Category: Short Story

Old Toovey was in a right state when I arrived to the Pub, his spittle frothy with the animated pursuit of his tongue attempting to catch his teeth. He had a full golden pint in one hand, seemingly forgotten, and in the other, and empty shot glass, its contents either long spilled or swallowed.

Henry must have have caught my staring, as he waved at the other empty shot glasses arrayed in a nonsensical pattern at Old Toovey’s elbow. Toovey was regaling a few locals and a couple outlanders with some tale, which itself was not out of place, but the fact that his eyes were bulging, and his cheeks flushed a bright red seemed right off.

“What’s all that about?” I asked Henry, as he pulled a pint without me asking. I took the cold glass, and tipped my head in thanks.

“He is taking the piss. I can’t catch enough to make sense of it. But something shook him terrible.” Henry pulled another pint as Charlie walked in behind me, looking for his usual post shearing stout.

“Hey Charlie,” I tossed him as he sidled up to the bar. His shoulders were wet, must have started raining out.

“Hey Ewan, thanks Henry,” Charlie nodded in quick succession. “Toovey, huh?”

“I was just asking,” I said.

“He is worked up about something up on the Queen’s land,” Henry added.

“How many has he had?” Charlie asked the obvious, I hadn’t even thought it yet.

“Just the one whiskey. Something about settling his nerves. The others are props. Won’t let me touch ’em,” Henry lauded. “Gets all red faced and blustery if I even try to take one away. That pint is merely a memory, more of it on the floor than in his gut, that’s for certain.”

I took a long swallow of my first pint, feeling the cool bubbles light up the back of my throat. The first sip was always the best drink, and all the swallows that followed were only attempting to live up to the first’s memory.

“Who are the strangers?” I asked.

Henry leaned in a bit towards us and whispered, “Not quite sure to be honest. Seem police-ish. Might be Scotland Yard? I didn’t bother to ask, and they aren’t bothering to drink.”

“…I am telling you the truth. Why would I lie? I have been working the Queen’s Estate for forty years now! Why would I ever make anything up like that?” Old Toovey’s pitch escalated wildly and then dropped to a near whisper. “I will have to inform the Estate Steward for certain. He has to know…”

I leaned towards Old Toovey with a raised glass, “Hey there, Toovey, going well?”

“It is not going well, Ewan. Not going well at all,” Toovey’s eyes went wide, and he ignored the small crown to his right, taking care to turn towards Charlie, Henry, and myself on the other side. The other gents rolled their eyes and shifted off, but the two outlanders seemed to be conferring with each other quietly. Toovey continued, “There is nothing in all my years that scared me like this, my young fellow, nothing. Not when that stag charged me, or when Mim fell down those stairs, nothing at all. Henry, I need a pint.”

Henry chuckled, “Tooves, you have it in your hand already.”

Toovey looked at his hand and realized he was holding both an empty shot glass and a pint. “Ah, so I do. Then I need another since this one shall be gone in a swallow.”

Toovey hammered the beer down, true to his word and Henry gently slid another over.

“So what happened, Toovey? Come on,” Charlie said. I nodded along in encouragement. The two outlanders seemed to have decided something and headed for the door.

“I was over near Lochnagar, where the snow is already accumulating, so I wanted to clear one of the old paths before it became impassable for the season, I am not sure why I pushed it off all summer, but I had…” Toovey swallowed heavily. “I didn’t even take one of the boys with me, again, not like me, not as strong as I used to be. I pulled up on a felled tree. Big one, not sure why it was over.”

“So far, this seems like a shite story, Toovey,” Charlie quipped with a grin. Henry shook his head.

“I am getting there, give me a minute. I need to set the scene, Ewan understands.” Toovey replied.

I shrugged nonchalantly, not knowing what that meant. Outside, the weather seemed to be getting worse. There was a far off peal of thunder, and the rattle of the windows told tales of the gusts beyond. The TV over the bar was showing something in the news, but it looked like typical Scottish weather, so I left it.

“I had the winch all setup, leaning over this trunk, making sure it was clear to pull, when my eye caught someone walking up on the high moor, had to be on the western side of the loch. There should be no one out here, I thought. I tried to make it out, this shape, moving slowly in the settling fog. I grabbed the spotting scope, and… I…” Toovey’s breath caught in his chest, trying to form the air into words to express his shaking memory.

“Its alright now, Toovey, you are with all of us. Just tell us what happened,” Charlie nudged.

“Damn it all,” Toovey spit, taking another long draught from his glass. “I saw a woman.”

Charlie laughed. “A woman? Oh come off it, Toovey. That’s odd, but does not explain your state.”

“She seemed to be clothed in ferns and moss, and her eyes, my god her eyes.”

“Odd, for certain. Strange, without a doubt. Perhaps a mental patient, escaped and living on the Queen’s land in secret.” I tried.

“No… no… the rocks, they were floating around her as she walked.”

“Come again?” I asked.

“She, ah… she was walking as if walking under the blustering clouds, cold was as nothing to her dressed even as she was. And the rocks she passed lifted from the ground, floating about her as if they were a cloud of butterflies, landing again in different places, some forming cairns, others scattering themselves again in the dirt. I thought at first it was an illusion, some trick of the light, but the boulders came up too, shifting about as if they were bits of cloud themselves, to settle again in new places.”

“Trick of the light alright, or your knackered,” Charlie said.

“I’m not. Swear it. But you see, that is only the beginning. She was at one moment, high up on the moor, me watching through the glass, and the next, I swear, I absolutely swear it, she was standing before me, right there as you are Charlie, as real as anything.”

“You are taking the piss!” Henry exclaimed. “This is a great story.”

“I am not! It is the truth, through and through. She stood before me as close as I am to you, her hair waving about as if she was under water, bits of rock, lichen, and moss floating around her like snowflakes caught on the wind. Her eyes were red, the color of a turned leaf yet to fall, and she was dressed in wisps of cloud falling from her form. Grasses and lichen beneath it all, creating this solid thing. She looked me over as if I was a specimen in a jar. I felt her look through me, and I was measured in a glance. Like I would look over bug before stepping on it.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I kept my mouth shut. Overhead the rain was getting louder, and the windows were hazed by the sheets of falling rain.

“She, ah, she wasn’t normal-“

“Because she was dressed in moss, Toovey!” Henry said.

“No. That’s not it. She wasn’t a woman. It was if there was a thing wearing a woman like a suit. Like a puppet. This slight wain of a girl, red hair as the dawn, red eyes as the sunset. Dressed like an imitation of our ancestors, but in the things of the land, water, or sky. She was something else, something terrible in disguise.”

“That is quite the story,” Charlie shrugged, his usually jovial nature downright stoic now. His face was written with a grimace halfway between disbelief and deep concern.

“That’s not the scary part,” Toovey admitted. He set his empty pint glass down, trying to work up the courage to tell us something more. “She spoke to me. I heard gravel in her throat and the cry of gulls on the wind. I heard the thunder of a distant storm and the crashing of titanic waves the world has not seen since before the dawn of man. Her voice was in my head, and I heard the half-remembered songs my mother used to sing to me. My ears heard all those things, but in my head, I heard her words. She understood the whole of our modern life in a moment, and spoke to me as such. She told me… told me… such terrible…”

“Almost there, mate. Go ahead,” I encouraged.

“She told me, she was here to bring about the end of our world. We had forgotten her, the one true god. We had forgotten her song, her voice, and her name. She was waiting until she knew we could not save her gift to us, the Earth. She saw it all through my eyes, my ears, my heart in the moment she stood before me. Tatha-na-Cailleach judged all of us. She saw it all in a heartbeat, and she has judged us all the same. She will remake the children, she told me. But for us, this is the end. We ruined it, we ruined it all.”

“Oh you had us for a damn minute,” Henry laughed, breaking the tense air among us. I forced a chuckle, but my heart was not in it.

“She… Oh, my.” Toovey gasped as he looked behind and he fell sideways to the ground.

I jumped to his side, trying to catch him, but he was limp as a fresh noodle and he slid right from my grasp. I managed to keep his head from striking the pavers, but his eyes were open and they told me everything that I needed to know. He was dead.

“Toovey?” Henry asked, leaning over the bar. “Should I call nine-nine-nine, Ewan?”

“I expect you should,” I replied. “But I think his heart gave out. He is already gone.”

Charlie’s hand slapped my shoulder, followed by an urgent whisper. “Look. Look at that.”

I turned, and there was a woman standing at the door, drenched from the rain, dressed in mosses and lichen, as if they formed her as much as the skin at her neck and arms did. She was a sallow white, nearing yellow in color, her hair long and as red as Toovey had witnessed. Over her shoulder, another TV was live as Thames was overtaking London, the great wheel tipping over, black cabs darting away from collapsing buildings. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing either in front of me or on the telly.

The strange woman waved her hand, and the last thing I ever saw was the bar around me leveled to the ground. But as the crushing darkness rushed in, I witnessed everything to be in a moment. Her vision of the world to come. A place not marked by our progress, but instead marked by the human race that should have been. One with the world that birthed it. Whole cities were to be swallowed by the grinding earth, filth to pulled down to the mantle to be reforged into the rock that whence the materials had come. The roads were to be shredded by vines and grasses, all the works of man plucked from existence as easy as I would toss a stone across the surface of the water. God Among Us, dressed in the spring, would dance with the children and raise them as her own. She had done it before, she would do it again. She had danced on the Moors, the Savannah, and in the valleys of the Three Rivers before it turned to sand, and she would dance in the new places with new names, everything on the face of the Earth healed and rewritten.

At the moment’s end, I did not find any of it as sad as I thought I would.

I appreciated her gift before the darkness consumed me.

Blessed be her name, Cailleach, tore across the last gasp of my mind as the crushing pain ceased and my last breath rattled out.

Hello there. I know where I need to go, but first, I need you to follow along for a page or two.

I have a secret.

The last time I told anyone about my secret, they thought I was maliciously lying and I was sent to bed without dinner. You probably figured out in that single sentence that it was one of my parents, and I was but a child, and you would be correct on both counts. My father brooked no forms of jest in our household, and even though I was doused in my own tears, sniveling snot dripping from the tip of my eight year old nose, he thought I was only working to make him the fool. I often am thankful that my father did not believe in physical violence, because I think that night he probably would have beat me to death. Doesn’t matter that I was a girl, I think he would have hit me anyway.

My mother was too drunk to care. Or she was deep in her stamp box, seeing how much LSD it took to shift the walls into noncongruent shapes, abstract forms dancing at the edge of her fingertips as she attempted to commune with the great spirit of the universe.

So my secret has been mine and mine alone for nearly thirty years now. As I got older, I knew that if I told any rational adult within shouting distance of a medical professional, I would suffer a barrage of tests, pokes and prods, metal leads taped to my skull as machines beeped monotonously in the background. I had fears that if someone believed it, only for a moment, that could ruin my life. It could ruin my freedom.

Ironically, my secret ruined my life for other reasons. I was so bathed in my fear of it getting out that I avoided deep friendships, lovers, and even my own family once I moved out. As you could probably guess by now, my own family was shit. But my extended family wasn’t so bad, and at least they made an effort to have a relationship with the only kid that came out of the train wreck of relationship my parents had. Maybe they felt sorry for me. Or maybe they felt sorry for the entire situation. Who knows? Pity was pity, and I did not take much of it.

I wished during many long nights that I could just be honest with a boyfriend. Tell him how I felt, but then at some point, he would discover the truth. I can’t hide it because I can’t fake the reality that everyone else call’s normal.

I don’t sleep.

At all. I have not laid my head down for a night’s rest since grade school. Growing up, that created unique challenges on how to keep myself busy while everyone else slept. I would have to take pains to not be discovered, and the game of it satisfied me for the most part. When I went to University, I had to hide myself, rotating between classes, dorms, and study halls to enshroud the truth. My life had it’s own set of clothes, and depending on where I was, or what I was doing, I compensated from within my fear by being confident or brash. ‘Working late?’, I was asked. Oh yes, of course, I would reply. ‘Pulling an all nighter?’ I would shoot back is there any other way to study? ‘Why don’t you ever go back to your dorm room?’ Oh you know, I see girls. Lots. Of. Girls.

‘Lesbians are hot.’

Sure they are, but I am not one. Just bored and happen to have all the time in the world to think this stuff through to throw everyone off my scent. Including dumbasses in their high school letter jackets trying to pick up a thin girl at the coffee shop who is obviously not interested in their muscle mass. I would love to tell people that when you all are sawing logs, I am acting like an idiot savant caught up in a new passion, discovering anything new to me, attempting to keep myself challenged… and not just binge watching the entire internet since, you know, I seemingly have the time. I mean, I will make time for the latest series that blows up my skirt, and who doesn’t like a little period romance or a good BBC series? But most of the time, I am just trying not to go crazy. Like my mom. Or in his own special fucked up way, my dad.

I often wonder if my mom was actually like me. Maybe that is why she self medicated so heavily. And maybe my dad knew as well, and that is where the anger came from. I would like to ask them, but they died, miserable and alone, while I was off at University becoming the highest ranked student in multiple degree programs. I had professors wonder if I was abusing amphetamines, but they admired the work ethic regardless. I graduated the same way that I entered University.

Alone.

So you may be wondering what has changed here. Why am I opening up on this now? After all these years? I may be a brilliant doctor, a competent surgeon, and a distant mentor to the new residents, but in all of that, I still struggle with any form of intimacy, even of the friend kind. I don’t mind that people think I am just a high functioning autistic, but still, sometimes, I wish that I had someone to talk to. I am not talking about the person reading these words, of course. I am talking about the Other or Others. I am not sure what they I should call them. I don’t think there is a definition or taxonomy for our relationships. They are simply Other.

You may think that I am starting to fracture into disassociated personality disorder, but I am certain that is not the case. I am not schizophrenic, and I am not mentally unstable. I am just different. My neural behaviors are a mutation, allowing for short term and long term memory formation and sensory filtering resets while I am awake. And that is how the Other reached out the first time, when I was resting.

I do not sleep, but my body needs to rest. I have to allow my physical processes to catch up, and my brain is no different. Where you lie down, close your eyes, and shift into patterns of sleep with dreams and somatic bliss, I sit in a chair, stare into the corner of the room, and meditate. My form becomes one with my mind, my breath pulls and pushes upon my alveoli, exchanging gases within my bloodstream, my heart pumping the components for life to all the cells within me. I fall into a dreamlike state, and often, I believe, achieve a REM cycle like those that do sleep. My brain is able to catch up like an awkward gangly long distance runner, and my body is able to adjust into the circadian rhythm that my brain forgot somewhere along the marathon route. I call sleep. But it’s pale imitation, by definition, is no such thing.

Seven years ago, I was sitting in my chair, focusing on my breathing, and I felt the comfort of my meditation take over. I had a long sixteen hour shift at the Hospital, and my body was tired. I let it cascade upon me, a tide coming in after too long of a hot sun, cooling my form in the iterative wash of crash and spray. There in the corner of the room, my eyes fluttered and shifted, and I felt the peace that I needed.

A voice spoke. Calmly, as if it had been calm conversation long before I had shown up.

“…and that is why I need you in my life. To guide me, to provide me a light to my feet. I need your guidance, your care, your love.”

I called out a panicked ‘hello?’ to the air suddenly, my eyes snapping fully open, wondering if someone had snuck into my home, and was for some strange reason, praying in the corner. The voice did not answer, and nothing changed. I got up, wandering the rooms of my house, checking the closets, flicking the lights on and off, and navigating each space, looking for an intruder. There was nothing.

Frustrated, I sat back down in my chair, feeling my way back to my place of Zen. As I approached the calm wash, I felt the voice coming long before I actually heard it. I knew it was not me, not originating from within my own grey matter. It was outside of me, it was Other.

“…I wish you would answer. I wish you would talk back to me.”

So I decided to try, staying in my calm state as best I could, not letting my own thoughts rage upwards and push me from my center. “I can try to answer,” I said to the empty space of my living room.

“What?!”

Her voice, that was a definitely a her. Younger, maybe preteen?

“You can hear me?” She asked.

“I can hear you. Can you hear me?” I asked, focusing as hard as I could on my breathing. The push and pull of the air, the folding and unfolding of geometric shapes, a dot forming a line forming a triangle, forming a square, forming a pentagon, then a hexagon. Stop. Reverse it. The hexagon becoming a pentagon becoming a square and so on. Breath holding at the top and the bottom of the sequence, forcing the peace to run through my veins instead of the blood that wanted to course to carry adrenaline to every cell. I instead focused on ataraxia, a boat on a sea of tranquility.

A tentative answer, timid nearly. “Yes.”

“Who are you?”

She did not answer, and I somehow understood that she had faded away. It must have been her choice. I waited for an hour more, wondering if she was trying to reach back, but unable or unwilling. When the room of silence became deafening instead of comforting, I instead made a second dinner, ate calmly and then headed to my study to workout. Being an nonsleeper is so much easier when you own your own place. No one can notice that you have six meals a day and exercise at odd hours.

The next evening, after I was feeling normal again, I sat myself down at the same time to see if the Other would arise from my place of calm. I focused on my breath, and again, I sensed her before I actually heard her.

“… was scared, I did not know how to respond. Please come back. Please come…” She pleaded.

“I am here,” I asked.

“Oh god,” again, shock in her voice.

“Don’t be afraid.” What else would I say? I had to understand this. My medical brain was whirring in place, trying to sort the conditions, components, and physical state into a sort of running chart, but with a massive wall of focus on my breath and the fragile voice on the other side of my spiritual telephone, it was all but shut down.

“I am afraid.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“I can’t sleep,” she said, the admission sounding like a desperate confession.

My heart started to race, and I struggled to hold on to the barely tenable thread of connection in my excitement. Could this be someone like me? I tried, “Insomnia?”

“No, I haven’t slept for weeks now. I can close my eyes, and I think I dream? But I don’t ever fall asleep. My mom is worried, I think. I heard her talking to my aunt about a sleep study. I don’t want to be a freak.”

I could hear the desperation in her voice. She knew it was wrong, but she also knew it was normal for her, and the two competing forces at her heart were pulling her apart. How could you know that it was wrong for everyone else, but right for you? How could you explain it to someone that would never understand? But I could understand. The universe had connected us… or perhaps our conditions did.

“You are not a freak. What is your name?”

“Imani,” she said carefully. “Shouldn’t you know my name?”

“Why would I know your name?”

“Because you are an angel or god or somethin’?”

The confusion came through so clearly that I nearly laughed out loud. “I am not either. I am a doctor of internal medicine in Vancouver.”

“You’re a doctor?”

“Yes. And I haven’t slept since grade school. And I am nearly forty years old now.”

“What? You are like me?”

“I am, I suppose,” I replied. “Tell me about yourself, Imani.”

“I’m eleven, and I live in Queens, New York. I am scared… uh… what’s your name?”

“You can call me Claire.”

“How are we talking, Claire?” Imani asked. Her voice was transitioning from fear to calm, even though a small torrent ran underneath.

I could pick up on nuances in her voice, as if I had my hand on her face like a blind person, feeling the emotion and body language through a different set of senses. It was a bizarre sensation.

“You were praying?” I asked.

“Yes, then I heard your voice last night, and I freaked out.”

“I freaked out too. I meditate to rest my body and mind. I think we connected because our brains were doing similar things. I don’t know anything else beyond that, this is new to me as well.” I could feel her crying over our shared thread, a gossamer connection, silver and bright reaching across the North American continent, and a sense of relief thrummed across it. I knew her feeling, and I assumed she could feel me too. “But we are in this together now.”

“What do I do, Claire?”

“This will sound bad, but you will just have to lie to your mom. You will have to tell her that you sleep great, it was just a recurring nightmare. When you hear her checking on you, deepen your breathing and I can teach you to meditate like I do.”

“I should lie?”

“This is not a malicious lie, Imani. Think of it as a coat that you can take off when you are not outside. Eventually, you will be able to use this gift however you see fit. Right now, I assure you, you are not going to die from this, and you are no less a person because of it. I have been steadily studying my own condition since my residency, and I am at or above every baseline for a healthy white woman at my age.”

“Why can’t I tell her?”

“You might be able to, someday. When you are in control of your condition, and it is yours to share as you see fit. Any doctor she takes you to will only try to medicate you into sleep, and while it may look like your sleeping, you won’t be. Your brain will still be going, you just will be under a heavy blanket of sedation. Ask me someday how my gall bladder surgery went, and I will tell you how to avoid the bad sensations.”

“I think I understand. You’re white?”

“Yes.”

“I’m black.”

“Why would that matter?” I asked seriously.

“Could this be genetic?”

I was impressed. “That is a great thought, Imani. Why would we share this condition if we are genetically diverse?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know. Other diseases and conditions can exist in different races. Maybe you and I have a shared ancestor somewhere along the line. Could be a bunch of reasons… and we can work through that together. With two of us, we have more data.”

A sigh of relief over our shared connection. “Can we talk soon?”

“Every night, if you want. Time zones don’t matter, so whatever time you wish during the night,” I smiled.

“K. Tomorrow at 1am my time?”

“Sure.”

We broke off from the connection and I came back to myself covered in sweat. The amount of effort it had taken me was significant, but I suppose like any exercise, it would probably improve with practice.

I continued with Imani all the way through her high school years, teaching her to meditate, guiding and mentoring her when she needed it, and act as a tutor when she struggled in school. She was crazy smart, and she was headed for pre-med on a full ride scholarship. It was like having a little sister or even an adopted child of my own. We made plans to meet in person over the summer, I was looking forward to my trip to NYC. Even with the age difference, I finally had found a friend. After all these years, being by myself, a stranger to all, it was still a unusual sensation to realize that Imani and I were bound together now, hundreds of miles away from each other.

Three weeks ago, we connected at our usual time. She sounded breathless, as if anticipation had built up for so long she was on the verge of bursting.

“Claire. Claire. Claire…”

“I am here, Imani. Why do you sound like you are about to explode?”

“There is another one of us! There is another one!”

That is what I could make out. She was shoving so much thought and emotion over our connection, that even in my calm state, I could not focus on all of it at once.

“Slow down, Imani. Take a breath. Who did you find?”

“I was meditating in the middle of the day, because I wanted to be rested for that final this afternoon, and I made contact with someone,” Imani said breathlessly.

“Who?”

“His name is Stephan. He lives in France, in the Bordeaux region, proud grandfather to four girls and a retired vintner. He was praying… and I heard him just like you heard me.”

My stomach nearly did a flip. One of us is an aberration, two is a coincidence, but three? There may be a pattern here. Something for us to dive further into. The limited testing that I had been able to facilitate between Imani and myself had been limited and constrained to our talks, emails, and occasional snail mail packages.

“Claire? Are you there?” Imani followed up.

“You can feel me, you know I am here,” I replied sarcastically.

“What do you think? Isn’t this amazing? Do you think…”

“Amazing for certain. If there are three, there may be tens, or hundreds, or more even. With 7.5 billion humans, it could be a lot higher even if it is a minuscule percentage number.”

“So why hasn’t it happened for seven years? Why just us?”

“It has to be the state of mind, right? Prayer. Meditation.”

“But lots of people pray. Lots of people meditate. We should be tripping all over each other every time we open up.”

“Was he praying about something specific?” I remembered my first time with Imani. The distance, the fear, but above it all the need to find peace in our strangeness.

“He was praying about being alone, I think. His wife passed last year and they were married for like, ever,” Imani said. “What should we do?”

“Is he open to coming to NYC?”

“You mean all of us together in person?”

She sounded giddy, and I grinned, feeling the infectious nature of her happiness.

I shrugged, “Why not?”

Now perhaps you understand why I am writing this all down. Telling this story now. Sharing my secret to these pages. Because it turns out that after all this time, it was not my secret. Or only my burden. It was all of ours. There is purpose here and now my job is to find it. I am starting these journals to capture it all.

A shared experience that now I know is not only my own. What I have learned through all this so far? Mainly that sometimes you don’t have to pray to have that prayer answered.

And that is something I can believe in.

“Goddammit,” Technician Fourth Class Dave Jackson snorted under his breath as his foot found another lump telling him there was a corpse under foot. He raised his hand over his head and yelled behind him, “we got another one over here!”

“Finding them in the surprising places is the worst, isn’t it?”

“Shut up, Ryan,” Jackson shot back with all seriousness. “This used to be someone.”

Private Nick Ryan shrugged, “It’s the truth ain’t it?”

“I am going to sock you in the teeth, Ryan.”

“Then your hand would have to go on leave and wouldn’t your dick be disappointed?” Ryan retorted with a flash of his wide perfect smile.

“Shut up, both of you,” Technical Sergeant Aaron Riley snapped at the two. “The villagers swore this was the place. Keep looking.”

“Riles, sir, look at this one,” Jackson pointed at his find. “Look at his face.”

“If you show me another corpse with it’s face blown off, I am going to lose my shit, Jackson,” Riley grumbled.

Jackson leaned down and flipped the German soldier with both hands. The German must have been dead for only a few days, both of this hands clenched together as if he had been praying. The dead man’s face was locked in a shocked expression, the eyes still wide open, although milked over completely from the damp.

“You reckon he was praying?” Ryan wondered.

“Notice that he doesn’t have his gun? And he didn’t bleed out, his uniform is remarkably clean, except for his knees,” Jackson pointed out. “It’s like the others.”

“Of course, only our medic would notice the lack of wounds. Perhaps he didn’t have a chance to bleed out…” Riley looked closer at the rank on the soldier. “And this was an officer, not a high one, but explains why he looks so… clean.”

“Fucking Krauts,” Ryan sighed.

“Ryan, pull that one over to the others. We will tag the group for the German POWs, let ’em bury their own. And, if I have to remind you, we aren’t here for the dead Germans, Ryan,” Riley ordered.

“Double fucking Krauts,” Ryan groused. He grabbed the soldier by his boots and dragged him towards the empty ox cart where at least three other bodies where laying.

As soon as Ryan was out of earshot, Riley nudged his medic. “Why do you really think it was weird?”

“All of them died without any gunshot wounds, Riles, and I would swear that one died on his knees, praying. Praying to something right in front of him, I would bet,” Jackson said quietly.

“Weird,” Riley agreed, his voice wandering off as if remembering something else.

“This whole mission is weird. Why assign a squad to clear out a remote farmstead? I mean, Captain Holt didn’t even explain to us why we were here. ‘Look for anything out of the ordinary?’ Those aren’t orders, it’s a fucking suggestion,” Jackson said.

Riley shrugged, unholstering his 1911 sidearm. “Well, let’s continue shall we? The barn?”

“You know how to show me a good time, Riles,” Jackson grinned, swinging his M1 Carbine from his shoulder. “Remind me to buy you a drink someday.”

“Jackson, you are at least a hundred drinks already,” Riley shook his head.

“Then I guess we will have a really good time doing it.”

They both walked across the field towards the barn standing alone, the house it belonged to had long burned down, only the blackened first floor remained as a monument to a world war that had marched through this valley without regard for who lived here.

Jackson unlocked the breach and checked his rounds out of habit. The only reason he owed Riley so many damn drinks was being cautious and not letting an enemy get a jump on him. That had meant more than a handful of Germans and Italians had unfortunately met their end on the other side of his firearm. He had prayed for every one, too.

“Jackson,” Riley stopped midstride. He pointed with his gun at the second level of the barn. “What is in the window?”

“Well if it was a sniper, I think one of us would already be dead,” Riley shouldered his carbine and down the sight. “It looks like a bucket? And a broom?”

“What are you guys looking at,” Ryan yelled from behind as he ran up.

“Fuck, Ryan, could you be any louder?” Jackson commented.

“Sorry. What you guys looking at?” Ryan tried again.

“We could have other Germans in this area. The war might be over for us, but for anyone that is in hiding, it could be a different story, Ryan.” Riley said.

“So, you find one?”

“Shoulder your rifle, Ryan. You take point.” Riley ordered.

“Aww man, seriously?”

Jackson shook his head. “Jesus, Ryan. How did you even survive this war? Your parents have any kids that lived?”

“And keep your damn pearly whites locked together until I tell you otherwise.” Riley added.

“Yes sir.” Ryan started walking slowly towards the barn, and Jackson and Riley followed carefully behind.

“This barn looks strange, Riles. Does it look like any barn you have ever seen?”

“You mean the second floor?”

“Hay storage is usually up top, the windows help keep it dry. It’s the shape. That barn is not symmetrical,” Jackson said. “The front doesn’t line up with back. Look at that far corner, there is an extra wall over there. I bet on it.”

Riley squinted, trying to see the irregularities, but he couldn’t make it out. “Don’t bet, Jackson. You owe too much already.”

Jackson huffed. “Sure, sure.”

Ryan put the end of his Springfield rifle between the edges of the large door and pushed the crack wider.

“HOLY SHIT!” He screamed and backpedaled, squeezing a single shot off in a panic. He fell heavily to the ground, and fired another shot wide.

“I hope to god you killed whoever was behind that door with the first shot,” Riley said.

“I saw a fucking g-g-ghost, sir.” Ryan stammered.

Jackson snickered with a wide smile.

“And do you think shooting it was going to do anything? Get up, Ryan.” Riley shook his head. “Jackson, if you will?”

“Gladly.” Jackson shouldered his carbine and pulled the door back with both hands as Riley kept his sidearm trained on whatever was behind the widening door.

“It’s a ghost alright. The Halloween kind, though. A sheet hanging over something,” Riley commented dryly.

“I swear to god, it was moving. And not a goddamn sheet,” Ryan said.

Jackson stepped around the edge of the door and looked over the wide open space inside the barn. “Riles, there could be a hundred places to hide in there. Think we should grab some of the others?”

“We should just burn it down and be done,” Ryan grumbled.

“Stick together, go slow, and watch our corners. If someone wanted to kill us, I think it would have happened already. It’s probably a runner.”

“Wouldn’t have Captain Holt told us we were looking for deserters?” Ryan pointed out.

“I don’t know,” Riley sighed. “Just keep your head on a swivel, Ryan. And try not to shoot all the scary things in the scary barn. Including the two of us.”

Ryan’s face twisted when he realized he was being made fun of. “Yes sir.”

“Now, seriously, take point, go slow. Keep your wits about you.” Riley added.

They slowly stepped into the gloom of the old barn, and the smell was what one would expect in such a place. The smell of time, of old work, and summers come and gone, leaving only the musty shadows of their passing. Light filtered in from above, creating thin shafts of dancing motes slowly shifting on currents only the dust would notice. There was old farm equipment strewn haphazardly along the inside walls, old ox plows and threshers, combing and pulling trellises were stacked against a winnowing machine in another corner, as if forming a shrine to an ancient god of harvest. Among it all was a heavy layer of old hay, with gray wood or black hard pack peeking through the patchwork quilt of matted grass.

The sheet that had put Ryan’s dick in the dirt indeed a fresh bullet hole through the center. Riley pulled it down, and underneath was a bundle of tall sticks tied together into an approximation of human being.

“It’s a scarecrow,” Riley said.

“It did it’s job,” Jackson added.

“Thanks, Jackson,” Riley said sarcastically. “I hit it.”

“Well at least your aim has improved enough for the end of the war to come,” Jackson teased.

Riley shushed them both and pointed up the side stairs, where a shadow was standing still, seemingly looking down at them.

“Another scarecrow?” Jackson asked.

Riley shrugged and moved up the stairs slowly, holding his 1911 at shoulder height. He nudged his gun against the sheet, and grabbed the edge, pulling towards him slowly. It shifted and fell, but unlike the one guarding the barn door, nothing had been holding it up.

“Was it on a wire, Riles?” Jackson said from behind.

“I don’t see one,” Riley swallowed heavily. He backed down the stairs as a sense of dread creeped up his arms to tingle the back of his neck.

“This place doesn’t feel right,” Ryan sniffed.

“Yeah, no shit.” Jackson agreed.

“Jackson, you and I clear this floor first, then we all move up. Ryan, stay right there and keep your rifle trained at the top. Anything that doesn’t come down those stairs with its hands in the air, you put a round in. Got it?”

“Yes sir.”

“You know for a bright sunny day, you would think there would be more light in here,” Jackson commented.

“Yeah. Clear the corners first. You take that side, I take this one,” Riley replied.

Jackson nodded, moving around the broken down hay bales and the first thresher on his side, poking into the darker places with the end of his rifle, his bayonet now attached.

Riley grabbed one of the broken shovel handles near the door, and used it the same way, keeping his 1911 pointed down the length of it. He pushed the sharper end of the broken handle into the darker places between the equipment and the occasional slats of wood that reinforced the animal stalls that ran along the wall. Every stall door was open, with most missing, and not a single animal or even the smell of one lingered. The livestock were probably the first thing to go when the Germans came. It had been years since any animal larger than a field mouse had been in these stalls. His eyes fully adjusted, and he was able to finally get a sense of the space. The barn was old, with generations of changes and adaptations made to fit as they were needed. This had probably started out as a grain barn, but over the years adapted to accommodate all the needs of the farm.

There was a small scream from Jackson’s side, and Riley ran over, his broken shovel still in hand.

“It’s a kid!” Jackson called out. “Hey, kid, its ok. It’s ok, little man, I won’t hurt you.”

Jackson dropped his gun and pulled the kid out towards the center of the open space of the barn floor. The boy was nearly emaciated, his skin tight around his face, his blond hair a memory that floated in a nimbus around his head. Riley noted he couldn’t be older than six or seven years old.

“Do you speak English? Francais? Deutsch?” Riley asked the kid.

“All of them,” the little boy replied. “Are you going to kill me?”

“Of course not, kid,” Jackson replied calmly. “We are the good guys. Americans. The war is over.”

“It’s over?” The kid replied, wide eyed. “Edwin didn’t tell me.”

“Who’s Edwin? Is he here?” Riley asked.

The small boy shook his head lightly, as if the movement pained him. Riley realized he was crying with no tears to shed.

“Edwin comes out at night,” the boy said slowly. “He only plays once the moon is out.”

“Is anyone else in the barn?” Riley tried again.

“It is only me.”

Riley waved at Ryan to lower his rifle, and he holstered his own as he took a knee to look the boy over. “Do you want some water? Chocolate?”

The boy nodded furtively. Riley unhooked his canteen, undoing the clasp and handing it over. “Take a drink. We have chocolate in our truck, if you can come outside.”

The boy took a heavy swallow from the canteen, but shook his head without saying a word.

“Come on,” Riley urged. “You’re safe now. You can come out into the warm sun, have some food with us, then we can take you to the village for a bat and a warm bed.”

“Edwin won’t like that,” the boy whispered. “He protects me since I promised to play.”

“What’s your name?” Jackson asked, looking the boy over for any injuries.

“August.”

“Nice to meet you Augie. May I call you Augie?” Jackson asked calmly, making sure that he didn’t accidentally stab the boy with his bayonet. “My name is Mr. Jackson. This is Mr. Riley, and that gentleman over there by the door is Mr. Ryan.”

“Augie? Who is Edwin?” Riley asked.

“He made my friends. They protect me when he sleeps.”

“You mean the scarecrows? With the sheets?” Riley said.

The boy nodded slowly, then took another drink from the canteen.

“Where is Edwin now? Does he need help?”

“No. No one can help Edwin. He has lived here longer than my family. My grandfather said he watches over the fields for us when we are sleeping. We always left bread and milk out for him.”

“Come on, son. We should get you somewhere safe. There may still be Germans around here,” Jackson said.

“You mean the Germans outside?”

“Not those Germans,” Riley said reassuringly. “But there might be others.”

“No, those were all the Germans. Edwin took care of them.”

“Edwin did that?” Riley said.

August nodded again. “He protects me.”

Jackson looked up at Riley and shrugged.

The boy continued, “Those men showed up, and stayed in my house. I hid in my spots here, and they never found me. They tried to come into the barn that night but Edwin kept them out. He scared them. They all screamed for a while, but Edwin made them stop.”

“Jesus,” Jackson whispered.

“Come on, Augie, lets go get some chocolate,” Riley said.

“Edwin…” the boy started.

“I know, I know. Edwin won’t like it. I will talk nicely to Edwin,” Riley replied calmly. “Ryan, take Augie here to the truck, give him some chocolate please. Maybe some crackers.”

Ryan nodded and took the boy’s hand, leading him calmly into the sun. Jackson picked up his carbine from the hay, and shook his head.

“I wonder how long he has been by himself out here,” Jackson said.

“By the sound of it, never,” Riley replied.

“Who do you think this Edwin character is? Strange name for French-speaking country folk. Edwin is an English name, right? Think it is a deserter from the Allies?”

Riley shook his head. “I have no idea. Not my job either. We are only after Germans, Jackson, and looks like Edwin took care of it.”

“What was the mission from the Captain, Riles? Like the actual mission?”

Riley sighed lightly. “We need to leave bread and condensed milk inside the door, on a barrel, under a napkin.”

“What?”

“It’s the orders. We don’t want what lives in this valley to follow us.”

Jackson looked incredulous. “Riles? Seriously.”

“Keep this between us. Got it?”

Jackson’s eyes were wide. “Of course.”

“You have to promise me!”

“I swear, Riles. What is going on?”

“Holt pulled me aside, he had some suit from London with him. The suit told me that there was something very dangerous in this valley. Something old.”

“Bullshit.”

“Swear to God,” Riley said. “You know I am telling the truth, because I don’t swear on God lightly. We have to leave an offering. An ample one. I have an entire loaf of bread for it.”

“No shit? Like actual bread?” Jackson asked with wide eyes.

“Yeah, its in a lockbox under the front seat. I had to make absolutely sure we did not screw it up. We have to do this just right… or Edwin… will chase the boy.”

“What did the suit tell you?”

“I can’t believe I am saying this, but it is classified.”

“Oh come on. I told you I would keep my mouth shut,” Jackson pressed.

“It’s locally known as a Cauchemar.”

“I know a little French, Riles, and all that means is nightmare,” Jackson raised his eyebrow. “You telling me Edwin ACTUALLY is a ghost?”

“The way the suit explained it to me is that its a Lutin, and a very mean one. A keeper of the land for the people that have lived here for many generations. And he will follow those he considers blood if he is not placated,” Riley swallowed at the memory, as if he was only sharing half of it. “The suit’s name was Dr. Samson, some bigwig that works for parts of the government that no one knows about. And he assured me of what I would find, how I would find it, and that I needed to take his word as the truth. Holt was dead serious too. If I had heard what I heard in any other place at any other time, I would have laughed my ass off all the way to church.”

“What the hell is a Lutin?” Jackson’s eyes were wide. “Is that a werewolf or something?”

“Ah, no, its uh, like a… hobgoblin. They can be playful, like children, but they can be far worse if they mean to be. That Dr. Samson, he warned me. And sure enough, Jackson, those German corpses out there tell me all I need to know.”

“And what’s that?”

“I leave the bribes, under a napkin, and we get the hell out of here before nightfall. That is all I need to know. The doctor assured me that if anyone but us came up here, they would just disappear. He told me exactly what to do to make sure this just got swept under the rug. He said, ‘This is war, Mr. Riley, and do you think that it is only a thing that affects the human race? My job is to clean up the parts that can’t be handled with a shovel or an ordnance team.'”

“I kind of don’t want to believe you,” Jackson admitted.

“He, uh, showed me something else that made me believe him.”

“And what was that?”

“His own Lutin, and it was sitting on his goddamn shoulder,” Riley admitted finally.

“Take a number,” the wrinkled crone grunted from behind the patina counter. “Be with you in a moment.”

Charlie shrugged, pulling his shielding hood down to cut the yellow glare from the overhead lights, and req’d a number from the kiosk panel near the door. The panel was cracked, barely registering his finger press, and his wrist chimed with the assignment.

He flicked his wrist to silence the notification, and took a seat near the window. It had a virtua-panel over the glass, and like the kiosk, it was cracked in places, flickering the image of a idyllic city scape in the rain. Virtual water dripped down over the blurred lights in a city that did not exist, and Charlie imagined what it be like to live in a world with rain.

There was a single other occupant in the lobby, an old man with optical implants, snoring against the wall like he was a human shaped white noise machine. Charlie shook his head, and tilted his head to turn on his newsfeed.

As usual, the future was all bullshit. Just like taking a number in a lobby with no one in it, except the snoring dude who was more like a water feature than living being waiting for the old crone at the desk. Election time was the worst time of year, and the newsfeeds were so heavily saturated with crafted messaging, it felt sticky. If you read it, it would embed itself like a virus, going full on mal-code, and subsuming neurons like Alzheimer’s. Charlie turned it off like he was scratching an errant itch, and focused on his breathing. The new implants were nagging his management subsystem, adopted kids letting the adoptive parent know they were terrible investments.

But he had to have them for his job. Natural lung tissue was far too sensitive to pressure changes, and utilizing a buffering system allowed the substandard gear the company dropped on the market to actually function. He didn’t need it to survive in the mines, but having the implants opened options. But it cost, man. Implants were never cheap, even though they were the standard for most folks. Kids got their network uplinks the first year of school these days, and the recent legislation pushing towards mandatory implants at birth had some real support behind it.

The Earthers did not appreciate it, but the were nothing but tourists really, thinking the edge of the human frontier was an exciting opportunity. A way to start over! Be like our ancestors exploring the wilderness!

Charlie scoffed inwardly. Fucking idiots, each and every one, and he knew, because he used to be one himself, a lifetime ago. Mankind couldn’t afford to be ‘au natural’ here on the edge, it only would lead to an inevitable death. And Charlie felt that humanity should collectively just let them die. Because afterwards, people like him, born survivors, would be sitting at the top of the pile, fully aug’d and ready for whatever the in-system worlds thought they could toss the colonies beyond the belt. His optical interface popped from the edge of his vision, and he noticed the crone behind the desk was staring him down, as if he was a shit stain on the chair.

“Sorry, off in LaLaLand over here,” Charlie apologized as he hustled over.

“When your number is called, you are supposed to come to the window, hun,” the Crone grimaced in some semblance of a pitying smile.

“I know, I know. It’s the election, its in my head,” Charlie groused.

“Join the club,” the Crone commiserated. “I don’t even turn on the feeds any more.”

“Did you vote?”

“No. Never have.”

“Huh.”

“I don’t complain about who is ruining our lives,” the Crone explained further. “The damn politicians all screw it up, just in different ways. So my vote doesn’t matter, Election Day is only good for the food.”

“Fair enough,” Charlie shrugged, dropping his hood down over his shoulders. “You know back on Earth, it used to be called Thanksgiving. Not Election Day.”

“Weird. Who would be thankful for a politician fucking them over? Anyway, what can I help you with, hun?”

“I need a imprint restore.”

“Customer ID?”

Charlie handed over the card that had been haunting him since he arrived back to the realm of the living.

“Wow. This one is old.”

“It’s my mom’s account. She passed a long ways back. My name is on the beneficiary field.”

“How long!? This card number is at least… what? A century old? The imprint date here, it says 2044. Wait, you can’t be over thirty?”

“I was in a coffin for a long haul, when I came out, the jump was wrong. It took a while to get back to the belt,” Charlie said offhand, avoiding the pain of the experience in telling the real story of first contact with a long dead species. She would have died in place hearing a story that long.

“I would say so,” the Crone sniffed. Her bouffant shifted on her head, and Charlie realized it was an artificial hair piece.

“Cancer?”

“Excuse me?” The Crone sniffed, typing furiously into her console.

“Your hair. I am assuming cancer?”

“Just my genes, hun. Mother was a spliced Ionian, her genes were designed for zero hair growth. My dad thought she was beautiful anyway. My brother got the hair, I got the skin,” the Crone paused. “Ah here it is. Look at that. That is impressive.”

“How long will it take?”

“A couple mins to spool up. The age on it means it is the crystal storage, so it will need to be lased back to the nearline matrix. But it’s here. The entire stack.”

“Wait, her entire stack?” Charlie wondered aloud. He was expecting a goodbye letter or a tearful farewell from his mom. Not her entire consciousness imprint.

“Looks like it, hun. You know what, since it is the holidays, I will spin up the entire thing for you. Looks like you need a little good in your life,” the Crone crooned. “It won’t cost you extra.”

“Th-Thanks,” Charlie stammered.

“What do you do now, Mr. Rembrandt?”

“Detective now,” Charlie admitted openly. “I found long haul mining a bit too stressful.”

“I can imagine. You went in, came up for air, and found the universe shoved you into the future. Why are you grabbing this imprint now?”

“Call it being homesick,” Charlie was still asking himself why. He didn’t know the real reason. The card had been sitting on his shelf, the only thing left of his old life, staring at him every day since he had landed his job on Europa. Five years of waking up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and seeing his mother’s name on his shelf. Beckoning him, calling him to remember a family that had passed a hundred years before he had even woken up. The entire contact event had wrought him into something new, something he had never imagined. Touching his old life felt like reaching across an unfathomable distance to something that should not be there to touch.

“You definitely need your memories, hun. It is what makes us who we are,” the Crone said. She handed him a small block, within contained the graphene and crystal memory core that contained all of what he had left behind. “Happy Election Day.”

“Happy Thanksgiving, you mean,” Charlie winked.

“Happy… Thanksgiving.” It sounded foreign on her tongue.

Charlie tapped his fingers against the core, and wandered back to his quarters, wondering if he would grow the balls in the intervening distance to see his mom again.

He didn’t know yet. But remembering Thanksgiving was better than any Election Day. Charlie smiled at the thought. Holidays are not what they used to be, but then again, maybe not all that much has changed after all.