubbed the cut against his trouser leg. “What?” he blurted, backing away. “I haven’t taken anything.”

“Will you accept Their next sacrament and drink from the chalice?”

“I told you, I don’t care about the Saints.” He glimpsed the binoculars and flashlight but didn’t reach for them.

“Saints?” asked Avankh. “Go then. Help your friends, boy. I will be here.”

 

*

 

Ilya fled the church in a rush. The policemen and their lights were visible at the gate, dim and distant. He ducked instinctively and hurried around the building. The slope was steeper than he remembered. In the dark, under curious Sel, the stones had lost their edges and hummocks interrupted the slope. Ilya took the first few steps too quickly and caught his boot on an outcropping in the churchyard. He went down on one knee, hands striking the rorid grass. He stood unsteadily, suddenly lost. Then he remembered the egg.

Ilya found the tree. He moved without purpose, searching the ground in the dark, pushing leaves aside. He could not find the small hollow and began to panic. He could not have said why. Then his fingers sank into the disturbed earth between two roots. Reluctantly, he reached into it. He grasped the egg and pulled.

A thin thread held it there. Ilya went still. Carefully, he tried once more. The same resistance came from below. He could feel it: a fine rootlet had pierced the shell and begun to branch inside. The life inside was still faint but fuller now.

Ilya gasped and fell backward. His chest hurt. He rubbed his palm against it, smearing it. He was terrified. Perhaps thrilled. His heart was beating too fast to tell. Only when he returned his touch to the ground did the buried pulse give him a sense of peace and place. Its own slow beat seemed to draw him onward. He followed the lethargic course in a crouch, crawling noiselessly, past the ossuary, between the three oaks. Neither memory nor monument guided him. Then the summery rose in the pit came into view. It was still bleeding. A heavy bead hung from the pistil, stretched and dropped. The third bottle was under the graft, badly positioned and nearly full. Two others had been capped and set beside Yaro’s pack. Nobody was watching them.

Ilya hesitated, afraid to call out. He stayed where he was for a moment, trying to quiet his breathing. He heard only the nectar dropping into the bottle and the continued ringing in his ears. Then another sound came from beyond the excavation. A muffled moan, answered by a faint grunt. He finally straightened. There was movement behind a low granite slab a dozen meters away, obscured by nettles and stones. Their clothes spread beneath Varya, keeping her off the cold stone. Yaro was braced above her, between her parted knees, his head lowered close to hers. Ilya could see the slow movement of Yaro’s back, grasped by Varya’s hands – both bleached by Sel. Neither noticed him and he ducked down before they could.

Another drop trembled at the pistil. Ilya got closer. The raktic nectar was different, redder than before, a luminous and lubricious ruby between the white folds. His index entered the flower. The petals folded and crushed around his fingertip as he pressed too deeply into the pistil. When he withdrew, a thick smear of nectar coated the skin. It gathered more vividly than before. Ilya brought it closer to his face. The scent was cloyingly lush and overripe. He parted his lips, but the nectar had begun to disappear. He watched in wonderment as the red sheen thinned and contracted into the nick in his index. A warmth moved through his arm, becoming passion elsewhere. The nick was gone, the skin smooth and immaculate.

The graft had stopped yielding. The pistil, exposed through the damaged corolla, had collapsed to one side. He touched the flower, more tender this time, then the rootstock. The tissue around the graft had split wider than Varya’s original incision. Its edges were tumid and blackening, resembling a festering wound held open by a rapacious wedge. He could still feel the pulse gathering in the rhizosoma, but it was faltering. He seized the scion at its base and pulled. It came free with a wet snap, trailing a thin thread of tissue before it broke. The wound throbbed in its absence.

“What the fuck are you doing? You were supposed to give us the signal,” said Yaro from several paces away, fastening his trousers. “Hey! I’m talking to you!”

Ilya tilted the bottle. The viscous, vermilion liquid poured out over the wound. Some ran into the loosened earth; some clung to the torn tissue and vanished into it.

“What the fuck!” Yaro jumped into the ditch and grabbed for the bottle. Ilya lost his grip. It struck the soil and spilled more.  “What the hell is wrong with you? Answer me!”

Ilya stared at the red pool and ribs until Yaro shoved him against the edge of the ditch.

“Yaro!” snapped Varya, panting. She was in her crumpled jacket but bare-legged. “Stop.”

“He just wasted our work!” He seized Ilya by the shirt. “What’s gotten into you? Talk, dammit!”

“Let go of me,” said Ilya.

Yaro shoved him again, deeper into the ditch this time.

“Yaro, leave him alone!”

Yaro sneered at her. “He’s throwing our money into the dirt. And for what?” He looked back at Ilya. “No! Wait–”

Ilya held both full bottles to his stained chest, twisting the cap from the second. “This isn’t yours,” he said.

“Yours, then? Don’t be greedy, Ilya. Give them back.”

“I will,” said Ilya, and tipped them.

Yaro lunged at him. Ilya tried to rebuff him, but Yaro was stronger and knocked him off balance. Yaro dropped to catch the bottles. His boot came down across one of the exposed fibrous ribs. It gave with a soft crack and split open along its curve. Ilya flinched and gave a short cry. He pushed himself upright.

Still on his knees, dirty from the ditch, Yaro held the salvaged nectar. About a third remained between them. He shook with relief. He gave a miserable little smile.

“Ilya – don’t!” screamed Varya.

Yaro twisted as Ilya swung the shovel. The nectar spilled before the blood as the blade caught him across the side of the head. He stumbled and dropped sideways, clutching nearly empty bottles. His eyes locked on Ilya at last. His mouth opened, but nothing came out. Ilya swung a second time.

 

Varya knelt at the edge of the hole, sobbing and stuttering. “Ilya?” she managed. “You have to help him.” She grabbed his leg with both arms. “Ilya, help Yaro. Please.”

“I can’t,” he said, settling a hand on her head.

“You can.” She clutched harder. “Use your Art. Do something. Anything. Make it go back inside him. Please.”

“I can’t help him. Not on my own.”

“The police. The VED. It doesn’t matter what happens afterward.”

“No, not them. They came here to uproot it.”

Varya stopped sobbing and stared at him. “The Flower?” she said. “No.”

“We just have to find a spot for him…”

“No.”

“…somewhere close to one of the larger runners…”

“No, no, no.” Varya withdrew from him. “You are not feeding Yaro to that parasite.”

“It can save him.”

“He needs a doctor, a mender, to save him. If you won’t–”

Ilya crouched and caught her by the jaw, pointing her toward the hole. “Varya, his skull is open. It’s done. Too late for that.” Varya shook her head violently under his grip, weeping. “You said it was beautiful.”

“What?” she said thickly.

“The flower. You were right.”

“Why did you kill Yaro, Ilya?”

“He attacked me when I tried to return the nectar. You saw him. You tried to help. Thank you.” He let her go, straightened and surveyed the surrounding area. “We can probably–” Clumps of earth fell beside Yaro as she scrambled out.  “Varya. Varya!”

Ilya dropped the shovel and went after her. She was making for the ossuary barefoot, stumbling over the uneven ground in the dark. The lights below appeared intermittently from the front of the church. Varya saw them too and drew breath to shout. Ilya lunged and tackled her from behind. They landed in a thicket of roses; dry canes waking into spring cracked under them.

“Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!” she howled before he covered her mouth.

“I’m your friend,” he said, holding her down. “I don’t want to hurt you, Varya.”

She bit his palm hard enough to draw blood. Ilya recoiled just enough for her to gasp and try to wriggle free. He forced her onto her back and pinned her shoulders to the prickly ground. When his hand returned to her lower face, it left a red smear across her mouth. She tried to keep her mouth open and shout but then tasted the pouring gore, far more of it than there should have been. Her eyes widened and her jaw clenched, but she could not stop the intrusion.

“I’ll save him,” said Ilya, tracking the vanishing flashes. “Don’t worry, Var. I’ll save you too.”

Varya went still for half a second, then fought more frantically. She recoiled from the taste and twisted with sudden, desperate strength, clawing at his wrist. Her breathing broke into wet, frightened little catches. He was too deep inside for her to force him out now.

Ilya held her there with the bleeding hand and freed his other. “Don’t fight it,” he whispered. “Let me.”

For a while there was nothing but her weakening struggle and the brittle noise of the briar surrounding them. Her midriff heaved with every labored breath and the fallow skin glistened. He held her until his stirred Art could no longer identify a rhythm inside her. When at last he let go, Varya slumped into the rose bed. Tears had run sideways across her face into her tangled hair.

 Ilya trembled from the exertion and sat leaning against the ossuary. Sweat had soaked him whole and he was unable to face her any longer. He removed several broken prickles from his sullied thighs. Varya’s jacket left threads of lining on the briar as he worked it free. He dressed her as well as he could before picking her up under the arms and dragging her toward the rhizosoma. In the dark distance, beside his church, stood the tall, serene figure of Father Avankh.

 

*

 

The Feast of Saint Marcelin has come and passed, and I think this may be the finest spring Morvin Mir has had in years. We had so many attendees that nearly half had to attend outside. Many came from Nagarvan and the surrounding villages; others were children and grandchildren of parishioners resting in our graveyard. I am always glad to see people return to their hometown. The village is still small, but dying is no longer its only affair. There are children in the parish again, new names listed under old surnames.

Father Avankh would have been pleased to see this reversal. It has been only two years since he passed and I still think of him daily, especially during these busy weeks. The immense gratitude I feel for him could not possibly have grown out of the mere decade during which we knew each other. During my seminary years away from Morvin Mir, it was my memory of him and his hospitality that kept me on the right path. Seminary also left me with the habit of journaling and writing my own prayers to the Saints, as well as sly little poems of adoration.

I was twenty-two when I took my vows and came back to assist Father Avankh properly. Although I knew a great deal more about hagiology than when first we met, it was under his tutelage and on our shared walks that I came to understand the true subtleties of our vocation. He was terribly enfeebled by then, his body frail and pained beyond mending, but his wisdom remained ripe and bountiful. He taught me patience, diligence and, above all, keenness to sin. I wish nothing else for him than to rest peacefully and enjoy whatever afterlife awaits a man who spent so much of this one tending to others – yet even in death, our work follows us. 

My mother is here as well. I did help her in the end. Her sickness continued for only six more months. When there was finally nothing more to be done for her, I brought her here. Father Avankh secured her suitable sepulture and even reconstructed a crude genealogy of sorts to link her to the village of Morvin Mir. We are together, each day. She resides in a peaceful plot behind the church, in the shade of a vigorous oak.  

We finally replaced the worst portion of the lousy roofing three years ago, and last summer I had the southern windows reglazed. The ossuary, meanwhile, remains ramshackle. Father Avankh never did tell me whose bones reside inside. Some Minute Saint? It matters not. Morvin Mir will be floriferous this summer. Roses prevail, naturally. They adorn every corner of the refurbished church during the Feast and lend it an air of veneration. I must also say that some of this fine flora was gifted to me directly, and innocently, by a few parish saplings, and less so by their mothers.

The rest is mostly routine. I make my rounds every morning. I trim where growth becomes too dense, redirect it where necessary and make certain that no grave receives more than it can sustain. I am merciless with the shears, generous with mulch. There have been no gravebursts under my care, nor any serious overgrowth. However, there has been one nuisance. This month, I found two young people, most definitely not from Morvin Mir, coupling on one of the old grave slabs. I take it to be some modish ritual imported from the West. Fornication in a graveyard – Saints preserve us.

My own glebe around the rectory is doing very well. The garlic and onions survived the winter gallantly, and the earliest peas have begun to hook on their strings. The mint continues to escape its bed. Everywhere I stand this season, life surrounds and surprises me. The carnage and decay of winter are the bounty of spring. In flowering gardens, eternal silence is no more than a sting. I have seen it for myself.

The Ghost Inverted
Silas Whitney

She was always at the window. Not the one in the front room where guests had once gathered and chortled on merry nights. Not in the kitchen where meals were prepared for our house of three. Her days were spent in that room, now set for guests that were not coming, but once dressed for one that would never return. The three became two. A full bed and an armchair where there was once a rocker and cradle. 

In the weeks after loss infected our home, she had taken to sitting in the armchair, staring out the window. I would kiss her head and ask her what she is watching. She only answered in opaque murmurs. What could I do except nod and carry on loving? Grief strikes both in these matters, but the mother worst of all. So much so that when neighbors asked what took her, I only answered with, “A broken heart.” 

The three became two became one. 

---

The ancient timbers moan above my head in the cold wind from without. High ceilings meant to vault prayers in the old days, now hold a reverberating mirror to the hushed echoes in my mind. Here in this old temple, long abandoned by people and time, I take refuge. Feathers from the same broken wing finding peace in each other's loneliness. Here, I am the master of the house, but only in the physical sense. My dominion resides over broken pews and rotting hymnals. In the realm of the metaphysical, I am not more than a rank stranger. Like the parabolic camel through the eye of the needle, a long time passing through.

---

I buried her next to him under the oak by the stream. Her eyes watched me as I carved her place out of the earth. I tried to say goodbye, but the words dug heels deep into my chest. I laid her in, covered her, and went back to the house. There I spent the rest of the day and most of the night deep in my own sobs and wailing. I had remained strong in the time she was still here, but now there was no one to be strong for. No one to burden with my tears. 

---

Golden light awoke me the next morning. Not from my bedroom window, for I had the curtains drawn, but from the cracked door to that room. That room with the window where she spent her last days. I arose and opened the door, peering over to the window and the now empty chair. I approached it, part of me still hoping to find her there so I might ask her what she sees and kiss her head once more. I round it and see the empty seat. The fresh wounds on my heart pulled open again and bled through my eyes in fresh droplets. I eased myself into the chair, proposing to myself it might bring me closer to her. Through the blur of my tears I gazed out that old window. 

---

Another leaf of paper. Another dip of my pen. Another wall of inscriptions. 

Again. 

Again. 

Books. Books. Books. Rows upon rows. Columns enough to rest the very road of time upon. Every inch of my wall covered. Piles growing like saplings from the ground, reaching to the ceiling for light where none exists. And yet, they grow. My study is a dark forest of biblioaks and hardcover pines. A wood of writing, invasive to the domestic trappings of this house, but still I write. 

I must write. I cannot stop for a moment. The seams of my mind are stretched taught against the burden of tears run dry, echos of laughter long ceased. The shadows of lives unlived. All of them take unpermitted refuge in my mind and I write. I write. I write them all down for this is the only way I may unburden myself from their weight. 

---

Each morning when I awaken from the cold planks of the floor, I am greeted with distorted images of broken stained glass illuminated by the gray sky. Shapes that once illuminated worship of a people like the gold leafing of books meant to be read by candle and fire. Each morning I peer out the gap between their dust crusted splinters and count the graves within the fallen fence. Each morning I count the headstones. For a time, my morning ritual was predictable when I counted the seven graves, fancying them to match the hour of the morning. That tradition lies long broken.

The first time I counted eight, I considered it a mistake on my part, but slowly I grew more convinced in their number having always been seven. I stepped out into the snow covered ground and made way to them, counted again, and took note of the names inscribed thereon. The stones all appear weathered and broken by the same time and neglect as the church. They simply could not have arrived as recently as my inventory suggests. I simply must have miscounted. 

---

My sobs ceased. The wells of my eyes dried in an instant as my sorrow was replaced with bewilderment. Through the window I saw him. My son, running through the tall grass and playing like I had seen him do before. Surely, it could not have been him. His face was averted so I could not say to be sure. I rose from the chair and flung the window open to call for the boy. But when I opened the window, he was gone. 

Breathless, I surveyed the now empty garden with a furrowed brow. A trick of the mind I thought. I relented, closed the window, and fell back into the seat. When I looked out the window, I saw the boy once more. I leaped from the chair and flew to the back door, but again, he was gone. Back to the window, I saw him again. 

---

They never stop. One after another they crash through my temples and my brow sweats new rivers. My eyes have ceased blinking for blinking brings things which are only vaguely inclined into clear still images. If I were to shut my eyes, for even a moment, I would be dragged to a gallery of uncommissioned artistry. Statues, paintings, and murals. Reverberations of lives long distant to me in waking but so intimate in sleep. 

---

After some time I determined that this boy, whoever he was, only existed in the panes of the window. I sat in the chair watching him play for two days, always his face turned the other way. His hair, his clothes, the manner of his movement all remind me of him. But without seeing his eyes, I may never be sure. Could this be what she saw all that time? Perhaps she too was enraptured by the chance of seeing our boy’s eyes once again. I believe she never allowed herself to look away for a chance of missing them for I found myself transfixed in the very same way.

While watching him play, perhaps four days since I had started, another enters. It’s her. My dearest wife. At least, as far as I am able to see, for she too keeps her eyes averted. My heart flutters, my sobs erupt freshly. I don’t dare open the window or rise from the seat. I called to her from within. If she or the boy heard me, they make no sign of it. 

---

This explanation satisfied me for a time. However, once the graves numbered ten and eleven, new names inscribed upon each one, I could no longer ignore it. I cannot call the headstones new, for they match the age of the others and the church with impeccable precision. Surely, though, they were not here before. I make note of every name. Each name brings dreadful and joyous memories of lives I never lived, but wished for in days long forgotten.

---

Finally, I could take it no longer. Again I rose from the chair and ran to meet them outside. I wanted to grab them by their shoulders and spin them round to face me so that I might see their eyes and know. If they were my family I wished to hug their necks once more and never release them. If they are something else, I wish to rid myself of their taunting. 

I ran out, the door slamming behind me. Alas, I was alone in the garden. I fell to my knees, clenching the dirt in my hands and broke into tearless sobs. I looked up and saw the old oak tree by the stream. Surely, I told myself. That is where they truly lie. If you wish to see them, see them there. I rose to walk and visit their graves, but something catches my eye. Rather something that isn’t there. Beneath the tree I had stood two headstones. I had carved them myself and set them the day I laid them to rest. But where I set them, there was nothing. Where their fresh covering of dirt was just days before was now an unbroken patch of grass. 

---

Thus have my days been for some months. I first heard their crying in my dreams. Weeps of memories with no home, longing to be remembered but fading in the absence of a willing mind. I could not push this first memory from my mind and so I elected to write it down. If I would have known the gate I was opening, I would have kept it shut. For once I aided this one, others followed. They scream and cry, begging for a home in my mind or in my pages.

---

Behind me, a familiar sound. Something I had heard in days long gone. Something I had grown too used to living without. Laughter. The sound of a boy. My boy. He was laughing. I turned to see, but he was not outside. The laughter sounded again. It was coming from within the house.

I ran to the door and tried to open it, but it was locked. The laughter continued, answered by giggles from the woman. My wife. I ran to that window. Inside I saw them. I saw their eyes. The armchair and bed were gone, exchanged for a cradle and a rocker. There, she sat, the boy in her arms. He was a baby. I watched her rock him. I heard her sing. I heard him laugh, coo, and cry. I stood and watched for hours, weeping in a joy I had not felt since the day my son passed into my hands before being carried away in death’s tow. 

---

Perhaps my curse is thus that I may live the rest of my days in seeing through the eyes of a spectre. For this is the existence of an inverted ghost. Where ghosts are dead and dwell out of place with the living. What then should I call myself, who am living, but dwell with the dead? 

---

Now, every time I try the door, it remains locked. I look through the windows around the house, each one shows me a different view and a different time of my dearest loves. In the kitchen I see him refusing to eat green beans. In the front room I see him playing with wooden toys while she sings. In his bedroom, she is always rocking him. In our room he runs in and wakes her to start the morning.

I thought of breaking the door, but I cannot bring myself to do it. If I breach the house, would they still be there? If I break a window would I shatter their memory along with the glass? 

---

You may say to let them fade for they are not my burden. I wish I could. But a fear gripped me when I first had the thought. I could see all of them bleeding into each other. They melted all into a single shape, a hand, that gripped my mind and choked. The shape said if I let them fade, then surely I would fade with them. I cannot stop. I must write.

---

No, I will remain here, just outside their senses. If the cost to keep their essence reunited is my starving, then it is no cost at all. I would rather they live outside of my grasp than not at all. I will give myself in this life and the next for their joy.

---

My morning ritual has changed from counting a constant number of stones, to searching for the new arrivals to the invisible choir. Each morning I catalog their names on the planks of the old sanctuary. The names of old men, young women, and children barely born all coalesce into a single voice of scars in the old wood. Every inch of the old chapel carved with a letter or a tittle, all save for the old sign. 

---

I toil. I sweat. I weep. But, I never stop writing. If not for myself, I must continue pushing this sisyphean stone along to spare another from my fate. When I pass one day, I beg you. If my memories come calling, let them pass. For there is no telling what others are behind. Leave the door shut.

---

The cold makes my skin feel brittle. My body reduces itself to a fine powder. Here I will stay, waiting to be called to my own grave. Perhaps then I may join them, but for now I will watch and enjoy their laughter from the other side of the pane. 

Story by SpyGuy1992/SnooCapers2591

There’s an old saying that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. That’s only half true. The only real certainty is taxes. Think about it—mortals pass away, empires crumble, but the taxman? The taxman is immortal. Not the individual person sitting behind the desk, mind you, but the institution itself. The moment human beings figured out how to build civilization, they invented taxes to keep the lights on.   I’ve spent the last twelve years working for the Internal Revenue Service. I have a government badge, a federal retirement plan, and a cubicle in a windowless basement that smells like burnt coffee and warm toner. Every April, I sit down and file my own taxes, just like everybody else.

What they don't tell you when you pass the Civil Service Exam is that the IRS runs a classified subdivision known officially as The Special Audits & Collections Division. No website, no phone line, and no official paper trail. We don't even like using internal emails. Everything is strictly word-of-mouth.   Our job is simple: we audit the taxpayers who aren't supposed to exist.   Vampires, lycanthropes, sirens, djinni, witches, liches, and forgotten Mesopotamian deities—entities that were already ancient when physical currency was first minted, and somehow managed to hoard a ridiculous amount of it over the centuries.  
To be clear, we only audit the "civilized" ones—the monsters who buy real estate, open business accounts, and live among us. We leave the wild ones alone. You don't try to audit a Sasquatch. They’re nomadic, they don't engage in modern commerce, and if you hand one a Form 1040, he's more likely to tear off your arm and eat the paper than sign on the dotted line.

When you join our division, they hand you an orientation packet. Printed across the very top in bold, heavy lettering is our golden rule: “The IRS does not care how you make
your money. We just want our cut. And we always collect!”  Under IRS Publication 525, if an asset has measurable value, it is taxable. Illegal blood trade? Taxable. Cursed artifacts? Taxable. Human
souls—assuming you’ve had them properly appraised by a certified third party—are
entirely taxable. The forms never ask if your income is ethical, legal, or holy. They only ask one thing: How much did you make?   And that is why the night stalkers are terrified of us.

My First Field Audit

Before I head out on a field assignment, I take a few specific precautions.   First, I down a
small glass bottle of holy water. It tastes like cold, metallic pool water, but it temporarily taints your bloodstream. If a thirsty vampire decides to try his luck, taking a bite out of me is going to feel like drinking a pint of liquid bleach. It’s a great deterrent.   Second,
I clip my standard-issue IRS badge to my belt. In our division, those badges aren't made of cheap nickel—they’re struck from pure silver. Classic creatures of the dark experience severe, agonizing skin burns the moment they touch high-grade silver. It’s amazing how polite a four-hundred-year-old monster gets when your credentials can melt their face off.

My very first field assignment was an old French Quarter vampire living in a sprawling, converted monastery just outside New Orleans. High stone walls, massive iron gates, and long, shadowy corridors.   When he answered the door, I was caught off guard. Movies always make vampires look six-foot-two and broad-shouldered. In reality, this guy was maybe five-foot-four. People forget that centuries ago, nutrition was awful. He was impeccably dressed in a tailored velvet suit, but he had no reflection in the mirrored hallway behind him. He pulled back his lips to bare a set of razor-sharp fangs, trying his absolute best to look terrifying.   I didn't blink. I just pulled out my silver badge, held it up, and watched him flinch backward.

We sat down at a massive oak dining table. I unzipped my leather briefcase and laid out the paperwork: Form 1040, Schedule B for interest and dividends, Schedule D for capital gains, Form 8938 for foreign financial assets, and Form 8283 for noncash charitable contributions.   He stared at the towering stack of documents like it was going to burst into flames.

"I don't see a box to check for what I am," he murmured, his voice echoing off the cold
stone walls.   "There isn’t one," I said, tapping my pen against my notepad.   "And... there's nowhere to state how the wealth was acquired?" he asked cautiously.   I slid a highlighted copy of Publication 525 across the oak table. "The United States government doesn't care if you got that gold from a royal crusade or a dark ritual," I said. "We just want our cut."

A look of immense relief washed over his pale face. He retracted his fangs and actually offered me a cup of tea.   What followed was four grueling hours of untangling centuries of compound interest.

Vampires are legendary at playing the long game. He had real
estate deeds dating back to kings whose names aren't even in modern history
books, gold acquired before standard weights existed, and bank accounts opened
under fallen empires.   He tried to claim his entire Gothic castle as a tax-exempt house of worship. I denied it. He attempted to depreciate his stone crypt under Form 4562; I approved it, but only partially. When we got to his offshore holdings, he smiled smugly.   "Those subterranean vaults aren't technically located on Earth," he purred.  
Without a word, I handed him FinCEN Form 114—the FBAR. "If it holds liquid assets and it isn't within the physical borders of the United States," I replied, "we consider it foreign. Fill it out."   His jaw dropped.   The real headache came from his staff. He had dozens of human thralls maintaining the grounds, but he’d been paying them under the table for decades without issuing W-2 forms or withholding payroll taxes.   "I provide them with
shelter and ambient blood-life!" he protested.   "Under Federal law, room and board do
not constitute a recognized health insurance plan or payroll structure," I told him flatly. "You’ve been misclassifying employees. You need to issue them Form 1099-NECs as independent contractors, or you're going to face massive statutory penalties under Internal Revenue Code Section 6651."   He caved instantly. Before I left, he asked if eternal servitude qualified as a long-term employment category. I told him the IRS doesn’t recognize eternal servitude as lawful labor — it’s just misclassified income with terrible branding.

Monster Jobs & The Weakness of the IRS

You’d be surprised how supernatural creatures earn a living in the modern world. Immortality keeps you breathing, but it doesn't pay your electric bill.   Younger vampires almost exclusively work remote tech jobs on the night shift. Sunlight can't kill you through a Zoom call, and working from home means nobody notices when you haven't aged a day in thirty years. Werewolves lean heavily into physical industries—construction, private security, long-haul trucking, or running local dive bars and gym franchises. Witches usually run boutique herbal shops or occult bookstores, writing off eye of newt and rare bat bones as "ordinary and necessary business expenses" under Schedule C.   Even ancient gods have adapted. Minor deities from fallen civilizations don't build stone temples anymore. They start YouTube channels and TikTok accounts. Millions of views, likes, and monthly Patreon subscriptions give them the exact same steady stream of adoration their ego needs to survive, and it brings in a very nice taxable income.

People think we're brave for walking into these lairs, but the truth is, IRS agents are immune to dark magic. Wards, curses, and mind-control charms rely on pushing your emotional buttons—fear, greed, lust, or guilt. But when a public servant is strictly focused on auditing a spreadsheet, there's no emotional hook to grab onto. We aren't interested in
harming taxpayers or their ability to generate income, which renders most offensive magic useless.

I once audited a witch. When I say witch, I’m not talking about modern New Age pagans or people who buy crystals online. I mean the old school kind—the kind that predates organized religion and practices sorcery with blood, bargains, and consequences.

She had layered her home with protective charms, symbols, and dark wards to keep me out. None of them worked. I walked straight through her shimmering barrier of dark magic, sat on her sofa, and opened my ledger. To her credit, she kept meticulous
records: candles, incense, animal parts, reagents, and bone dust were all
carefully documented. Under Schedule C, we classified them all as legitimate
business expenses. I even managed to write off pet food expenses for her
familiar, a deeply sinister-looking Siamese cat.   She relaxed a bit once she realized the
deductions were valid—the charms couldn't stop me from entering, but the
paperwork certainly stopped me from overcharging her. And just for the record,
I did check her cauldrons for small children, but I found no evidence of
any.

However, our division does have one fatal, catastrophic weakness.   We are terrible at normal, everyday human interaction. Most of us are socially awkward nerds who prefer numbers over people.

Take my colleague Bob, for example. Bob is a mathematical genius on our Western States team, but he gets nervous ordering food at a drive-thru. He was sent out to audit a Nevada brothel suspected of being a money-laundering front run by a succubus, basically a very attractive female demon.   She didn't use dark magic on Bob. She didn't have to. She just walked out in a skimpy outfit, sat right next to him on a leather couch, giggled at his jokes, and lightly touched his arm. Bob lasted about fifteen minutes before he panicked, dropped his clipboard, and ran out of the building screaming. We had to reassign the file.

The Full Moon Riders Motorcycle Club

My most insane assignment brought me out to the dusty
outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona, to audit the Full Moon Riders Motorcycle
Club.   On paper, they were registered as
a non-profit riding association. According to the ATF, they were a violent
outlaw gang. But according to the IRS, they were an unregistered partnership
that hadn't filed a tax return in eight full years.

I pulled up to their clubhouse—a massive, rusted sheet-metal
building surrounded by chain-link fencing and dozens of custom Harleys. When I
stepped inside, the room went dead silent.  
The place smelled like stale beer, motor oil, and wet dog. There were at
least thirty guys inside, every single one of them towering, covered in scars,
and extraordinarily hairy.

The club president was a massive, gray-bearded lycanthrope wearing a leather vest.   I held up my silver badge. The president stared at it, grunted, and made a slight hand gesture.   Before I could react, two massive bikers grabbed me by the arms, lifted me off my feet, and slammed me down onto a wooden stool. Another biker placed a heavy, two-liter ceramic stein of dark beer on the table in front of me.  The president leaned over, his yellow eyes glaring into mine. "We don't talk numbers with dry throats," he rumbled. "Drink."   Refusing meant a swift trip to an unmarked grave in the desert. So, I drank. Then they poured another. By the fourth stein, my head was spinning, and the room was roaring with laughter.   That was when the president decided to test me.

He dragged me outside to an axe-throwing pit behind the building.   "This is Mitch the
Fang," the president barked, clapping a hand on a shirtless, refrigerator-sized werewolf covered in battle scars. "Mitch never loses. Beat him, and maybe we talk taxes. Lose, and we feed you to the desert."   Mitch stepped up, hurled his heavy steel axe, and buried it a hair's breadth from the center mark. The crowd of bikers howled and cheered.  
They handed me an axe. It weighed roughly three pounds. I stood there swaying slightly, squinting at the wooden target twenty feet away. I took a deep breath and let my brain do what it does best. I calculated the exact distance, accounted for the wind speed, estimated the required rotational torque, and determined the precise release point. Math is math, whether you're behind a desk or throwing weapons.   I threw. The axe spun cleanly through the air and split the absolute center of the wooden bullseye.   The yard went
silent.   Mitch stared at the target, his face turning bright red. "He cheated!" he roared.   Before I could speak, Mitch's bones cracked loudly. His spine elongated, his jaw burst forward, thick fur erupted across his skin, and in seconds, a nine-foot-tall werewolf was lunging directly at me.   He hit me like a runaway freight train. We crashed through a wooden picnic table, and he grabbed me by my ankles, flipping me completely upside down. My silver badge and my sidearm slid across the dirt, far out of reach.

The crowd of bikers encircled us, chanting, "Eat! Eat! Eat!"   Blood rushed to my head as I hung there helplessly. But as I looked up, I realized my face was level with Mitch's lower anatomy.   Facing imminent death, I abandoned all professional decorum. I pulled back my fist and speed-bagged his testicles as hard as humanly possible, over and over, finishing with a desperate, crushing grip.  The giant beast let out a high-pitched, ear-splitting shriek that sounded like an eight-year-old girl getting scared by a spider. His eyes rolled back, his legs buckled, and four hundred pounds of unconscious werewolf collapsed directly on top of my chest, knocking the wind out of me.   When I finally woke up, the club president was standing over me, grinning.   "You won," he chuckled, dragging me to my feet.   Mitch was back in human form, sitting on a cooler with an ice pack between his legs. He looked up, gave me a weak laugh, and slapped my back so hard a filling flew right out of my mouth. "Fair fight, man," he wheezed. "No hard feelings."

We went back inside and finished the audit. We filled out Form 1065, drafted Schedule K-1s for the members, and properly reported their illegal gambling income under 26 U.S.C.
§61.   When we wrapped up, the president handed me an official leather cut. "You're one of us now," he said. Then, before I could thank him, he shifted into his wolf form, hiked his leg, and pissed all over me, completely covering me in his territory scent.   The entire room broke out into howls and cheers.   "That means nobody in the supernatural underworld will ever touch you," the president explained as I stood there in stunned silence. "You're a werewolf Goodfella now." He reached into his vest, pulled out a small piece of paper, and wrote down his cell phone number. He handed it to me and grinned. "Call me if you ever need help in a jam." I looked down at the number, then back at the werewolf who had just pissed on me. Somehow, I believed him.

The Pharaoh’s Estate Tax

Not all immortal taxpayers are living off tech startups or outlaw biker bars—some are literally wrapped in linen and refusing to leave their tombs.   A few years ago, I
received a file for an ancient Egyptian pharaoh whose sarcophagus and massive
funerary hoard had been quietly shipped to a private estate in Upstate New York
back in the 1920s. Over the decades, his estate managers had been selling off
scarabs, lapis lazuli, and ancient gold coins to fund an elaborate, climate-controlled mansion.   The problem? They’d been filing under a revocable living trust that claimed the principal beneficiary had been deceased since 1330 BCE.

When I pulled up to the estate, the front lawn was guarded by two towering, stone Anubis statues. I walked up the steps, briefcase in hand, and knocked on the massive bronze doors.  They creaked open on their own. The air inside was bone-dry and thick with the scent of myrrh, cedar oil, and ancient dust. I followed a long, dark hallway painted with intricate tomb hieroglyphics until I reached a grand atrium. Sitting on an obsidian throne at the far end of the room was the mummy himself—decked out in a golden nemes headcloth, wrapped head-to-toe in aged linen bandages, and clutching a crooked scepter.   The moment I stepped onto the mosaic floor, the room temperature plunged. Swarms of black scarab beetles erupted from the shadows, skittering across my shoes, and a deep, rattling voice echoed directly inside my skull:  

 "WHO DARES DISTURB THE ETERNAL SLUMBER OF KHAFRE-RA? KNEEL, MORTAL, LEST MY CURSE WITHER THY FLESH TO DUST!"  

I casually kicked a couple of scarabs off my wingtips, sat down at his marble coffee table,
and opened my briefcase.   "I'm here regarding Form 706, the United States Estate and Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax Return," I said, tapping my pen. "And I'm afraid we have a major classification issue."   The mummy blinked his hollow, glowing eye sockets. The swarm of scarabs came to a sudden halt.

"ESTATE TAX?" he rumbled. "I AM A LIVING GOD! THIS GOLD IS
MY DIVINE BIRTHRIGHT, ENTOMBED WITH ME TO PASS INTO THE AFTERLIFE!"  

 "Under 26 U.S.C. §2031, the gross estate of a decedent includes the value of all property, real or personal, tangible or intangible," I explained, sliding a stack of audit notices
across the marble table. "However, to claim an Estate Tax exemption, the
primary asset holder must actually be deceased."  

He leaned forward, his linen bandages rustling dryly. "I AM DECEASED! MY ORGANIC VISCERA WERE CANOPICALLY JARRED THREE THOUSAND YEARS AGO!" 

 
"If you were legally dead, your estate would have triggered a
forty-percent federal transfer tax the moment it crossed into U.S. territorial
waters," I replied smoothly. "Furthermore, since you are currently
sitting upright, communicating in telepathic English, and actively directing
the liquidation of ancient artifacts to pay your high-speed internet bill, the
IRS legally considers you a living resident alien. That makes all capital gains
from your artifact sales subject to standard federal income tax under Section 61."   The pharaoh stared at me. He looked down atthe stack of forms, then back at me.  

"BUT... THE CURSE OF THE PHARAOHS—"  

"Is not a tax-exempt deduction," I interrupted. "Though, if you keep the temperature in this tomb below sixty-eight degrees to preserve your wrappings, we can classify a portion of
your utility bill as a necessary preservation expense under Schedule C."   The glowing blue light in his eye sockets dimmed slightly. He slowly lowered his scepter, set it against his
throne, and let out a dry, raspy sigh that smelled like three-thousand-year-old
papyrus.   "Do you... accept gold bullion?" he asked, his voice returning to a normal, un-amplified whisper.   "Only if it's converted to U.S. Dollars through a certified exchange and properly declared on Form 8300," I said. "Now, let's talk about those canopic jars—if they
contain precious metals, we're going to need a third-party appraisal."

God and the Devil

People often ask me if God and the Devil exist, and whether our division handles their accounts.  The short answer? Yes, they both exist.  The Creator of the Universe, however, is not a U.S. taxpayer. God is omnipresent, which means He technically doesn't maintain a single legal residency within the borders of the United States. Furthermore, His churches,
temples, and religious institutions operate under tax-exempt status. As long as
the heavenly realms stay out of commercial enterprise, we leave them be.   The Devil, on the other hand, is much more accessible. He doesn't do his own grunt work—he delegates soul collection to junior demons—and he is heavily represented by elite, ultra-expensive corporate law firms in Los Angeles and Manhattan.  There's a reason people call him the "King of Lawyers." His contracts are terrifyingly detailed masterpieces of legal craft.   However, hidden deep within the standard boilerplate text of every infernal contract—usually buried in the fine print on page forty-seven under clause 8B—is a single, innocent-looking sentence:

"The Damned party assumes all sole financial and legal responsibility for
any personal tax liabilities arising from wealth, assets, or material benefits
accrued as a result of this Covenant."  

Most mortals are so eager to sell their soul for fame and fortune that
they never bother to read the fine print.  Which brings us to our favorite house calls.   When a struggling musician suddenly buys a thirty-room mansion in cash, or a failed businessman suddenly acquires a fleet of private jets with zero visible income, our red-flag algorithms instantly trigger an audit. We show up at their door with a clipboard and a summons.   When they panic and try to blame the Devil, we just slide the contracts across the table and point out clause 8B. The Devil may win your eternal soul when you die, but until that day comes, the IRS collects on the income. He gets the spirit; we get thirty-seven percent of the liquid capital.   The Devil might negotiate eternal damnation, but he doesn't get to negotiate your tax liabilities.

The Celtic Sea God and the Ultimate Exorcism

Most supernatural entities fall into line once they realize we aren't going away. But every now and then, some ancient power decides it’s above human law.   A few years ago, we
ran into an issue with Manannán mac Lir—an ancient Celtic sea deity operating
out of the rugged coast of Maine.   For centuries, he’d been extorting local fishermen, demanding gold, fine spirits, and catches of livestock as "tribute" to grant them safe passage through the foggy waters. But in recent decades, the sea god had gone
corporate. He’d opened a lucrative chain of coastal seafood restaurants, a charter boat service, and several commercial bait shops.   The problem? He ran everything strictly in
unrecorded cash, completely omitting his earnings. He viewed the profits as
divine tribute; we viewed it as tax evasion under 26 U.S.C. §7201.   We sent him official notices. In response, he mailed a wooden bucket full of rotting cod to our regional office.

We sent a formal summons, and he placed a curse on the local post office, causing all
federal mail to catch fire.   He thought his ancient magic made him untouchable. He was wrong.   We didn't duel him with spells or holy weapons. We used bureaucracy.   We filed
tax liens on his restaurant properties. We issued bank levies, freezing every single one of his corporate accounts. We seized his charter boats, padlocked his bait shops, and confiscated his golden artifacts under federal forfeiture laws.   Without his money, he couldn't pay his staff or maintain his businesses. His restaurants closed. His charter boats
were auctioned off on a government liquidation site.   As his physical presence faded from the shoreline, something fascinating happened. The local fishermen stopped leaving
offerings at his shrines. Tourists stopped telling stories about the old god of
the mist. Without human belief and financial tribute to sustain him, his power
withered away.   Within a year, the terrifying Celtic sea deity had shrunk down to a faint, harmless fog that occasionally drifted across the harbor. Then, even that vanished.   We closed his file with three simple words:  Taxpayer Nonexistent.

Last Assignment Before Vacation

Just last week, I was called into the Assistant Regional Commissioner's office.   Behind the desk sat Arthur Vance—a tired-looking man in his late fifties with thinning gray hair, reading glasses perched on his nose, and a half-eaten bran muffin sitting on a paper napkin. He looked like a guy who’d spent thirty years doing municipal audits, because he had.  "Your collection metrics are the highest in the department," Arthur said, taking off his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose before sliding a massive, leather-bound file across the desk. "Which is why I'm giving you this last file before you head out on leave."  

 I opened the folder. The target was a prominent global venture capitalist who owned massive stakes in defense tech, real estate, and private space exploration. But buried deep beneath a labyrinth of offshore shell companies was an ancient dragon nesting thousands of feet below Yellowstone National Park, masking its enormous thermal signature in the
natural volcanic activity zone while sitting on a potential two-hundred-million-dollar
hoard of gold bullion, rare jewels, and unrecorded cryptocurrency.   "He’s refused every standard certified letter we’ve sent," Arthur noted dryly, adjusting his cardigan. "So
logistics approved a special equipment requisition for you."   He pushed a paper authorization form across the desk. "It's an Air Force-grade, heavy fire suit. The kind
airbase fire fighters use on runway crashes for high-intensity jet fuel fires. Aluminized fabric, integrated rebreather, rated for three thousand degrees Fahrenheit continuous
radiant heat. It’s heavy, uncomfortable, and smells like vulcanized rubber, but
it’ll keep you from turning into carbon while you deliver the summons."   I signed the requisition form and slid the target file into my briefcase.

Honestly, I was looking forward to two weeks on a quiet beach in Cabo, sipping margaritas and not thinking about spreadsheets or blood-curdling screeches, but duty calls. Nothing gets between a public servant and his approved paid time off—especially not a overgrown lizard with a hoarding problem.   "A dragon can breathe all the fire he wants," I said, offering a faint smile as I checked my belt to make sure my silver badge was secure. "But he can't burn through Internal Revenue Code Section 61. I'll have his audit wrapped up by Friday, and I'm catching my flight on Saturday morning."   Because at the end of the day, monsters can hide in the shadows, they can command dark magic, and they can terrorize mortals for thousands of years. But sooner or later, they all learn the exact same lesson:   The IRS doesn't care who you are, what you are, or how you make your money. We just want our cut.....and we ALWAYS collect!