Speaker 1: The West was one, they say, with grit, gunpowder and
Speaker 1: the iron wheel of pioneers. But the land was older
Speaker 1: than any nation, and the silence of the prairies was
Speaker 1: not always empty. In the vast sun scorched places between
Speaker 1: boomtowns and lonely outposts, other forces were at play. Things
Speaker 1: that slumbered beneath the salt plats stared from the coal
Speaker 1: spaces between the stars, were bled from rocks that fell
Speaker 1: from stranger skies. These are the tales the official histories
Speaker 1: forgot to write. There are the whispers from the west
Speaker 1: that was not just wild but weird. Here the greatest
Speaker 1: threat is the bullet in the back, but a truth
Speaker 1: that could unmake a man's mind. The sun was a hammer,
Speaker 1: and the Arizona bad Lands with the anvil silas gripped
Speaker 1: the reins of his dun mare, the leather hot and
Speaker 1: slick with sweat. For three days he had been on
Speaker 1: the trail of Kyote Jim, a two bit outlaw with
Speaker 1: a five hundred dollars price on his head, enough for
Speaker 1: months of whiskey and warm beds. The trail was easy
Speaker 1: to follow. Jim was careless, leaving a wake of discarded tins,
Speaker 1: and spoke to wildlife. But now the trail was leading somewhere.
Speaker 1: Silas didn't like. The land itself was growing quiet. The
Speaker 1: buzz of chiricadas had traded in the air, once thick
Speaker 1: with the scent of dust and chris oat, now held
Speaker 1: a sterile, metallic tang, like the air after a lightning strike.
Speaker 1: The rocks, too had begun to take on a peculiar sheen,
Speaker 1: a faint, sickly luster that wasn't a reflection of the sun.
Speaker 1: Silas pulled his mare to a halt, drawing a canteen.
Speaker 1: The water was hide enough to brew coffee with. He
Speaker 1: scanned the horizon. The landscape was a jumble of scorched
Speaker 1: maces and cracked earth. But ahead, nestled in a shallow basin,
Speaker 1: something was wrong. It was a patch of wrongness in
Speaker 1: a world of harsh rights, a faint, shimmering haze that
Speaker 1: wasn't from the heat. He urged the mare forward, his
Speaker 1: hand resting on the butt of his colt. The feeling
Speaker 1: of unease solidified into a cold knot in his gut.
Speaker 1: He found Coyote Jim's horse first. It was dead, its
Speaker 1: high drawn tight over its skeleton, its eyes wide and white.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't Thursta had killed it. The ground around
Speaker 1: the carcass was covered in a fine, gray, brittle dust,
Speaker 1: as if every drop of moisture had been violently leashed
Speaker 1: from the soil, and the beast itself desiccated. The horse
Speaker 1: looked like a forgotten relic, ancient and fragile. There were
Speaker 1: no buzzards. One hundred yards further he found the source
Speaker 1: of the strangeness. It was a crater, maybe thirty feet across,
Speaker 1: and in its center lay a rock, But it was
Speaker 1: like no rock Stiles had ever seen. It was a
Speaker 1: misshapen lump of something that seemed to drink the sunlight,
Speaker 1: and from it something bled. It was a color. He
Speaker 1: had no name for it. It was not purple, nor
Speaker 1: violet or crimson, but it was a living, shifting hue
Speaker 1: that his mind recoiled from, a visual scream that boats
Speaker 1: with a soft internal light, seeping into the crater floor
Speaker 1: and staining the earth around it. This was the source
Speaker 1: of the haze, the metallic smell, profound and unholy silence.
Speaker 1: The landscape within the basin was a gallery of cars.
Speaker 1: The cacti were no longer plants, but fleshy tuberous things
Speaker 1: that twisted into agonizing shapes, their needles replaced with what
Speaker 1: looked like fine, glassy hairs. They seemed to writhe in
Speaker 1: a slow, constant torment. A lizard scuttled passed, its scales
Speaker 1: replaced by crystalline gross that caught the alien light and
Speaker 1: fractured it into a dozen more impossible shades. Ain't it
Speaker 1: a marble? The voice was a dry rasp, like stones
Speaker 1: grinding together. Silas spun his colt cleared the holster in
Speaker 1: a single fluid motion. An old man set on a
Speaker 1: rock near the crater's edge, daunt weathered like a desert mummy.
Speaker 1: He was dressed in the tattered rags of a prospector.
Speaker 1: His eyes, however, were the worst part. They glowed with
Speaker 1: a faint, reflected sheen of the color from the crater.
Speaker 1: Names Jedediah Kane, the old man said, not flinching from
Speaker 1: the pis him, and that there, that's my claim. I'm
Speaker 1: looking for a man, Silas said, his voice tight. It
Speaker 1: was by cowdy. Jem seen him. Jededdiah smiled, the ghastly
Speaker 1: cracking of his sun split lips. Oh I seen him?
Speaker 1: He came blundering in here, thirsty and shouting. He didn't
Speaker 1: appreciate the gift. He gestured with a skeletal hand towards
Speaker 1: the crater. He tried to chip a piece off the starstone,
Speaker 1: thought it was some kind of jewel. The frostbster chuckled
Speaker 1: a dry, rattling sound. The stone just shared a piece
Speaker 1: of itself with him. He's part of the garden now,
Speaker 1: bertilizing the new world. He pointed to a patch of
Speaker 1: ground near the meteorite where the color was particularly vibrant
Speaker 1: and the soil seemed to churn with a slow, thick motion.
Speaker 1: There was a lump under the soil that might have
Speaker 1: been a boot silas felt a cold dread that had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the heat. You're insane, old man, insane.
Speaker 1: Jededdiah's voice rose, taking out on a fanatical fervor. I
Speaker 1: was blind, and now I see. I came here seeking gold,
Speaker 1: the pool's metal, and I found the blood of creation.
Speaker 1: It speaks to me. You see, shows me things whirls
Speaker 1: for the sky is this color? With the mountains walk
Speaker 1: and the rivers singing in geometric patterns. He stood up,
Speaker 1: his movements jerky and unnatural. He was unnervingly tall as
Speaker 1: if the color had stretched him. It's a gift, a
Speaker 1: new genesis for a world that's run dry. The color
Speaker 1: will drink the brown in the gray and make everything
Speaker 1: new again, everything beautiful. Silas began to back away slowly.
Speaker 1: The air was thick, hard to breathe. He could feel
Speaker 1: the color on his skin, a tingling sensation, like an
Speaker 1: army of ants. In the corner of his eye, the
Speaker 1: landscape seemed to shift and bend. The horizon buckled. You
Speaker 1: can't leave, Jedediah whispered, his voice suddenly in Silace's ear,
Speaker 1: though he was still ten feet away. The sound seemed
Speaker 1: to crawl directly into his skull. You've seen it. You
Speaker 1: have to be a part of it. You have to
Speaker 1: drink deep and let it wash you clean. Silas didn't think.
Speaker 1: He fired the colt bucked in his hand, the explosion
Speaker 1: deafening in the oppressive silence. The shot struck Jedidiah in
Speaker 1: the chest, thrown him back a step. A dark stain
Speaker 1: appeared on his shirt, but it wasn't red. It was
Speaker 1: a deeper, more intense shade of the alien color. The
Speaker 1: old man looked down at the wound with detached curiosity.
Speaker 1: Waste the lead. Son. There's no blood left in me,
Speaker 1: just the light. He lunged. He was impossibly fast, his
Speaker 1: hands hard as petrified wood, clamped onto Silas's gun arm.
Speaker 1: The bounty hunter was strong, but Jedediah's strength was not
Speaker 1: a musclin bone. It was a rigid, unyielding force. The
Speaker 1: very ground seemed to pulse, and a nearby cactus screamed
Speaker 1: a high, thin sound like tearing silk. Silas brought his
Speaker 1: other fist around, smashing it into the prospector face. It
Speaker 1: was like punching the stone wall. He felt bones in
Speaker 1: his hand cracked. Jedediah's head snapped back, but his grip
Speaker 1: didn't loosen. The color and his eyes blared. Desperate, Silas
Speaker 1: kicked out, looking his boat behind Jedediah's leg and throwing
Speaker 1: all his weight forward, they tumbled to the ground, rolling
Speaker 1: towards the edge of the crater. Silas could feel the
Speaker 1: heat from the meteorite, the palpable psychic pressure that made
Speaker 1: his teeth ache and his thoughts spray. He saw flashes
Speaker 1: of sprawling, non earthly cities under a black starpak sun.
Speaker 1: He broke free, scrambling away on his hands and knees.
Speaker 1: Jedediah got to his feet, laughing that dry, horrible laugh.
Speaker 1: He wasn't looking at Silas anymore. He was looking at
Speaker 1: the starstone, his arms outstretched as if to a lover.
Speaker 1: It's time he croaked. The harvest begins. He stumbled toward
Speaker 1: the meteorite, his wound leaking the impossible color under the
Speaker 1: thirsty ground. As he reached the edge of the stone,
Speaker 1: he laid a hand upon its surface. The effect was
Speaker 1: instantaneous and absolute. The color flared, a silent detonation of
Speaker 1: light that bleached the sky. Jedediah Cane screamed, but his
Speaker 1: scream was not of pain. It was a sound of
Speaker 1: ecstatic release. His body dissolved not into dust or ash,
Speaker 1: but into pure color. He became a liquid stream of
Speaker 1: the alien hue, flowing into the meteorite, which pulsed once,
Speaker 1: a deep, resonant thrum that Silas felt in his marrow.
Speaker 1: The ground shuddered. The color surged out from the crater,
Speaker 1: no longer seeping but flooding. The gray dust around Cowdy
Speaker 1: Jim's horse ignited into a carpet of shimmering alien moss.
Speaker 1: The screaming cactie thrashed and writhed. Silas ran. He didn't
Speaker 1: look back. He scrambled over the basin's edge, his lungs burning.
Speaker 1: The horrifying images from the stone burned into his mind.
Speaker 1: He found his mare, her eyes rolling in terror, and
Speaker 1: huled himself into the saddle. He rode east as hard
Speaker 1: as he could, away from the setting sun and the
Speaker 1: spreading stain of wrongness that was consuming the bad lands
Speaker 1: behind him. He rode for two days without stopping much,
Speaker 1: a man possessed. When he finally stumbled into the dusty
Speaker 1: outpost of Redemption, he was hollowed out, his eyes wild.
Speaker 1: He tried to tell the sheriff, a fat man with
Speaker 1: a sweat stained collar, just what he had seen. It
Speaker 1: was a color, Silas stammered, his voice hoarse, a color
Speaker 1: from somewhere else. It killed him. It's growing. The sheriff
Speaker 1: just stared at him, then told him to get some
Speaker 1: sleep and lay off the mescal. Silas gave up. He
Speaker 1: never filed the claim for a cowdy Jim's bounty. He couldn't.
Speaker 1: He left town that evening, riding without destination. As the
Speaker 1: moon rose, he looked down at his own hands on
Speaker 1: the reins under the nail of his forefinger, almost too
Speaker 1: small to see, was a tiny, persistent speck, a speck
Speaker 1: of color, A speck of a color he had no
Speaker 1: name for a color that wouldn't wash off. And he knew,
Speaker 1: with a certainty that chilled him to his very soul,
Speaker 1: that he wasn't running from the color. He was just
Speaker 1: carrying its seed to fallow ground. The dynamized roar was
Speaker 1: the only higher power Cormick respected. It was a god
Speaker 1: progress of shattered rock and brute force, and had paid
Speaker 1: his wages. He stood on a precarious ledge, the wind
Speaker 1: whipping dust into his beard and washed a plume of
Speaker 1: smoke and de bury billow from the mountain side. Below him,
Speaker 1: an army of labors, desperate men from every corner of
Speaker 1: the earth, cheered another few yards of the whisper's throat
Speaker 1: had been calmed. Their employer, the man with a Vision,
Speaker 1: stood nearby, standing at the raw wound in the mountain
Speaker 1: with eyes that burned with a feverish light. Jefferson Hale
Speaker 1: was a railroad tycoon of singular terrifying ambition. While other
Speaker 1: men laid track across flat plains, Hale decided to drive
Speaker 1: his trans continental line straight through the jagged heart of
Speaker 1: the Rockies, through a past the local Ute tribe shunned.
Speaker 1: They said it was a place where the world was thin,
Speaker 1: where the wind carried voices that weren't the wind's own.
Speaker 1: Hale called it a shortcut. Magnificent Cormick. Hale boomed over
Speaker 1: the wind, his voice dripping with self congratulation. Every blast
Speaker 1: is a hammer blow against the ignorance of geography. We
Speaker 1: are not merely laying track, We're imposing the will of
Speaker 1: mankind upon this savage landscape. Cormick just grunted and spat
Speaker 1: a stream of tobacco juice. He was the foreman. His
Speaker 1: job wasn't to believe in manifest destiny. It was to
Speaker 1: manage the dynamite the men and the mounting list of problems.
Speaker 1: And the problems were getting strange. It had started with
Speaker 1: the disappearances. Men vanished, Not just drifters who took their
Speaker 1: pay and ran, but Venturan workers who disappeared between shifts,
Speaker 1: leaving their tools, their meager possessions, and sometimes a half
Speaker 1: eaten meal behind. There was no sign of struggle, no
Speaker 1: tracks leading away from the camp. They were simply gone.
Speaker 1: Then came the tools they left behind. A pick axe
Speaker 1: was found with his head bent into a perfect fluid spiral,
Speaker 1: the iron looking more like pull tappy than ford steel.
Speaker 1: A sledgehammer was discovered twisted into a shape that seemed
Speaker 1: to fold in on itself, a nod of metal that
Speaker 1: hurt the eyes to look at. Cormick held it in
Speaker 1: his hands, feeling a faint vibration from the object, a
Speaker 1: hum that resonated deep in his bones. He had thrown
Speaker 1: it into their crevass, and his heart pounding with a
Speaker 1: nameless dread. The worst part, however, was the sound at night,
Speaker 1: when the generators fell silent and the camp was lit
Speaker 1: by flickering fires, it'd begin a low, rhythmic chanting that
Speaker 1: seemed to emanate from the freshly blasted tunnels. It wasn't
Speaker 1: a human sound. It was metallic and dissonant, a sequence
Speaker 1: of clicks, scrapes, and grinding tones that fought a complex,
Speaker 1: unnatural pattern. It made the men's teeth ache and their
Speaker 1: tempers fray. Fights broke out over nothing. Men woke up
Speaker 1: screaming from nightmares of shrinking metal and impossible sharp angles.
Speaker 1: It's the mountain. A grizzled irishman named O'Malley had whispered
Speaker 1: to Kormick, his eyes wide with tear. It's singing, sir,
Speaker 1: and I don't like the tune. O'Malley was gone. The
Speaker 1: next morning, his bedroll was still warm. Cormick brought these
Speaker 1: concerns to Hale, presenting a crowbar that had been bent
Speaker 1: into the shape of a three dimensional figure eight. This
Speaker 1: ain't natural. Hail men are spoke, they're vanishing, and that
Speaker 1: noise from the tunnels. He snatched the crowbar, his eyes
Speaker 1: gleaming sabotage. This is the Union Pacific trying to slow
Speaker 1: us down. They hire thugs to scare men, to break
Speaker 1: our equipment. He dismissed the channing as wind in the rocks,
Speaker 1: amplified by superstition. He would not be delayed. The schedule
Speaker 1: was everything. He doubled the wages for the blasting crews
Speaker 1: and ordered them to work around the clock. A week later,
Speaker 1: a ute elder appeared at the edge of the camp.
Speaker 1: He was ancient, his face a road map of wrinkles,
Speaker 1: and he leaned heavily on a staff. He spoke to
Speaker 1: Hale in broken English, his voice rasping with urgency. You
Speaker 1: cut the stone. The old man said, pointing a trembling
Speaker 1: finger at the tunnel. But you do not see the veins.
Speaker 1: You cut the skin between the worlds. He warned them
Speaker 1: of a being that did not walk or fly, but
Speaker 1: traveled on the straight line. He said they were not
Speaker 1: building a road, but calling its name with iron and fire.
Speaker 1: Hale had laughed a harsh, ugly sound. He called the
Speaker 1: elder and drunken savage, and had his personal gards run
Speaker 1: him off, firing their pistols into the air. The old
Speaker 1: man had simply turned and walked away. His shoulders slumped,
Speaker 1: not in defeet, but in sorrow. The work continued. The
Speaker 1: tunnel grew deeper, the chanting grew louder, more insistent, but
Speaker 1: it was no longer just at night. The men could
Speaker 1: hear it during the day, a subliminal hum beneath the
Speaker 1: clang of hammers and the shouts of the foreman. They
Speaker 1: were carving a channel, and something was resonating with their work.
Speaker 1: The breaking point came when they were set to blasted
Speaker 1: a final section of rock connecting the two main tunnels.
Speaker 1: The men refused. The entire Chinese crew laid down their
Speaker 1: tools in silent protests. The Irish were drunk and muteness.
Speaker 1: Hale was incandescent with rage. Cowards, luddites. I will do
Speaker 1: it myself, hebellowed, grabbing a bundle of dynamite sticks. I
Speaker 1: will complete this passage of my own hands, and dragged
Speaker 1: this continent, kicking and screaming into the modern age. Hale, don't,
Speaker 1: Kormick shouted, grabbing his arm. A sudden, terrible understanding had
Speaker 1: dawned on him. He'd seen the strange metallic veins in
Speaker 1: the rock, how they seemed to converge on this exact point.
Speaker 1: He'd seen the drawings in Hale's office, the long, unbroken
Speaker 1: line of the track stretching across the map, the straight line.
Speaker 1: They hadn't just been digging randomly. They'd been following a
Speaker 1: path that was already there, a path of least resistance.
Speaker 1: They were completing a circuit. Hale shoved him away, his
Speaker 1: mask of face of Zeltry. Get out of my way, Cormick.
Speaker 1: History is made by men of action, not doubt. He
Speaker 1: stalked into the tunnel, laid the charges himself, and lit
Speaker 1: the long fuse. He strode back out, his chest puffed
Speaker 1: with pride, as the workers scrambled for cover, The blast
Speaker 1: was enormous. The mountain shuddered for a long, breathless moment.
Speaker 1: There was only the ring in there and the patter
Speaker 1: of falling rock. The silence that followed was absolute, profound.
Speaker 1: The channing had stopped. A collective sigh of relief went
Speaker 1: through the camp. Maybe it was over. Then a new
Speaker 1: sound began. It wasn't the chanting. It was a low,
Speaker 1: steady hum, a clean industrial thrum that came from the
Speaker 1: darkness of the now completed tunnel. A cold geometric light
Speaker 1: began to pulst within, casting sharp edged shadows that seemed
Speaker 1: to move their own volition. The men stumbled back. This
Speaker 1: was not the warm, flickering light of a lantern or
Speaker 1: a locomotive's headlamp. This was a dead light, cold and precise.
Speaker 1: Something began to emerge from the tunnel mouth, moving along
Speaker 1: the newly laid tracks. It was not a train. It
Speaker 1: was a being, if such a word could apply. It
Speaker 1: was a conglomeration of impossible geometry, a moving sculpture of
Speaker 1: grinding metal plates, razor sharp angles, and shimmering crystaline structures.
Speaker 1: It had no front or back, no driver, no engine.
Speaker 1: It simply was, and it moved with a terrible purpose.
Speaker 1: The air around it warped, and the sound it made
Speaker 1: was a distant chanting from the tunnels, now clarified into
Speaker 1: a deafening, soul scraping shriek. It moved down the track,
Speaker 1: a physical manifestation of a hostile the Orum. The men
Speaker 1: screamed and fled, scattering into the wilderness. Only Jefferson Hale
Speaker 1: stood his ground, his face a mixture of ultimate terror
Speaker 1: and ecstatic triumph. My god, he whispered, his voice filled
Speaker 1: with a horrifying awe. It's beautiful manifest destiny. The entity
Speaker 1: passed over, and Hil didn't scream. He wasn't torn apart
Speaker 1: or crushed. He was simply erased. For a second, his
Speaker 1: form seemed to flatten, to lose its depth, and then
Speaker 1: he was gone, avoid in reality a patch of air
Speaker 1: that the ice slid off. The entity had not killed him,
Speaker 1: It had corrected him, removed him from its equation. Cormick ran.
Speaker 1: He ran until his lungs burned and his legs gave out.
Speaker 1: The shrieking hymn of the thing on the tracks chasing him.
Speaker 1: He found a handful of other survivors huddled in a
Speaker 1: cave their faces blank was shot from the valley below.
Speaker 1: They could hear the sound. The entity had cleared the
Speaker 1: pass and was now moving out onto the great Plains,
Speaker 1: following the endless iron road they had so painstakingly built
Speaker 1: for it. Cormick never went back to civilization. He became
Speaker 1: a ghost of the mountains, a wild eyed man who
Speaker 1: would occasionally appeared isolated homesteads raving about the railroad. He
Speaker 1: tried to warn them. He told them they were laying
Speaker 1: down pathways, not for commerce, but for things that travel
Speaker 1: on straight lines. He told them of the train that
Speaker 1: wasn't a train, the one that ran on the railroad
Speaker 1: to nowhere. But no one listened. They just saw a madman,
Speaker 1: another casualty of the frontier. And all the while, across
Speaker 1: the continent, the hammering continued. Thousands of men laid down
Speaker 1: mile after mile of straight iron track, extending a formal
Speaker 1: invitation into the heart of their world. Silas rode into
Speaker 1: the town of Serenity under a sky bruised with twilight.
Speaker 1: The name was a cruel joke. Serenity was a festering
Speaker 1: sore on the height of the territory, a place where
Speaker 1: men with no pass and no futures came to drink, gamble,
Speaker 1: and bleed for silas. It was just a place to
Speaker 1: collect the bounty and wash the trail dust from his
Speaker 1: throat his face. A road map of scars etched by
Speaker 1: knives and bad decisions drew no more attention than a
Speaker 1: crack in the boardwalk. Here everyone was scarred in one
Speaker 1: way or another. He collected his money from a nervous
Speaker 1: sheriff who looked like he had bought his badge from
Speaker 1: a mail or in a catalog, then found his way
Speaker 1: to the town's largest saloon. The air was thick with
Speaker 1: a smell of stale beer, sweat, and desperation. He took
Speaker 1: a corner table, his back to the wall, a habit
Speaker 1: that had kept him alive longer than most in his profession.
Speaker 1: He ordered a whiskey and let the noise of the
Speaker 1: saloon wash over him. A familiar discordinate him. It was
Speaker 1: when he stepped outside hours later, the whisky warm in
Speaker 1: his belly. Then he first saw it. He glanced up
Speaker 1: at the familiar tapestry of the night sky, at the cold,
Speaker 1: distant diamonds of the constellations. But tonight there was a
Speaker 1: new one tucked away near o'rion's belt was a pinprick
Speaker 1: of light that didn't belong. It wasn't the warm, twinkling
Speaker 1: light of a normal star. It was a dead white
Speaker 1: point of cold fire, like a chip of bone lodged
Speaker 1: in the black velvetist face. It seemed to stare down
Speaker 1: at him, and only him. He blinked, rubbing his eyes.
Speaker 1: A turk of the cheap rock, good whiskey, he thought,
Speaker 1: But when he looked again, it was still there, a
Speaker 1: silent celestial accusation. A faint, irrational chill crawled up his spine,
Speaker 1: the feeling he hadn't had since he was a boy.
Speaker 1: A further dark. He shook his head, dismissed at his weariness,
Speaker 1: and retired to a cheap room for the night. The
Speaker 1: next day, the star was forgotten, lost in the harsh
Speaker 1: glare of the sun, But as dust fell again, Silas
Speaker 1: felt a strange compulsion to look up, and it was there,
Speaker 1: the Hangman's star, he found himself calling it, and he
Speaker 1: started to notice things. He saw Cutter, a gambler who
Speaker 1: had famously shot his own partner over a poker hand,
Speaker 1: step out of the saloon, glance around furatively, and then
Speaker 1: fix his gaze on that exact same spot in the sky.
Speaker 1: A flicker of something fear recognition, cross Cutter's face before
Speaker 1: he scurried back into the lamplight. Later, he saw the
Speaker 1: saloon owner, a mountain of a man named Thomas, who
Speaker 1: was rumored to build his business on the bodies of
Speaker 1: his rivals, standing on his balcony, a cigar clamped in
Speaker 1: his teeth, staring at the star with a look of
Speaker 1: grim contemplation. Over the next few days, the celestial paranoia
Speaker 1: began to fester. A silent, unspoken understanding grew among a
Speaker 1: certain subset of Serenity's population. The back shooters, the clam jumpers,
Speaker 1: the men with notches on their gun belts. They all
Speaker 1: carried a new tension in their shoulders. They all cast
Speaker 1: speriod of glances at the night sky. The Hangman's Star
Speaker 1: was their secret, a shared burden they couldn't speak of.
Speaker 1: It was a brand visible only of those who'd earned
Speaker 1: it by spilling another's blood. Silas A man who'd taken
Speaker 1: out more men than he could remember, saw it brighter
Speaker 1: than anyone. It was a constant weight on his soul,
Speaker 1: a cold pressure in his mind. He found himself counting
Speaker 1: the men he saw looking at the star. There was
Speaker 1: at least a dozen in this one street town, and
Speaker 1: he began to suspect, with a chilling certainty, that the
Speaker 1: star's intensity was tied to them, It was feeding on
Speaker 1: their presence. The first demise was quiet cutter. The gambler
Speaker 1: was found in an alley behind the saloon with a
Speaker 1: knife in his back. The sheriff called her a robber
Speaker 1: gone wrong. The silace knew better. That night he looked
Speaker 1: up at the Hangman's Star. It was still there, cold
Speaker 1: and belovolent, but he could have sworn it was infinitesimly dimmer.
Speaker 1: Its accusatory glare had lessened just a fraction. And that's
Speaker 1: when the horrifying truth clicked into place. The star wasn't
Speaker 1: just a brand, It was a judge, and it had
Speaker 1: passed its sentence. The next day, two more marked men
Speaker 1: were found to cease. A few between rival freight owners
Speaker 1: had been simmering for months, suddenly bowled over into a
Speaker 1: bloody street gunfight. When the smoke cleared, both men lay dead.
Speaker 1: That night, the star was no pssibly fainter. A terrifying
Speaker 1: thought entered Silas's mind. It wants us to do this.
Speaker 1: It wants us to thin the herd. The unspoken secret
Speaker 1: was now an open conspiracy. The marked men of Serenity
Speaker 1: began to hunt each other. The town became a killing field,
Speaker 1: adjudicated by a silent, cosmic entity. Alliances were formed and
Speaker 1: broken in the span of an hour. The sound of
Speaker 1: gunshots became as common as the creak of the saloon doors.
Speaker 1: The unmarked citizens of Serenity barricaded themselves in their homes,
Speaker 1: leaving the streets to the damned. Now, silence was a
Speaker 1: predator by nature, but this was different. This wasn't for
Speaker 1: money or survival. This was a celestial cull. He found
Speaker 1: himself barricaded in his room, the star's cold life filtering
Speaker 1: through his window, a constant, maddening pressure. He didn't want
Speaker 1: to be a part of it, but the Star wouldn't
Speaker 1: let him go. It whispered in his mind, showing him
Speaker 1: the faces of the other marked men, urging him to
Speaker 1: be the hand that swung the scythe A heavy boot
Speaker 1: kicked his door in. It was Thomas, the saloon owner,
Speaker 1: a massive shotgun in his hands. His eyes were wide
Speaker 1: with a zealous fire, reflecting the cold light of the
Speaker 1: star evening Silas. Thomas boomed, his voice unnaturally cheerful. It's
Speaker 1: a fine night for tidy enough. Ain't it this insane? Thomas?
Speaker 1: Silas said, his own colt steady in his hand. Insane.
Speaker 1: I've never felt more say in my life, thorn lap.
Speaker 1: Don't you feel it the clarity? For years we've been
Speaker 1: looking over our shoulders for the law, for revenge, but
Speaker 1: we were always looking down. The real judgment was always
Speaker 1: up there waiting. He gestured with his shotgun toward the window.
Speaker 1: It's a gift, Silas, a chance to wipe the slate clean.
Speaker 1: The last man standing gets to walk away free. No
Speaker 1: one walks away from this, Silas said, his voice low.
Speaker 1: Only one way to find out. A shotgun to roared,
Speaker 1: blasting a hole in the wall where Silas's head had
Speaker 1: been a second before. Silas fired back, his bullet, catching
Speaker 1: Thomas in the shoulder, staggering the big man. Thomas roared
Speaker 1: in pain and fury, charging forward, swinging the shotgun like
Speaker 1: a club. They clashed through the flimsy wall and out
Speaker 1: onto the balcony. The whole town spread out below them.
Speaker 1: Stage for their final act. They fought with a savage desperation.
Speaker 1: Two killers locked in a dance orchestrated by a distant,
Speaker 1: uncaring star. Silas was faster, but Thomas was a brute.
Speaker 1: He grabbed Silas, lifting him clean off his feet and
Speaker 1: slamming him against the railing. It splintered, groaning in protests. Below,
Speaker 1: the street was littered with bodies. The star's light was faint, now,
Speaker 1: a pale ghost of its former self, but it still watched.
Speaker 1: With a final desperate surge, Silas jammed the barrel of
Speaker 1: his colt under Thomaster's chin and pulled the trigger. The
Speaker 1: fight went out of the big man, and he collapsed,
Speaker 1: a dead weight that crashed through the broken railing and
Speaker 1: fell to the street below. Silence descended upon serenity, a profound,
Speaker 1: echoing silence, broken only by the whisper of the wind. Silas,
Speaker 1: battered and bleeding, pushed himself to his feet. He was alone.
Speaker 1: He looked up. The Hangman's star was almost gone. It
Speaker 1: was just a dying ember, a faint speck of dust
Speaker 1: on the black canvas. But it wasn't completely extinguished. A tiny,
Speaker 1: cold spark remained. He understood then Thomas was wrong. There
Speaker 1: was no wipe in the slate clean. The star would
Speaker 1: never truly disappear as long as he silence still due breath.
Speaker 1: It was his, now, his alone, to carry. He stumbled
Speaker 1: down the stairs and out into the street, a lone
Speaker 1: figure in a town of ghosts. He found his horse,
Speaker 1: mounted up and rode out of serenity without so much
Speaker 1: as a backward glance. He didn't know where he was going,
Speaker 1: but it didn't matter. For the rest of his nights,
Speaker 1: wherever he went, he would have company, a silent celestial warden,
Speaker 1: a tiny pin prick of cold, dead light, reminding him
Speaker 1: of what he was and what he had done, the
Speaker 1: last man standing under the Hangman's star. The droughts had
Speaker 1: scoured the world clean, leaving only dust and brittle faith.
Speaker 1: For a year, Jacob Hayes had watched his homestead bake
Speaker 1: and crack under a sky the color of bleached bone.
Speaker 1: The creek had turned to a snake's skeleton of polished rocks,
Speaker 1: and the old well, the one his father had dug,
Speaker 1: had been nothing but a throat full of dust. For
Speaker 1: six months, all that was left was his own stubbornness,
Speaker 1: a force of nature almost as powerful as the sun.
Speaker 1: His family felt the weight of that stubbornness. His wife,
Speaker 1: Martha grew thinner and acquired her with each passing day,
Speaker 1: her prayers becoming dry whispers. His son, Caleb, a practical
Speaker 1: boy of sixteen, had a new hard set to his jaw,
Speaker 1: his gaze constantly on the two remaining water barrels. And
Speaker 1: then there was Elizabeth at ten. She was a quiet child,
Speaker 1: lost in a world of her own, making, a world
Speaker 1: that seemed to be receding even further as the real
Speaker 1: one withered around her. We will not be beaten by
Speaker 1: this land, Jacob would declare, his voice of raw command
Speaker 1: against the silence. And so they dug. Every day, from
Speaker 1: sun up to sundown, Jacob and Caleb attacked the unforgiving earth,
Speaker 1: chasing a new well, their shovels ringing a desperate rhythm. Then,
Speaker 1: one sweltering afternoon, it happened. Caleb shovel struck something that
Speaker 1: wasn't rock. It was a wet, sucking sound water. A
Speaker 1: cry of pure, unadulterated joy tore from Caleb's throat. Jacob
Speaker 1: scrambled down the ladder, his face cracking into a rare,
Speaker 1: triumphant smile. They had done it, They had beaten the land.
Speaker 1: Their joy lasted until they hauled up the first bucket.
Speaker 1: The water was wrong. It wasn't the cloudy, muddy water
Speaker 1: they expected. It was thick, almost viscus, and it clung
Speaker 1: to the sides of the wooden bucket like oil. In
Speaker 1: the dim light of the whale shaft. It seemed to
Speaker 1: possess a faint internal luminescence, a sickly phosphorescent glow. When
Speaker 1: Jacob dipped his hand into it, he recoiled. It was
Speaker 1: unnaturally cold, a deep, penetrating cold that had no place
Speaker 1: in the sun blasted earth. This is not God's water,
Speaker 1: he said, his voice low and heavy with conviction. The
Speaker 1: smile was gone, replaced by a grim mask of suspicion. Father,
Speaker 1: it's water, Caleb pleaded, his throat raw with thurst and
Speaker 1: hope we can boil it. No, Jacob command and in
Speaker 1: his authority absolute, we will not touch it. It's tainted,
Speaker 1: a trick of the devil to test our faith. He
Speaker 1: forbade them from drinking it. He would keep digging, he declared,
Speaker 1: a few yards over through water, clean water was close.
Speaker 1: But as he spoke, his eyes kept darting back to
Speaker 1: the bucket of glowing liquid. As if it were a
Speaker 1: coil serpent. That night, the nightmares began. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: one person's bad dream, but to share it hard that
Speaker 1: infected the whole family. They all saw the same thing,
Speaker 1: sprawling weird cities of black, greasy stone building in possible geometries.
Speaker 1: The angles were all wrong, pushing the eye and sickening
Speaker 1: the mind. Above it all hung a black, bloated sun,
Speaker 1: and from every shadow things washed with unseen eyes. They
Speaker 1: would wake up in a cold sweat. The architecture of
Speaker 1: that dead city burned into their minds, the taste of
Speaker 1: ozone and decay in their mouths. Elizabeth was the most
Speaker 1: deeply affected. Martha found her one night, standing by the
Speaker 1: new well, her head cocked as if listening to a
Speaker 1: faint melody. The faint glow from the well water painted
Speaker 1: eerie patterns on her face. She didn't seem scared, She
Speaker 1: seemed attentive. Soon after she began to change, The girl,
Speaker 1: who was once merely quiet, became utterly silent. Then she
Speaker 1: began to speak again. But the words were not English.
Speaker 1: It was a flowing, siltibate language, full of soft clicks
Speaker 1: and long drawn out vows. There was a language that
Speaker 1: sounded ancient and utterly alien. She spent her days in
Speaker 1: the shade of the cabin, a stick in her hand,
Speaker 1: drawn in the dust. Her drawings were not the simple
Speaker 1: pictures of a child. They were complex, maddeningly intricate geometric patterns,
Speaker 1: spirals that seemed to fold into themselves, triangles with shifting angles,
Speaker 1: lines that implied dimensions that had no right to exist.
Speaker 1: They were maps of the nightmare city. When Martha, her
Speaker 1: heart ache with fear, knelt beside her and asked what
Speaker 1: she was doing. Elizabeth looked up, her eyes clear and calm.
Speaker 1: She pointed a small finger at the drawings, then at
Speaker 1: the well, and whispered in her new alien tongue. Though
Speaker 1: Martha could not understand the words, the meaning was terrifyingly clear.
Speaker 1: The teacher below is showing me the true shape of things.
Speaker 1: Then the dust storm was a final blow. It came
Speaker 1: without warning, a rolling brown wall that swallowed the sky
Speaker 1: and imprisoned them in the cabin for three days. The
Speaker 1: wind howled, sand blasting their small home. The last of
Speaker 1: the clean water was gone by the second day. Their
Speaker 1: lips cracked, their throats burned. Jacob sat with his bible,
Speaker 1: his face a stony mask of defiance. Caleb paled weak,
Speaker 1: finally broke. We have to drink it. Father, he rasped,
Speaker 1: his voice barely a whisper, will die. We will keep
Speaker 1: our faith. Jacob counted, his voice hollow. We will not
Speaker 1: drink from a poisoned well. Elizabeth is not dying. Caleb
Speaker 1: shot back, his gaze falling on his sister. It was true.
Speaker 1: While they withered, Elizabeth seemed untouched, her skin was clear,
Speaker 1: her eyes bright. She sat in her corner, quietly, tracing
Speaker 1: her impossible patterns on the floorboards, humming a strange atonal lullaby.
Speaker 1: That night, Martha made her choice. Her husband's faith was
Speaker 1: a rock, but it was a rock that would crush
Speaker 1: the ball. Her daughter was living proof that the well
Speaker 1: offered something other than death. With Jacob boss in a fitful,
Speaker 1: dehydrated sleep, she took the bucket and slipped out into
Speaker 1: the dying storm. She returned with the glowing water, its
Speaker 1: cold light filling the dark cabin. She knelt by Caleb, first,
Speaker 1: offering him the dipper. He hesitated for only a second
Speaker 1: before grabbing it and drinking greedily. Then she turned to
Speaker 1: her husband, who was now awake, his eyes wide with horror.
Speaker 1: A bomb nation, he breathed, scrambling away from her, as
Speaker 1: if she were a leper. You have damned us. All
Speaker 1: but Martha's eyes were on Caleb. As the boy drank,
Speaker 1: a profound change came over him. His eyes, which had
Speaker 1: been dull with thirst, widened with a sudden, terrifying comprehension.
Speaker 1: He looked from the bucket to his sister's drawings on
Speaker 1: the floor. He gasped, not in pain, but in revelation.
Speaker 1: He pointed to a complex, interlocking series of lines. He
Speaker 1: began to speak, and the same syllaban alien language that
Speaker 1: had claimed his sister now flowed from his lips. Elizabeth
Speaker 1: looked up and smiled. She crawled over to him, took
Speaker 1: his hand, and together they began to correct a flaw
Speaker 1: in one of the drawings. The teacher below had a
Speaker 1: new student. Jacob was an island in his own home.
Speaker 1: His family was lost to him, Communing in a language
Speaker 1: of madness, their minds intertwined with a thing that slept
Speaker 1: in the cold, dark water beneath his land. He was
Speaker 1: the last remnant of the world. He knew in a
Speaker 1: house that had become an outpost for another Martha offered
Speaker 1: him the dipper one last time, her face impassive. He
Speaker 1: stared at the glowing water, then at the faces of
Speaker 1: his children, their eyes reflecting the impossible geometry they now
Speaker 1: understood so well he could feel the thirst clad at
Speaker 1: his throat, a physical torment, but a greater, more terrifying
Speaker 1: thirst seemed to emanate from the bucket, the thirst of
Speaker 1: an ancient, patient, intelligence that had waited in the dark
Speaker 1: for a very, very long time. He had a choice,
Speaker 1: dive thirst, clinging to his faith insanity, or drink deep
Speaker 1: and surrender his mind. The sun was a white hot
Speaker 1: coin and a bleached blue sky. Jonas was a man
Speaker 1: who understood the desert. He understood the shimmering heat haze
Speaker 1: that played tricks on the eye, the profound thirsts that
Speaker 1: could drive a man mad, and the crushing weight of
Speaker 1: a silence so complete it felt like a physical presence.
Speaker 1: He was a man of tangible things, of the heft
Speaker 1: of his pistol and the solid warmth of his horse rock.
Speaker 1: What he did not understand was the shadow that trailed him.
Speaker 1: He first noticed it at noon. The sun was directly overhead,
Speaker 1: and his shadow should have been a tight, dark puddle
Speaker 1: beneath him and his horse. Instead, it was elongated, stretched
Speaker 1: out behind them, as if cast by a low afternoon sun.
Speaker 1: He dismissed it as a trick of the heat, a
Speaker 1: distortion caused by the shimmering air. But the feeling of
Speaker 1: wrongness lingered. Now would the sun beginning its slow westward descent.
Speaker 1: The feeling had curdled into a cold certainty. His real shadow,
Speaker 1: the one that obeyed the laws of God and light,
Speaker 1: stretched long and thin before him. But there was another one,
Speaker 1: a second, darker patch of blackness that clung to his heels.
Speaker 1: It was this second shadow that was wrong. He pulled
Speaker 1: rock to a hawk, the horse stamping nervously, sensing it
Speaker 1: rider's unease, Jonas watched the ground. His true shadow stopped
Speaker 1: with him, a perfect still silhouette. The other one, however,
Speaker 1: did not. It seemed to pool for a moment. Then
Speaker 1: it slid, detaching from the heels of his boots and
Speaker 1: flowing over the crack earth like a spill of black ink.
Speaker 1: It contorted, twisting into shape that was not his, something
Speaker 1: vaguely serpentine, before reattaching itself to him. Jonas's blood ran cold.
Speaker 1: He was a practical bed. He had faced bandits, wolves
Speaker 1: in the raw fury of a prairie storm. He knew
Speaker 1: how to fight what he could see in touch. This
Speaker 1: was something else entirely. He drew his colt in a
Speaker 1: familiar way to small comfort, and fired around into the
Speaker 1: dark patch on the ground. The bullet kicked up a
Speaker 1: puff of dust, leaving a small crater in the earth.
Speaker 1: The shadow was utterly unaffected. It rippled almost lazily, as
Speaker 1: if in amusement. A primal fear, the kind he hadn't
Speaker 1: felt since he was a child, took hold. This thing
Speaker 1: was not a shadow. It was a creature that wore
Speaker 1: the shape of a shadow, a predator from a place
Speaker 1: with different rules. He spurred rock into a gallop, his
Speaker 1: heart hammered against his ribs. He didn't know what he
Speaker 1: was running from, but his instincts screamed at him to flee.
Speaker 1: He wrisked a glance over his shoulder. The thing kept pace, effortlessly,
Speaker 1: flowing along the ground behind him, a silent, two dimensional pursuer.
Speaker 1: He came to a small outcropping of rock, and an
Speaker 1: idea born of desperation sparked in his mind. He leaped
Speaker 1: from his horse's back, and scrambled up the sunder in
Speaker 1: space of the rock. He stood atop it, fully exposed
Speaker 1: to the sun's rays, and looked down the shadow thing
Speaker 1: stopped at the base of the rock. It could not
Speaker 1: seem to leave the shadow cast by the rock itself.
Speaker 1: It slithered back and forth along the line where light
Speaker 1: met dark, a caged animal, its form shifting restlessly. He
Speaker 1: understood sunlight. This thing was bound to the darkness. It
Speaker 1: could not enter the direct, cleansing light of the sun.
Speaker 1: It was safe for now, But this sanctuary was also
Speaker 1: a clock. The sun was already touching the tops of
Speaker 1: the distant masis. His safety was measured in the dwindling
Speaker 1: hours of daylight, and so the race began. He stayed
Speaker 1: on the high ground, moving from one sun lit patch
Speaker 1: to another, a desperate game of celestial hopscotch. The landscape,
Speaker 1: once a wide open expanse, transformed into a treacherous minefield.
Speaker 1: Every rock, every stunted thorny bush cast a long dark shadow,
Speaker 1: a potential ambush point, a hiding place through the thing
Speaker 1: that hunted him. His pursuer grew bolder. It would detach
Speaker 1: from his own shadow and dart across a patch of
Speaker 1: darkness to lie in wait for him. He saw it
Speaker 1: slither into the shadow of a top cigaro and had
Speaker 1: to veer the horse sharply, which made it whiny in
Speaker 1: tearor the thing was learning, it was using the terrain
Speaker 1: against him. The psychological toll was immense. His eyes raw
Speaker 1: from the glare, darted everywhere at once. He was no
Speaker 1: longer just a rider, but a navigator of light and dark,
Speaker 1: his mind constantly calculating angles and trajectories of the dying sun.
Speaker 1: The world was no longer made of rock and sand,
Speaker 1: but of safety and peril, light and death. As the
Speaker 1: sun sank lower, painting the sky and hues of orange
Speaker 1: and blood red, the shadows stretched, becoming vast oceans of darkness.
Speaker 1: The safe islands of light grew smaller and farther apart.
Speaker 1: Jonas was forced to make frantic dashes across shattered ground,
Speaker 1: his skin crawling with the feeling of the thing flowing
Speaker 1: just inches behind him. He could feel its presence, a
Speaker 1: palpable coldness, a drain on the very air. He found
Speaker 1: himself off on a wide flat mesa, a final raised
Speaker 1: platter of rock. There was nowhere else to climb. The
Speaker 1: sun was a burning sliver on the horizon. His own
Speaker 1: shadow stretched for one hundred yards, a long dark road
Speaker 1: leading back to the way he came, and at his
Speaker 1: heels the other shadow pulsed, waiting. He stood his ground,
Speaker 1: his back to the set and sun, facing the darkness
Speaker 1: that was about to inherit the world. A horse, sins
Speaker 1: of the finalite of the moment, bolted, galloping off into
Speaker 1: the twilight. Jonas was alone. The last sliver of the
Speaker 1: sun disappeared. For heartbeat, there was nothing. Then the shadow
Speaker 1: at his feet began to rise. It was no longer
Speaker 1: a flat patch on the ground. It peeled itself from
Speaker 1: the rock, gaining a horrifying, paper thin third dimension. It
Speaker 1: rose like a sheet of black cloth in the wind,
Speaker 1: Silent and absolute. It was taller than him, a featureless,
Speaker 1: man shaped hole in reality. He fired his colt emptying
Speaker 1: every chamber into the rising darkness. The bullets passed through
Speaker 1: it without effect, their passage marked by nothing. The thing advanced,
Speaker 1: its coldness, watching over him, stealing the breath from his lungs.
Speaker 1: It didn't grab him, it didn't tear at him. It
Speaker 1: simply flowed over him. He felt a terrifying, crushing pressure
Speaker 1: from all sides, as if the world were being flattened.
Speaker 1: The sounds of the desert, the wind, the chirping of
Speaker 1: a lone cricket were instantly silenced, replaced by profound and
Speaker 1: absolute void. His vision dissolved into pure, featureless black. He
Speaker 1: tried to scream, but he had no breath. He tried
Speaker 1: to struggle, but it was as if he had no limbs.
Speaker 1: He was being erased, smoothed out, pulled into a world
Speaker 1: of two dimensions. His last sensation was being folded like
Speaker 1: a piece of paper into space. There was infinitely thin
Speaker 1: and utterly empty. The moon rose, casting a pale silver
Speaker 1: light over the empty mesa. There were no footprints, no
Speaker 1: signs of a struggle. Rock. The horse stood a mile away, trembling,
Speaker 1: staring at the spot where his rider had been, But
Speaker 1: there was nothing there, nothing but rock and sand and
Speaker 1: the vast, silent desert which captain secrets well. Jonas was gone,
Speaker 1: a footnote and a story no one would ever read,
Speaker 1: absorbed by the shadow that walked on the dark side
Speaker 1: of the world. Now, Kane was a man who specialized
Speaker 1: and disappeared. He could beld into a saloon crowd, vanish
Speaker 1: into a box, canyon, or simply fade into the vast,
Speaker 1: indifferent landscape of the west. He was running from a
Speaker 1: name he no longer used and a crime he could
Speaker 1: never forget. So when he found in the canyon, it
Speaker 1: felt like a gift from Providence. Talked away behind a
Speaker 1: screen of rock and juniper, the entrance was nearly invisible,
Speaker 1: and nestled within it, bristined and untouched by the harsh world.
Speaker 1: Outside was a town. The sign read Haven's Rest. It
Speaker 1: was perfect, almost too perfect. The clapboard buildings were freshly painted,
Speaker 1: the street was free of mud manure, and flowers boomed
Speaker 1: in window boxes, their colors vibrant against the dark wood.
Speaker 1: But the most perfect thing about it was the silence.
Speaker 1: It was a deep, profound silence, not of emptiness, but
Speaker 1: of stillness. He rode down the main street, his horse
Speaker 1: hoof beats sounded like cannon shots in the quiet. He
Speaker 1: saw people. A blacksmith stood at his anvil, his hammer
Speaker 1: raised high, his muscles tensed for a blow that never fell.
Speaker 1: The iron on the anvil was cold and black. In
Speaker 1: the salute, a girl with red hair was frozen in
Speaker 1: the act of pouring a drink from an empty bottle.
Speaker 1: Into a clean glass. Her smile was wide and welcoming,
Speaker 1: but her eyes were vacant. A cold knot of unease
Speaker 1: tightened in Kane's stomach. He dismounted and pushed open the
Speaker 1: door to the Sheriff's office. The law man stood behind
Speaker 1: his desk, one hand resting on a stack of wanted posters,
Speaker 1: his gaze fixed on the far wall. He was breathed.
Speaker 1: A slow, shallow rising followed his chest, but his eyes
Speaker 1: were like dusty windows on an abandoned house. Sheriff Kane said,
Speaker 1: his voice rove. There was no response. Kane waved a
Speaker 1: hand in front of the man's face. Nothing. He was
Speaker 1: a statue of flesh and bone. Came back out of
Speaker 1: the office, his hand resting on the butt of his pistol.
Speaker 1: He started to notice something else. A strange, pale, weblike
Speaker 1: growth clung to the corners of the buildings and stretched
Speaker 1: between the eaves like ghostly cobwebs. It wasn't a fungus,
Speaker 1: he recognized. It was faintly luminous, seeming to punch with
Speaker 1: a soft internal light, and he gave off a faint,
Speaker 1: sweet smell, like damp earth and honey. He saw it everywhere,
Speaker 1: now wrapped over the sign of the general store, woven
Speaker 1: into the spokes of a wagon wheel creeping up the
Speaker 1: side of the church steeple. The town wasn't just silent,
Speaker 1: it was infested. In the hotel, he found a room
Speaker 1: with an open door. A woman sat on the bed,
Speaker 1: a needling thread in her hand, poised a man to
Speaker 1: tear in a child's dress. She was as still and
Speaker 1: as empty as the rest. On the bedside table, however,
Speaker 1: was a leather bound diary. It was open, and the
Speaker 1: last entry was written in a frantic spidery scrawl. Think
Speaker 1: smudged as if by a trembling hand. It's in the air,
Speaker 1: the spores. I thought the fungus was just a curiosity,
Speaker 1: a strange new mold. But it's a parasite, not of
Speaker 1: the body, but of the mind. I saw it happened
Speaker 1: to Martha next door. She was humming a tune. Then
Speaker 1: she just stopped. She stood in her garden for a
Speaker 1: whole day, staring at a rose bush. The light in
Speaker 1: her eyes went out. It doesn't kill you. It harvests you.
Speaker 1: It eats your thoughts, your memories, your words. It takes
Speaker 1: everything that makes you and leaves the shell behind it
Speaker 1: offers peace, a terrible empty piece. I can feel it now,
Speaker 1: trying to get in. It whispers to me, promising to
Speaker 1: take away the grief, the fear. It's so tempting to
Speaker 1: just let go, to forget. God help me, I'm so
Speaker 1: tired of remembering. The writing trailed off into a meetingless scribble.
Speaker 1: Kane dropped the diary as if it were burning hot.
Speaker 1: The sweet smell of the fungus suddenly seemed cloying, suffocating.
Speaker 1: He realized, with a jold of pure terror, that he
Speaker 1: had been breathing this arricence he arrived. He bolted from
Speaker 1: the room, his heart pounding. The silence of the town
Speaker 1: was no longer peaceful. It was predatory. He had to
Speaker 1: get out, but as he ran towards the street, a
Speaker 1: wave of dizziness washed over him. The edges of his
Speaker 1: vision began to shimmer, and he could see the faint
Speaker 1: web black patterns of the fungus overlaying everything like a
Speaker 1: crack in a looking glass. A voice, soft and sweet
Speaker 1: as honey, echoed in his mind. It wasn't a sound,
Speaker 1: it was a thought that was not his own. Why run,
Speaker 1: it whispered, You are weary. We can feel it, the
Speaker 1: miles you've traveled, the faces that haunt you, the blood
Speaker 1: on your hands. Let it go, Rest, be at peace.
Speaker 1: He stumbled, followed to one knee. The face of the
Speaker 1: man he'd done away with, the man whose name he
Speaker 1: was running from, rose in his memory, clear and sharp.
Speaker 1: The fungus sensed his pain, his guilt, and it offered
Speaker 1: him the one thing he craved more than anything. Oblivion.
Speaker 1: No more nightmares. The voice coued a siren song of serenity,
Speaker 1: No more looking over your shoulder, Just stillness, just silence.
Speaker 1: Join the chorus, be one with Haven's rest. He looked
Speaker 1: at the frozen figures around him, the blacksmith with his
Speaker 1: hammer raised, the woman with her needle poised. Their faces
Speaker 1: were so calm, so free. For a moment, he leaned
Speaker 1: into the feeling, letting the sweet promise wash over him.
Speaker 1: The weight of his past, the constant grinding fear he
Speaker 1: could feel it began to lift. It would be so easy.
Speaker 1: But as the memory of his crime began to fade,
Speaker 1: something else rose in its place, not just the face
Speaker 1: of his victim, but the reason, the memory of the
Speaker 1: land Baron's cruelty, the injustice that had simmered for years,
Speaker 1: the final explosive act of rage. It wasn't just a
Speaker 1: memory of guilt, It was a memory of who he was.
Speaker 1: That rage, that choice, that single violent act, had set
Speaker 1: him on this path to race It would be to
Speaker 1: race himself. The pain was the proof he was still alive.
Speaker 1: No a raw act of defiance, he pushed himself to
Speaker 1: his feet, shaking his head to clear the sweet fog.
Speaker 1: My ghosts are my own. The voice and his head changed.
Speaker 1: The sweet cooing tone vanished, replaced by a piercing, psychic
Speaker 1: shriek of frustration. The peace of Haven's Rest shattered. The
Speaker 1: blacksmith's hammer, which had been frozen for what might have
Speaker 1: been years, came whistling down, smashing the cold anvil with
Speaker 1: a deafening clag. The echo through the street. A saloon
Speaker 1: girl hurled her bottle not at a glass, but at
Speaker 1: Kane's head. He duck and it shattered against the wall
Speaker 1: behind him. The sheriff in his office drew his pistol
Speaker 1: with a slow, mechanical scrape of metal on leather. The
Speaker 1: people of Haven's Rest began to move, not with life,
Speaker 1: but like Marinitts, yanked by unseen stirrings. Their movements were jerky, unnatural,
Speaker 1: their blank faces a horrifying contrast to their violent actions.
Speaker 1: They were the funguses, antibodies, and caine was the infection.
Speaker 1: They shambled towards him, a silent, placid mob. Kane drew
Speaker 1: his coat, but he didn't fire. What was the point.
Speaker 1: These people were already gone. He showed past a frozen
Speaker 1: faced farmer who swung a pitchfork with clumsy forest and ran.
Speaker 1: He knew he couldn't just fleae the canyon. The spores
Speaker 1: were in the air, a part of this place. He
Speaker 1: had to cut out the heart. The sweet smell was
Speaker 1: the thickest at the center of town, near the public well.
Speaker 1: He fought his way there, using his fists and the
Speaker 1: butt of his pistol to knock the puppets aside. The
Speaker 1: well was choked with the fungus. A huge pulsating mass
Speaker 1: of the pale, weblike growth spilled over its stone sides,
Speaker 1: a cancerous heart that fed the entire town. He spotted
Speaker 1: the General's store. Its door was ajar, its owner standing
Speaker 1: motionless just inside. Kane shoved the man's pliant body aside
Speaker 1: and burst in. He found what he was looking for,
Speaker 1: A can of kerosene and a box of matches. He
Speaker 1: ran back to the well, the puppet townsfolk closing in
Speaker 1: on him. He uncorked the can and drenched the pulsating mass.
Speaker 1: The fungus seemed to recoil, the light within it, pulsing faster.
Speaker 1: Kane struck a match. For a second, he hesitated. He
Speaker 1: looked at the faces of the people surrounding him, lost
Speaker 1: in their terrible peace. He was about to bring fire
Speaker 1: and ruin to their quiet haven. But it was a
Speaker 1: false haven, a beautiful lie. He chose the ugly truth.
Speaker 1: He tossed the match. The kerosene ignited with a whosh
Speaker 1: that sent a wave of heat across the street. The
Speaker 1: fungus streaked sound that was not a sound, a wave
Speaker 1: of pure agony that slammed into Kane's mind and threw
Speaker 1: him to the ground. The pale web black gross all
Speaker 1: over town flared with a brilliant, sickly light, then turned
Speaker 1: to black ash. The townspeople collapsed in heaps, their strings cut.
Speaker 1: The fire roared, spreading from the well to the nearest building.
Speaker 1: The dry, perfect wood of Haven's rest caught quickly. Kane
Speaker 1: scrambled to his feet, his head ringing. He stumbled away
Speaker 1: from the growing inferno, his lungs filled with smoke and
Speaker 1: seent of spores. He found his horse, its eyes wide
Speaker 1: with terror, and hauled himself into the saddle. He rode
Speaker 1: out of the canyon, not looking back until he reached
Speaker 1: the ridge below him. The hidden town of Haven's Rest
Speaker 1: was a funeral pyre, sending a column of black smoke
Speaker 1: into the clean desert sky. He had destroyed its peace,
Speaker 1: burned away. It's forgetting. He was still Cane, a man
Speaker 1: running from his past, a man haunted by his ghosts.
Speaker 1: As he turned his horse and rode back into the vast,
Speaker 1: indifferent west, he knew he was not a victim of
Speaker 1: his memories. He was their keeper, and that was a
Speaker 1: freedom no false Haven could ever offer. So the campfire
Speaker 1: dies and the stories are told, but the shadows they
Speaker 1: cast linger long after the last amber fades. The West
Speaker 1: was a frontier not just of land, but of sanity.
Speaker 1: It was a place where the veil between worlds was thin,
Speaker 1: worn away by solitude and the endless saching sky. These
Speaker 1: tales are more than ghost stories for a lonely night.
Speaker 1: Their echoes of a fundamental truth that humanity is a
Speaker 1: brief and noisy visitor and a cosmos that is ancient, silent,
Speaker 1: and utterly indifferent. Remember that the next time you find
Speaker 1: yourself alone under a canopy of unfamiliar stars, the silence
Speaker 1: may not be empty. It may simply be listening. I'm
Speaker 1: Steve's doctor.