Speaker 1: It's said our town was founded on an unspoken promise.
It's the kind of place that looks wholesome from the outside.
Meet fences, tidy lawns, church bells on Sundays, curfew that
people actually obey. But underneath it all, it's a current,
something old, something everyone feels but doesn't name. That's where
the box comes in. In door Vale, when you turn eighteen,
you get a box on your doorstep at sunrise, always
the same hand carved word, smooth as bone, no latch
or lock inside. Is your role, the word that tells
you who you are. Now it's not symbolic. You don't
get a say. Once the box names you, that's it.
Everyone says it fits that the box or always nose.
My cousin got caretaker. Now she runs the infirmary, even
though she used to faint at the sight of blood.
My friend Leo got stone layer, even though he couldn't
hammer a nail straight, but now he restores gravestones like
an artist. They say the box finds the path you
were meant to take, that it doesn't make mistakes. I
wanted to believe that, but as my eighteenth birthday crept closer,
something in my gut twisted in apprehension, worried that I'd
somehow be the only one it gets wrong, or sent
on a path I would lead my life into misery,
a fear I'm guessing a lot of people have. At
dinner the night before, my parents acted like it was
a graduation. My dad grilled steaks, my mom made that
awful potato salad. She thinks I like they kept smiling
too much. Afterward, I met up with some friends around
the fire pit near the lake. Everyone made predictions, cracked jokes.
They said I'd be a brewer since I always brought
the best drinks, or maybe an archivist because I kept
a dream journal when I was twelve. Then someone I
don't remember who raised their cup and said, just hope
it doesn't say shepherd. Everyone laughed, even the adults who
were passing by smiled as if it were an inside joke. Yeah,
someone else added with a grin, if you get shepherd,
you have to go to the clearing. More laughed a
little forced. I smiled too, but the jokes stuck in
my teeth like a seed I couldn't swallow. We don't
have sheep indoor val No one farms and as far
as I know, there is no clearing, but everyone knew
the joke played along like it had been passed down
with the same as our lullabies and town ordinances, a
tradition missed in my household. That night, lying in bed,
I stared at the ceiling and tried not to think
about it, about the word, about what it would mean
if the box made its first mistake at home. I
brought it up to my parents, but they brushed it off.
The way they saw it, it was a legend at
this point. It was a warning given in case Shepherd
came up, but no one had gotten it in decades,
so it was thought to be a relic of the past,
a job no longer needed in the town. In bed,
I kept thinking about it. I imagined opening the box
to find something normal, manifesting market like my dad, maybe,
or chef like my mom, something safe, something people would
nod and smile at that would let me fade into
the background. At midnight, I heard a soft thud on
the porch. I waited five minutes before opening the front door.
The wind smiled like damp earth. The street was empty
and sitting neatly on the welcome mat with no signs
of a deliveryman. No tracks in the frost. Was the box.
It was hand carved, polished, smooth corners, slightly rounded, like
it had been passed down for generations, exactly like it
had been described, no hinges, lock or markings. I brought
it into my room and placed it on the desk.
Sat there for a while, just staring at it. I
was alone. My parents knew it would be here, but
opening your box as a special and private moment people
knew to leave you in solace. It was nerve wracking.
My hands didn't want to touch it. I thought back
to the fire bit, to the laughter, to the way
everyone had grinned when they said if you get Shepherd,
you have to go to the clearing, like it was
a game with a way to lose. I lifted the lid. Inside,
on soft red velvet was a single folded piece of paper.
I unfolded it. One word, Shepherd. Everything in me went still.
It fell like all the air had been sucked out
of the room, and I could feel my heart hammering
in my chest. I read it again, just to be sure,
same word, same tight, ink, printed, clean, centered. I closed
the lid and hid the box beneath my bed this morning.
I didn't say a word. My parents didn't ask, but
my mom watched me too closely over breakfast, her fork
barely moved, her eyes didn't leave my face. She must
have thought I'd gotten something I hadn't expected, But deep
down it felt so much worse. It was common to
let someone process what they've perceived. It's sometimes a shock
for the fact that it was always right gave parents
a credence not to push. Nothing makes a situation worse
than making someone defensive. I packed my back like a
normal said I was going to school. I didn't. I
cut through the edge of town, where the woods started
creeping back in, past the old feed shed, past the
berry thickets that no one picked from. People of this
town never venture far. Hiking trails only circle near the
edge of town. There's water close to fish. It drilled
into everyone not to go far into the thickets, a
warning that worked here. Part of me felt like it
was delusional to finances out there, But nothing I saw
while raised in this town matched the idea of a clearing,
so it had to be out there. Eventually, the GPS
in my phone froze, then shut off. Entirely. After hours
of searching at the end of a forgotten trail, I
found it, the place I was never meant to see.
The trees opened into a clearing. Animal bones littered the
grass in tangled spirals. I don't know what I expected
to find in the clearing. What I didn't expect was
a man. He stepped out from behind one of them
the crooked trees, slow and deliberate, like someone long unused
at being seen. His skin was dry and colorless, eyes
yellow to the edges, thin, trembling hands held nothing, but
still twitched like they were used to carrying weight. He
looked surprised to see me. You lost, he grumbled, No,
I don't think so, I stumbled back. This was true.
Though I didn't know what I was looking for, I
knew I was looking for something, and I could only
guess that I'd found it. He paused at this, weighing
what I'd meant, maybe even doing some threat assessment. He
looked like he hadn't been around anyone in years. I
could have stood there, trying to ramble in explanation, but
instead I reached slowly into my pocket and pulled out
my note. Once he saw what was neatly written in
the center. He sighed and sat down on a stump,
like standing took too much out of him. You weren't
supposed to be chosen, he said, not yet. I asked
him who he was. He gave me a look like
I should have known. I'm the shepherd, he said, or was,
or still am. Technically that didn't make sense. I never
seen him before in my life, he explained. He has
the role. It's not like any ordinary job in the town.
Only one can have it. Most people assumed he left
town after his box arrived, but he didn't leave. He'd
been hiding, skirting the boundaries. He looked at me with
a kind of grim curiosity. If you your box and
I'm still breathing, he didn't finish the thought, But I
got it. Whatever force governs the boxes, whatever makes them
accurate infallible, it shouldn't have chosen me, not until he
was dead, and yet it had. He didn't speak much
after that, just led me through a twisting animal path
behind the clearing, deeper into the woods than I thought
they went. The trees here were old and gnawed like fists.
The sky disappeared above us. Everything smelled like copper, and
wet ash. We reached what looked like a collapsed shack
tucked into a hollow. This disgusting place is where he lived.
I tried to imagine calling that place home, but the
idea sickened me. Inside, buried beneath the tarp and stacks
of mold, darkened crates, was a journal. He set it
on a stone, opened it to the first page. The
pages were warped, some torn, some stuck together. The cover
was stained with something reddish brown and long dried. I
didn't ask what it was. Maps, names, drawings, instructions, a
lineage of entries, different handwriting, dates, going back generations. This
is the Shepherd's record, he said, your job now. He
flipped to a marked section, a diagram of the town perimeter,
covered in strange symbols and notations. Beneath it, a short,
tight sentence scrawled in angry strokes, maintained the boundary. I
asked him what that meant. He didn't answer directly. Instead,
he turned the page showed me a list dozens of entries.
It detailed a busy schedule. Every day there was an entry,
sometimes two or three. The details were cryptic, only listing
an amount of tasks completed nothing on what happened, but
pressing inferensas proved fruitless. All that was stressed was the
importance of the job. Was this it living alone and
working every day, some thankless job in the middle of nowhere.
I would have preferred to be a janitor. At least
then I'd be able to see my friends have a
social life. But if I ignored the role, the boundary
would apparently fail. Whatever that meant. If I left, the
would somehow suffer, and if he died, if anything happened
to him, it would fall to me. No backup or replacement,
a life of solitude, just me. He gave me some
parting words for me to figure out. If you see one,
come to me. I left dissatisfied with what I was hearing.
My curiosity turned sour, making me want to see if
I could somehow change my role. That night, I woke
to a sound like leaves being raked across the porch.
I got up and looked outside. There was something standing
in the yard. My fingers stiffened against the sill. My
tired eyes slowly adjusted, my mind desperate to me make
the shape into a tree or a shadow, but it
remained as It was upright, pale, with a huge grin.
It stood there as still as a statue, watching, waiting.
The longer I stared, the more I became aware of
the fact that I was standing directly in front of
a little window. If it hadn't noticed me yet, I
was giving it every chance. I backed away from the window, slowly,
trying not to make the floorboard speak. When I finally
reached the bed, I eased myself under the covers and
stayed perfectly still, my heart thooding so loud it felt audible.
I lay there, staring at the ceiling, listening for any
shift outside. By dawn, it was on no signs as
something was rummaging in the yard. I ran back to
the clearing. The old shepherd was already awake, waiting at
the fire pit like he knew i'd come. I think
I saw one, I said. He nodded slowly, then grabbed
a canvas bundle from behind a tree. Inside rusted tools
something like a branding iron and a long iron steak
carved with cymbals I couldn't decipher. He seemed to be
able to track it like a bloodhound. We found the
things skulking near the edge of the woods. It was
still in the shape of someone almost human, same size,
same build, but its knees bent wrong, and its eyes
were all pupil, no white. It smiled when it saw me,
spoke in the voice of my childhood best friend, a
girl who moved away years ago. Hey, it said, wanna play,
she added with a smile. Her cadence was just like
how she sounded many years ago, My blood friend called.
The old Shepherd didn't hesitate. He charged, drove the steak
straight through its gut. Its shrieked, curled backward like a
snapping twig, but didn't die. I don't want to go
home yet, it whined, twisting its neck toward me, Please
just a bit longer. It laughed as the old Shepherd
pinned it to the ground, an elation that didn't match
what his body was going through. Despite what he was saying,
its actions didn't match. Its hands clasped over the shepherd's
pulling the steak further in like it was well coming death,
thrashing death rows that looked painfully stronger than a hum
in that size. It took two four minutes to stop moving,
catching the shepherd a few times, causing a few nicks
and bruises. We burned it. The smoke smelled like copper
and roses, but even that acted strangely. Instead of billows
and clouds pushed around by the wind, it rose like
a thin pillar into the sky until it dissipated. I
was done pretending this was normal, I demanded answers. Okay,
what the hell is going on? I yelled. The sheep
usually move as a flock, but sometimes a lamb gets astray.
He retorted, like that somehow answered my question. Tears whirled
in my eyes, overwhelm by taking in so much. No
enough with being cryptic. This is insane. Why did she
sound like my old friend? Am I connected to this?
I jobbed? This seemed to catch his attention. He turned
to me. You knew her, Yeah, we grew up together,
played every other day until she moved away. I answered,
moved away? Classic, he muttered, Just explain, I demanded, She's dead,
died a while ago. By the sounds of it, I
guess you were too young for your parents to tell
you straight. But she didn't move on, he replied bluntly.
I was stunned, soaking in what he said. The body
was a shambling husk but it held what remained of
my old best friend, something which we excited into smoke
that moved on into some unknown after life. If what
he was saying was to be believed. I just stared
at the embers, at the reality of the situation. I
didn't sleep after the whole ordeal I'd witnessed, not even
for a minute. Every time I closed my eyes, I
saw the things. I had no way to process, nothing
earthly I could relate it to so I could comprehend
the gravity of what was going on. I kept telling
myself it didn't make sense that this was insanity creeping
in my mind snapping after opening the box, But deep
down I knew better. I remembered the creature's voice, the
way it smiled, like it had teeth behind its teeth. Still,
I was resting, I'm not doing this, so I decided
to leave no packed bags, just a coat, my ID
and a lie to my mom about heading to the library.
I walked to the gas station on the highway where
the delivery truck stopped, found a guy loading his flatbed.
Asked for a ride to the next town. He barely
looked at me, just said sure, hop in. We drove
in silence. Ten minutes out of town, the tree started
the thin and I saw the county line sign her head.
I actually smiled. I was going to make it out.
Then the driver made a weird noise, a kind of sharp,
choking hiccop. He leaned forward, fingers twitching, and the wheel hey.
He made a gurgling sound and slump sideways, foot pressing
the gas hard. We veered onto the gravel, then off
the shoulder completely. The truck slammed into a ditch, flinging
me into the dash. I blacked out. I woke up
in the town clinic, same floral wallpaper, same scent of
antiseptic and old paper, a place I'd been to a
few times as a child. My head throbbed, my shoulder
was bandaged. A nurse leaned over me, pressing a cold
cloth to my cheek. You're lucky, she said, gently, only
a mild concussion. I tried to sit up. She placed
a hand on my arm to keep me still. You
don't get to leave, she whispered, You've already been written in.
And just like that, I knew that whatever path I
was forced onto, I was locked in. After the crash,
and waking up in the clinic. I was sent home
the same evening, no follow ups. No one from town
asked if I was okay, only if I was ready,
whatever that meant. I tried to pretend everything was fine,
that I could still choose a normal life. But that
night I heard something outside. A knock, slow, deliberate, repeating
three times, then silence. I peeked through the curtain and froze.
No one was on the porch or the street, but
just at the tree line, black against the sky, a
figure was waving. The next day, he came limping up
my driveway, the old shepherd, gaunt and twitching, cuts along
his face, shirt torn, like had gone through thorns or worse.
You need to listen, he said. His voice was different, now,
no longer cryptic, no longer in control. He looked scared.
I need your help. I found another one wondering the
tree line. Figured it'll be another easy catch, but it
turned on me. It attacked. They've never done that before,
I demanded he explain all of it. I was sick
of being left in the dark for so long. He
wiped blood from his cheek and slumped down on my
porch step. This job isn't easy, but if you were chosen.
I guess I have to accept you can handle it,
he resigned. Around the world, death is commonplace. People die,
move on and that's it. But here it's a bit thin.
The veil beyond is in always one way. Sometimes things
slip back. I nodded, curious to what he meant. They
wonder aimlessly, clinging on to relics of their past life,
old routines, nostalgic areas. But they can't stay here, they
can't find peace. So we help them move on, shepherd
them to where they need to be. I was breathless
at this. Despite the absurdity of what he was saying,
it kind of made sense. It's not easy. Sometimes you
froze up the other day, recognize de friend thou will
happen a lot. People you love, people you grew up with,
will pass, and sometimes they'll linger behind. They will recognize
you and greet you like an old friend. But the
routine never changes. No matter how hard it is, you
have to do what's necessary. This may my heart sink.
A stranger I could maybe deal with, but some one
I know, a friend or a family member, would tear
me apart. It made sense why he chose to live alone.
Fewer connections meant fewer attachments able to despatch them with
more ease. Despite what they say, they don't fight back. Ever.
You saw with a husk. Its mind wanted to wonder,
but his body knew it had to move on. All
we do is guide them there. But I started, not
knowing how to ask, looking at his banged up body. Yeah,
I know, but I wasn't lying. They don't attack. I
think they just, for whatever reason, rejected me. He looked
at me directly, with sincerity in his eyes. I need
you to finish my task. When I found near the
tree line. That's all just one time and I'll take
back over. I stared at him, weighing what he asked.
It still felt too much for me, but one off
I could maybe do, And seeing how banged up he was,
knowing that he'd try again if I didn't, I felt
like I had no choice but to say yes. I
set off for the woods. Before I left, the old
shepherd pressed two objects into my hands, A short wooden steak,
scorched black and edged with sigels I couldn't read, and
a sealed satchel tied shot with waxed twine. He held
eye contact too long before letting go. Stay on the
marked path. He said, don't speak first, don't run, and
don't ever lie to it. He didn't elaborate, just turned
and left. I was left alone, facing the tree line,
the sky behind me turning red. I stepped deep into
the forest, further than where the townsfolk walked. The trees
were close together, crooked. The air changed fast, damper smelled
like turned soil and copper. As I walked, I started
noticing carvings, jagged spirals, and almond shapes like stretched eyes.
Some had shallow notches across them like lashes. Finally I
reached a hollow, a sunken depression in the earth, maybe
thirty feet wide, with a stone basin at its center.
Next To it was an emaciated looking figure, a husk
of a person, slapping his hand on the stone. When
I got closer, I could hear him saying something, last
two balls of pairs, last two bowls. He was saying
it like he was running a market stall. There was
about to close when I remembered Martin, who passed away
a number of years ago. The old man was part
of my childhood. He used to give free fruit to
kids to quote, make them grow up big and strong.
I approached slowly, trying not to make any sudden movements,
but he carried on like it was still doing business.
When his hollow sockets locked onto me, recognition spread across
his face. Ah, dear boy, did you want an apple?
They're fresh, he beamed, just like he used to when
he saw me as a kid. My eyes welled as
I slipped out the steak, heart beating in the highest gear.
My breathing picked up as I stopped in front of him,
Unsure if I should go through with a grim task
I was given. I stared at the stake, willing it
to move on its own. The idea of driving it
into some something that appeared living was beyond what I
felt capable of, let alone the familiarity of them. The
seconds droned on in two minutes as he continued slapping
the rock like his old market stand. I can't do it,
I muttered to myself, readying to leave. It wasn't causing trouble.
What was the harm in leaving it there until the
shepherd got better, I thought to myself. But before I
could leave, the thing snuck up on me. Its hands
clasped over mine hard, gripping the steak I still held
pointed forward. Or would you prefer a banigna instead? He muttered,
but his voice didn't match his actions. He stepped towards
me while pulling my arms in, driving the stake partly
into his chest. Shock froze me, but as soon as
the adrenaline pumpt I followed through, pushing forward as hard
as I could. The husk fell backward, pulling me with it,
and I straddled it, keeping the stake's position true until
I could drive it deeper. One last time, it thrust
around before finally falling still. I rolled off it, breathing
so hard I thought I would pass out, but compose
myself before getting back up. I slowly unrouted the satchel
to see what was inside and recognized the contents. It
was what the shepherd used to start the fire to
honor mister Martin. I set it on the stone he
seemed to perceive as his market stall and lit it.
It didn't take long to roar to life, and with
some effort, heaved the husk on to it. Watching the
smoke pillar seep into the sky, I paused for a
moment to silently remember mister Martin before cleaning up and
heading back home. I made my way back to town under
a sky that felt different, lower somehow, even the stars
looked like they were watching me. People passed me on
the street, but something else caught my attention. The rooftops,
the shadows between buildings, the gaps between street lights. In
those spaces, I saw them figures, tall, narrow things just watching.
Their eyes didn't glow, but I saw them anyway, like
impressions burned into my vision. I didn't know what was happening.
I wasn't ready for this. Why were there so many?
I needed answer? So I went to the old shepherd's house.
I knocked nothing. I waited and still nothing. But I
couldn't walk away. My skin itched like something wanted me
to understand. So I opened the door. The house was dim,
smelled of dust and cedar. I called out, but there
was no reply. I found him in the back room,
slumped in a worn armchair, peaceful pale. A single candle
burned low beside him, almost out, he was gone. I
don't know how long I stood there. I don't know
what I said, or if I said anything at all.
My stomach was hollow, not sad, just stripped, worried that
all the answers die with him. But as I looked
around the markings and the walls, the dozens of stakes
lying neatly by the door, and I saw the scattered journals,
flipped through some, and everything was in there what he
told me, and more, the scale of the task, the
targets that aim for, and the eyes seeing all those
who remain. And it clicked. He had seen the figures too,
saw them while I was naively worrying about the one
that I had seen. He knew the scope of the job.
That's why he didn't take me in, not wanting to
burden me with this monumental task. And now he was gone,
I walked home without trying to hide any more. I
met the town's eyes when they glanced up. I saw
the way the shadows shifted behind their curtains. I heard
the slow rhythm of something breathing beneath the dirt. And
for the sake of this man who had thanklessly done
this job for decades, working so long that this role
was only a rumor in my generation, I decided then
that I would be the new shepherd for this town,