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Plasma Frequency Magazine

Issue 5: April/May 2013

Cover Art by Laura Givens inspired by "Boom Town"

eReader Edition

Editor-in-Chief, Richard Flores IV

Assistant Editor, Amy Flores

Assistant Editor, Molly Moss

Assistant Editor, JT Howard

Assistant Editor, Alex Sidles

Art Editor, Vacant

Marketing and Advertising, Vacant

Plasma Frequency ISSN 2168-1309 (Print) and ISSN 2168-1317 (Electronic), Issue 5 April/May 2013. Published bimonthly by Plasma Spyglass Press, Vacaville, California

Annual subscription available at www.plasmafrequencymagazine.com. Print edition $56 for US residents for one year. Electronic edition available free.

Copyright © 2013 by Plasma Spyglass Press. All Rights Reserved.

www.plasmafrequencymagazine.com

www.plasmaspyglass.com

# In This Issue

Cover Art by Laura Givens

From the Editor

The Spotted Horse

By Richard Fuller

The Heidelberg Wave

By Connor Powers-Smith

The Kyne Extraction

By Fi Michell

Art By: Luke Spooner

The Bellwether

By Kellelynne H. Riley

A Better Way to Live

By Eliza Hirsch

Book Review

Shards of History

Art By: Teresa Tunaley

Respect

By Jay Caselberg

The Alien Experience

By Jessica Meddows

Art By: Laura Givens

Boom Town

By Milo James Fowler

#  From the Editor

The growth of Plasma Frequency continues to amaze me. We have some great readers and subscribers. A lot has happened since we saw you two months ago. We've had some changes to our staff, we've had some changes to how we handle submissions, and we have an announcement for our Year One Anthology.

I will start with our new staff members. JT Howard and Alex Sidles join our editorial team to help get these issues to you in the best quality possible. Issue 1 had just three editors, we now have a team of five editors working to put this magazine out. The increased work each issue takes has resulted in the need to continue to grow. I'm very pleased with that.

We had to switch over to Submittable to handle our submissions load. There are just so many writers submitting that our old ways were not keeping up. This will also allow me and my editors to keep better communication with writers as to where they are in the editorial process. All in all we think it will work out well.

This issue is packed full of more great stories. We have some returning authors, some new authors, and once again we have a never before published author. Laura Givens returns with a spectacular cover for this issue. We welcome a new artist this issue, Mr. Spooner has a great piece of art inside

I can't believe the next time I write a "From the Editor" it will be for our sixth issue. And it will be a full year that we have brought you stories, art and book reviews. I am very excited about that. And, as promised, I have the details on how we will be publishing our Year One Anthology.

We wanted to do things a little differently. So we are going to select two stories in each issue for the anthology. The first will be voted on by you, our readers. The second will be chosen by the editorial staff.

In issue 6 there will be details and a link to a reader survey and poll. You will be able to go there and answer a few questions and vote. Voting will last for at least 30 days, likely longer, and a deadline will be posted in Issue 6.

Nothing official yet, but I plan to have the Year One Anthology released by the end of August. It will be available in Print and on the Kindle. So watch for the link and voting rules in Issue 6.

Let me step aside and let the work of our writers and artists shine. Enjoy.

Richard Flores IV

Editor-in-Chief

#  The Spotted Horse

# By Richard Fuller

A shadow menagerie circled the walls of Marilee's room. The only sound in the darkened room was a slow, steady beeping. Even though there wasn't any music, the animals appeared to be dancing. One after another they went—up and down, around and around: the bear (Beep!), the lion (Beep!), the tiger (Beep!), and the horse.

(Beep!)

Marilee couldn't see the animals. She couldn't see anything. She couldn't feel anything, either, because there was nothing to touch. And she couldn't hear anything because there was no sound.

Except...she thought there might be something. It was very faint and very far away. Music?

(Beep!)

"Good morning, Nurse."

"Morning, ma'am. Any change?"

"I'm not sure. She looks about the same"

"Try not to worry. The doctor will be in to see her soon. He's scheduled some more tests this afternoon."

"Thank you, Nurse. In the meantime, I've put this little carousel next to her bed. Her father bought it for her right after she was born. I'd like it to be here when she wakes up.

"See how the small light projects the animals' shadows on the wall? Back home, she'd lie in her bed hour after hour watching them move around her room.

"The horse with the spots is an Appaloosa. As she got older, it became her favorite. When her father tucked her in at night, he'd kiss the freckles on her cheeks and call her his Little Appaloosa. He died when she was only five. She loved him very much.

"The music stopped working after he died. It's funny, though. The other day she told me she could still hear it when she listened real close."

(Beep!)

Marilee definitely heard music. And she thought she saw something, now. It was only a shadow. Still, a shadow thing was better than nothing at all.

It began moving, slowly, up and down. Where before there had been only nothing, now there was a shadow and there was up and down.

(Beep!)

"Sometimes I'd take her to see the big merry-go-round in the park. I wouldn't let her ride it, of course, but she enjoyed watching the animals go by. One of them looked just like the horse on her little carousel. Every time it passed, she'd point and shout, 'My spotted horse!' Then she'd laugh."

(Beep!)

Marilee saw it more clearly--the metal pole, the legs frozen in mid-gallop, the brightly painted mane and tail. And the brown spots. Spotted horses were her favorite.

(Beep!)

"Yesterday, I lost track of her only for a moment. When I saw her again, she was climbing up on the horse. Before I could reach her, the ride started moving. She fell.

"It was my fault, mine and that damn horse."

(Beep!)

She climbed up on the horse's back. She could feel things, now--the saddle beneath her, the excitement of the ride to come. She leaned forward and gripped the pole as hard as she could.

(Beep!)

"Ma'am, I know Marilee squeezed your hand, but the doctor says we shouldn't get our hopes up. Her recent test results aren't very encouraging. The bleeding in her brain has slowed, but we won't know how much damage there is until the swelling goes down. Right now, all we can do is wait and pray."

(Beep!)

The horse began dancing to the music--up and down, around and around. Marilee's pulse quickened and her breath caught in her throat.

If only her head didn't hurt so.

(Beep)

"Nurse, something's wrong. Get the doctor. Hurry!"

(beep)

They went up and down, but mostly up, and the higher they went, the more the nowhere became somewhere. She saw the rest of them, now--the bear, the lion, and the tiger. They soared on their shiny poles, taking her with them.

(b——)

"Oh, God. Doctor, please help her!"

"Ma'am, you need to step back.

"Starting CPR.

"This isn't working. Nurse, hand me the paddles.

"Clear!"

(——)

The other animals ran beside her, faster and faster. She closed her eyes and leaned back, giving herself over to the rhythm of the galloping horse, letting it take her where it would. Her heart and her breathing slowed. Absolute peace surrounded her.

As if in a dream, she heard a voice say, "Welcome home, my Little Appaloosa."

~

"Ma'am, I'm so sorry. We did everything we could, but her brain suffered too much damage. In the end, she just slipped away. I know it doesn't seem like it right now, but it might be a blessing. With her advanced age plus the Alzheimer's, it's unlikely your mother ever would have recovered completely."

~

Marilee ran through deep grass under a clear blue sky. The sun warmed her face and the wind blew back her hair. She was strong and she was fast, and there was no more pain. The fear and confusion that had smothered her soul were gone.

She looked around and saw other children running with her.

A boy said, "Hi! I'm a great big bear. I have white fur."

Another said, "Hello! I'm a powerful lion. I have a golden mane."

A girl said, "I'm a ferocious tiger. I have black stripes. What are you?"

Marilee laughed and shouted, "I'm a horse! And I have beautiful spots!"

On they ran—the bear, the lion, the tiger, and the spotted horse. They sprinted through forests and fields, racing the wind. They danced together—up and down, around and around. They leapt up to the bright sky and tumbled down to roll and laugh and dream in the warm grass.

Music was everywhere.

~

In the dark, empty room, the little carousel went around and around to music no one could hear.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Richard lives in LA (Lower Alabama) where he's a proud native of the Redneck Riviera. He's an archaeologist by trade and a speculative fiction writer by passion. He tends to be saddened by rejections, naively pleased by a modest publication history, and optimistic about his current efforts. Genre-wise, the first might be classified as realism, the second romance, and the third fantasy. He prefers to think of it as a continuing saga.

#  The Heidelberg Wave

# By Connor Powers-Smith

Schroeder had just concluded—based upon the angle of the blue-white moonlight streaming in through the narrow window high up one stone wall—that the time must be midnight, when three heavy knocks rattled the cell's wooden door. He took the knocks as confirmation of his hypothesis; whatever else they might be, these people were punctual. When they told you they would come to lead you to your death at the stroke of midnight, you could depend upon it.

He rose from the cot and stood, waiting. The door swung open, and they entered: two big bruisers, the double silver lightning bolts of the SS stark against their gray uniform tunics.

One of them spat out, "You will come with us."

"Yes," Schroeder said flatly, as if recognizing the validity of a rather obvious mathematical proof. He was pleased his voice lacked the quaver he had expected, the quaver that was shaking his internal world, quickening his heart, churning his bowels, harrying his mind, herding his thoughts to and fro in disordered rushes.

The SS men turned and left the room, and Shroeder followed. The hallway was thickly shadowed, the electric lights strung along the walls almost powerless against the castle's gloom. His bones ached with the cold. He tensed his muscles to keep from shivering, not wishing to give the men the satisfaction of displaying any reaction which could be interpreted as fear.

Controlling his body was simple compared to the task of quieting his mind. He could not allow himself to die with his thoughts in this chaotic jumble, so unlike his normally poised and disciplined mental stance. As he trailed the SS men along the dark corridors, he reminded himself that there was still one experiment left to perform; two, if he counted that final experiment which every living creature—scientist, layman, and single-celled organism alike—must someday conduct.

But it was the other, penultimate experiment which he wished to consider. The fact that any data he gathered would go unreported was a small thing. By its very nature, communication of any kind would end the experiment immediately; faster, really. Any attempt to observe the experiment or its results would retroactively end it before it had begun.

At least, that was how it would appear from the outside. That was how Werner would experience it, assuming Werner had bothered to make the arrangements. There was no guarantee of that, of course; an SS standartenführer was under no obligation to heed the requests of a mere physicist, especially one condemned to die for the treasonous crime of pursuing branches of science deemed contrary to the tenets and teachings of national socialism.

They followed a snaking route through the castle, past crumbling walls, through tumbledown arches. The walk would have been interesting to one of the castle's many enthusiasts, but Schroeder was not among them.

Heidelberg Castle sat brooding 80 meters up the Königstuhl hillside. Schroeder found it unsurprising that the SS had adopted the castle as a sort of architectural mascot; it was very much in keeping with their fondness for dark, medieval romanticism. This was his first visit.

They descended a winding stone stairway, narrow and steep, the steps worn smooth by centuries of use. Finally they arrived at a sturdy wooden door. When one of the men swung the door open and led him inside, Schroeder saw immediately that Werner had made every effort to satisfy his wishes.

The walls were lined to the ceiling with sandbags, which, when added to the extreme remoteness of the dungeon, and the general disuse of this part of the castle, would ensure the gunshots went unheard. Near the wall on his right stood three tripods, similar to those used in photography. Mounted atop each, instead of a camera, was the sleekly tapered, somehow vulpine form of a Mauser carbine. A small mechanical device was attached to each gun's trigger; a black electrical cord snaked away from each device, the three cords meeting on the floor and slithering along together toward the corner, where a low wooden table stood. The electrical cords flowed into a timer that sat on the surface of the table along with several small glass jars, a cardboard box, and a syringe.

Near the opposite wall, two high wooden posts stood bolted solidly to the floor and ceiling. Attached to each post was a stout iron manacle, looking very much at home in this dank medieval pit.

~

Only after he had inspected the preparations did Schroeder notice Werner, standing near the far wall, very little changed from the days of their first acquaintance, when the young man had been just another graduate student at the University of Heidelberg, struggling to grasp the bizarre ambiguities of quantum physics.

Schroeder had remained aloof from the volatile political discourse that had consumed the country, and the university, throughout the dreary postwar '20s. Often his classes—physics lectures, containing no logical intersection with politics—had degenerated into wholly inappropriate ideological debates, the shouted invective drowning out his lessons. What had quantum theory to do with communism? Yet students had labeled his presentation of certain data "bourgeois science," then explained—with utterly unjustified condescension—the correct, dialectically sound interpretation. What had it to do with Nazism? Yet more than one student had sneeringly referred to his life's work as "degenerate Jewish physics."

It was the same, he understood, throughout the university, as long-discredited theories like phrenology were resurrected, and legitimate areas of study like Darwinism were perverted to serve the ideological needs of the day. There seemed to be no subject, however unrelated to politics, about which the ignorant and the arrogant did not see fit to opine.

When the Nazis had triumphed, Werner had wasted little time in abandoning the classroom in favor of the SS, where ambiguity was not an issue, where ironclad certainty was never farther than the nearest ranking officer. Schroeder preferred not to guess how large a part the energetic young man had played in the increasing madness of the '30s. There had been nights when Schroeder's shutters had been powerless against the noise and light outside, so loud were the chants and screams, so bright the burning homes and shops and synagogues. On those nights, Schroeder had buried himself beneath every blanket and pillow in the house, and eventually, all sound muffled, all light dimmed, he had slept.

By the time the war had come, the physics department had been reduced to a shell of its former self. Those faculty members who had not gone to work for the Nazis on one clandestine project or another, nor fled the madness of the new Germany, had found the scope of their research strictly circumscribed.

Schroeder had considered leaving Germany himself, fleeing to England or America like so many of his colleagues. Some still conducted research; he had seen their work in the scientific journals, not without a pang of jealousy at their continued freedom. Others, though, had fallen mysteriously silent. Were they working for the Allies in some secret capacity? He recoiled at the thought of such brilliance wasted on the menial work of plotting artillery trajectories, designing rockets, building bombs.

In the end, it had been the fear of being pulled into the fight, being forced to choose a side, which had kept him in the small, neat house he had lived in for decades. Granted, the Allies' cause was infinitely preferable to that of the Nazis. But science should know no cause other than itself; scientists should remain above the petty world of zealots and ideologues. If Schroeder had a guiding principle, it was this. The same conviction had led him to refuse the increasingly unsubtle requests to join the Nazi war effort.

He had continued his research, verboten or not, though he had known there were too many true believers at the university to allow such secrets to be kept indefinitely. One day he had returned to his office to find it ransacked, his desk and filing cabinets pulled apart, their contents strewn about the room or, worse, vanished.

A car had trailed him home from the university that night, making no attempt to hide its presence. He had led it to his house, where another car, and half a dozen SS men, had been waiting. That had been less than a week ago; justice, such as it was, had been swift.

~

Werner called, "The prisoner will be brought forward." One of the men prodded Schroeder in the back, and he walked to the center of the room.

"The prisoner will be restrained," Werner said, and the men took him by the arms and led him to the posts. They manacled his unresisting arms, then began testing the restraints, making sure there was no slack.

Werner, who had been rummaging around on the little table in the corner, approached, the glint of metal and glass drawing Schroeder's eye to his right hand, and the syringe there, and the murky red liquid within.

He came quite close and said, in a low, confidential tone, "This should do the job. Something the medical boys have been working on. It should deaden your nerves completely in a few minutes. If I've got the proportions right. Otherwise, it'll save us three bullets." He grinned. "I'm only kidding, Herr Professor. It will work. It's been tested. Rigorously. So much more convenient when one isn't forced to rely on cats and dogs and so forth for one's test subjects. This proportion is correct, I believe, for a man of your weight. It's permanent, by the way. But that needn't concern you, eh?" Without further comment, he plunged the needle into Schroeder's left arm.

Almost immediately, all sensation began to fade. The panicky flutter of his heart became less palpable. It was as if a thick, blanketing snow was falling within him, muffling all feeling.

Werner took a silver cigarette case—an eagle clutching a swastika engraved in delicate lines across its surface—from his trouser pocket, and drew out a cigarette. He lit it, politely blew the smoke away from Schroeder's face, and returned the case to his pocket.

"We'll give it some time," Werner said.

"Yes," said Schroeder.

He closed his eyes, and his mind returned to the experiment.

~

Very shortly he would be shot through the heart by three carbines, operated automatically by the timer, and the simple trigger-pulling mechanisms he had designed. The three members of the firing squad, Werner had told him, would have to be in the room when this occurred. But they would not actually fire the guns. And, crucially, they would not observe the moment of his death.

When the guns were fired, and for five minutes afterward, the underlings, and Werner, and Schroeder himself, would be blindfolded, their ears covered by the thickest headphones available, their noses plugged against the smell of gunpowder. The nerve-deadening agent would prevent Schroeder from feeling the shots. Thus, at the time of the execution, and for a period of five minutes thereafter, there would be no one in a position to observe the event.

According to quantum mechanics, not only would it be impossible to say with absolute certainty that Schroeder was dead, until his death was directly observed; until that observation, he _would not be dead_.

There was a small but measurable chance that he would survive, due to all three of the guns misfiring, or the timer malfunctioning, or the triggering devices. His personal wave function, that theoretical tool describing the probability of his being in any of an infinite number of places, positions, and states, would remain open. At any given moment, all objects, from electrons to whole atoms, from human beings to planets to galaxies, could be said to possess such a wave function. Due to the uncertainty inherent in the fabric of the universe at its most basic level, it could not be definitely known that a particular object occupied a particular place until that object was observed, at which point its wave function would collapse to a definite, knowable point. A certainty.

Until it was observed to be in a particular position or state, every object in existence—every electron, every elephant, every planet and star and galaxy—existed as a wave function only. Until observation caused the wave function to collapse, the object was simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, at all points in time and at none of them.

For those five unobserved minutes, Schroeder would be neither alive nor dead, and both; neither here in this dungeon, nor in any of the infinite number of other places it was technically possible for him to be, yet in every single one.

He could only guess what such a quasi-existence would be like. Assuming he was still able to think, his time as a pure wave function would be a sort of limbo; a deaf, dumb, and blind existence of the mind alone.

Five minutes would be more than enough time to verify the findings of his life's work, and to contemplate the ramifications. Any longer, and he could not predict his own reaction. How would he cope, if such an unnatural state persisted, not for mere minutes, but for hours, days, indefinitely? Would he reach new heights of pure reason, conquer new realms of knowledge? Or would his mind gnaw away at itself like an animal in a trap, leading only to madness?

Five minutes. After that, death by observation; a fitting end for a quantum physicist.

~

Schroeder became aware of a smell like burning bacon. He opened his eyes to see wisps of black smoke drifting up from somewhere below. He blew the smoke away; the smell lingered.

Werner was facing him, smiling broadly. His arm was extended toward Schroeder's body, but Schroeder could not angle his neck down far enough to allow him to follow Werner's arm along to the hand; he could only see as far as about halfway down the forearm, which was quite close to Schroeder's chest. Werner stared at him, his smile growing ever more amused.

"Nothing?" said Werner, sounding genuinely curious.

"I'm sorry?"

"You feel nothing?" Werner held up the last inch or two of a burning cigarette, and flicked it across the room into the shadows. "Very good. Then we may assume that the serum has taken effect."

Werner moved to the low table in the corner, and rummaged among the contents of the cardboard box. He approached the SS men, his hands filled with a jumble of objects that he quickly distributed. He gave each man a thick blindfold, a set of heavy headphones, and a pair of nose plugs. "Take your positions," he said, and they moved off to stand behind the tripods.

Werner came over to Schroeder and, without a word, pulled the thick blindfold over Schroeder's eyes, and jammed the nose plugs deep into his nostrils. Schroeder was plunged into total darkness, and realized he had seen the last light he would ever see.

Werner's voice boomed out of the blackness: "Schroeder Katz, you stand accused and convicted of treason against the Reich in the form of the practicing of sciences deemed destructive of intellectual hygiene. You have been sentenced to death by firing squad. The sentence will now be carried out.

"Take your aim," Werner ordered. Then all sound was cut off, as Werner slid the headphones into place.

~

As his last connection to the outside world disappeared, Schroeder shuddered, thinking suddenly, as he had not done in years, of his boyhood visits to the home for invalids to which his grandmother had been consigned. His father must have been mad, bringing a child to such a place, where every form of suffering to which the human body and mind were susceptible had been on display. The twisted shapes of the crippled and dying, the inhuman shrieks of the insane, had haunted Schroeder's earliest nightmares. But his grandmother had been worse than any of the others, worse than all of them combined.

Meningitis had stolen her hearing, a degenerative retinal condition her sight. As his father had held her hand, and murmured to her soothingly, uselessly, Schroeder had huddled against the door of the little room, trying unsuccessfully to avoid imagining her condition. He had kept his eyes wide open, afraid even to blink, had brushed his hands across his ears to assure himself he could hear, and still the room had seemed to grow ever dimmer, the sighs and cries of the other patients to recede ever farther into the distance.

He had refused to go near his grandmother, though after every visit his father had beaten him and berated him as a selfish coward. As, perhaps, he had been. He had been too young to empathize with his grandmother, beyond the immediate horror of imagining himself like her. And he had spared not a shred of pity for the suffering of the home's other poor wretches.

They must all be dead now, he realized, they and anyone like them, if not from age or illness, then through the Reich's savage, involuntary version of mercy. The master race could not countenance their glaring imperfection, could not devote its precious resources to their care. Pity was for weaker peoples, children of lesser destinies.

Schroeder repressed a sob. Why had he never considered them before, nor the countless other innocents whom the Nazis were determined to throw upon the pyre? He should have fled, should have assisted the Allies in any capacity he could. Now it was too late. He waited for the bullets he would not feel, and for whatever fate would follow.

~

Twenty thousand feet over western Germany, and descending by the second, RAF Flight Lieutenant Christopher Miggins peered out through the canopy of his Lancaster, scrunching his eyes up in a vain attempt to make sense of the dark landscape below. Fifty miles short of Stuttgart the squadron had been hit full in the face by a freak snowstorm, and the planes—or anyway, his plane—had been scattered. His wireless was dead, so communication was impossible; not that he was overly keen, at the moment, to inform the rest of the squadron that he was, for want of a better word, lost.

The plane's navigation system had been showing signs of ill health for weeks, and no amount of politely worded requests had convinced Command that this might present rather a problem at some point in the future. Now that point was here; the thing had joined his wireless in the great electronic beyond.

Wherever he was, he couldn't very well return to base with the bunker-busting Grand Slam still tucked snuggly in the bomb bay. That would earn him a chewing-out from Squadron Leader Perkins—always eager for the chance—and would most likely eliminate all hope of leave any time soon.

Dropping the thing was of pressing importance. He was beginning to experience the mental equivalent of the urgency one felt upon attempting to store five pints of lager in a four-pint bladder. At this point, any target would do.

"There's something," said Sergeant McMillan, his copilot. Miggins followed McMillan's pointing finger. After a few seconds of eye-watering strain, he thought he could make out the object of the sergeant's attention.

Far below lay the dense, huddled darkness of a town or city. He banked the Lancaster to get a closer look. Most likely it was one of those places whose lack of industry and strategic importance had so far spared it His Majesty's glad tidings. Well then, high time someone let the bastards know they were at war.

"Good enough," he said. He had noticed a prominence, a hill or small mountain, and, a few hundred feet up, a structure of some kind. If the anonymous town held anything of tactical significance, that was likely to be it. "Let's try to put it right on top of that fort, there." "Right," McMillan said, flicking switches and twisting dials in preparation.

~

Werner felt the frantic vibration of the timer run through his fingers and up his arm. The headphones must be good indeed; he knew the timer to be very loud, and yet he heard nothing, only felt the buzz of its alarm, announcing the end of the required five minutes. But then, he had not heard the gunshots, either.

Werner pulled off his blindfold, and switched off the timer. Then he took the headphones off, staring straight ahead, at the sandbagged wall.

Indulging Katz in his ridiculous experiment had apparently caused a bit of the nonsense to rub off on Werner, particularly the idea of the professor being stuck in some kind of no-man's-land until someone looked at him. Now he was enjoying the sense of power the fantasy afforded, even richer than that generated by a simple execution. He could keep the professor suspended in his theoretical netherworld for as long as he liked, and then turn, and snuff him out like the weakest candle flame that had ever burned. The merest flick of his eyelids would do it, the barest split-second of sight. He could blink the man out of existence, wink him away.

The tension was wonderful. He breathed deeply, savoring it, staring at the sandbagged wall. Finally he began, slowly, to turn.

Before he could face the professor, an enormous noise overhead, an explosion of some kind, forced Werner's eyes to the ceiling. The initial concussion did not end; instead it melted into a heavy, ominous rumbling. Eyes riveted nervously to the stone ceiling, Werner assured himself that they were much too far underground for any explosion to reach them. But the rumbling continued, growing rapidly in volume. He assured himself again. The rumbling continued, grew louder and nearer and more undeniably real.

Just as he decided there might, in fact, be some danger, the ceiling collapsed in a plunging storm of splintered wood and shattered stone and tons upon tons of plummeting earth.

~

Werner was crushed under the deluge, and killed instantly, as were the other two SS men. Schroeder Katz was neither seen nor heard to die, and he had no means with which to observe the deadly collapse for himself. Almost certainly the dungeon's destruction would have killed him, even assuming the three perfectly serviceable carbines had not performed that work. The chances that some pocket in the falling wreckage was formed in the exact spot he occupied, or that a particularly solid and fortuitous block of stone shielded him from the worst of the debris, are remote in the extreme.

But no such collapsed chamber has ever been discovered in Heidelberg Castle, and no four buried bodies have ever been unearthed. Therefore it must judged extremely likely, though not quite absolutely certain, that Schroeder Katz is dead.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Conor Powers-Smith was born in New Jersey, and grew up there and in Ireland. He currently lives on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, where he works as a reporter. His stories have appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Abyss & Apex, and other publications.

#  The Kyne Extraction

# By Fi Michell

Kyne Extraction Attempt #17 Log: Observations of Subject Omega

Earthdate: 2015:08:12 Final observation phase.

Subject Omega (SO) fits our highest-level selection criteria. She shares our faith in the sanctity of life and does not believe in abortion. She is of strong body and mind, with a powerful tendency to rationalise the extraordinary. This agility was a low level criterion but we recommend upgrading it to high. We believe it is crucial to future success since previous Kyne Indicators achieved a maximum 77%, prior to traumatic failure. SO surpassed this benchmark four Earth weeks ago.

Localtime: 11:15:32 Kyne Indicators: 90%

SO is a partner at Tucson, Tucson & Anders, a law firm in Sydney, Australia. (A "white collar" job is a desirable subject attribute.) SO is presenting her client's case in court. The pearl buttons of her blouse pop open due to changes in her breast tissue composition. The capillaries in her neck and cheeks are dilating. Her blood pressure is rising but remains below the danger level. The judge instructs her to buy new clothes over the weekend. (We believe she will find this unnecessary.)

Localtime: 21:45:10 Kyne Indicators: 92%.

We observe SO in her bedroom, struggling to unbutton her trousers. The buttons bite further into her growing midsection each day. Her resistance to buying maternity clothes is a desirable subject attribute. The reduced financial impact helps us achieve an impressive Neutral Impact Level (NIL).

She balances on one leg while her opposite foot grabs the hem of her trousers. This position is unstable. Regulations forbid our intervention. She is wobbling. The progeny moves.

(We pause for one Earth second to calm ourselves.)

She stands on the trouser hem and pulls her other leg free. Her pulse nears danger level. The progeny flips.

(Our bladders ache with fear but we persevere.)

We are impressed by her ability to control her center of gravity at this advanced stage. She has stabilised.

Kyne Indicators: 94%

SO has stored her clothes, but her shoes remain scattered on the floor beside her bed. This risks tripping her but we may not intervene.

She collects a teddy bear from her pillow. SO sometimes sleeps with the bear but it is inert, harmless to the progeny. SO carries it through her walk-in-robe and leaves it on the bathroom shelf. She takes a shower. The water temperature is fifteen heat units. This is safe.

The progeny is moving and SO's pulse is rising. She breathes too fast. Increased oxygen stimulates the progeny further. (Our bladders are weakening with excitement.)

Kyne Indicators: 95%.

SO is moaning and her limbs tremble. She touches each one of the fifteen moving protrusions on her midsection. These are an extremely exciting indicator. (One of our bladders has burst.) Her midsection resembles an Earth-child's beach ball with the short plastic fingers poking out all over.

SO is crying, "Please, God, make it stop." Her pulse is too elevated but regulations forbid our intervention. She braces her hands upon the glass shower screen to stay upright. We pray to the Higher One.

The fifteen protrusions disappear.

Localtime: 22:00:05 Kyne Indicators: 96%.

SO has completed her shower. She collects the bear and walks back into her walk-in-robe. Her pulse and breathing have slowed. She tucks the teddy into the pram squashed in the corner. It contains clothes and toys suitable for a human baby. We believe these items help SO maintain her self-deception and hence her mind.

Kyne Indicators: 97%

SO puts on an old t-shirt that belonged to the man with whom she intended to life-pair. (His absence is the result of Kyne Procedure Nine—Prepping the Environment.) SO has not paired in the two Earth years since he left. This is a desirable subject attribute but the lack of a human father is a source of confusion for her, hence the importance of the correct psychological profile. SO has no conscious memory of our first physical visit, though she may recall fragments in dreams. The only sign we left was a migraine headache.

Localtime: 22:03:24 Kyne Indicators: 97.5%

SO's pulse is rising as she enters her bedroom. The progeny is moving. She grasps her midsection and trips over a shoe. The progeny—

(We cannot continue to observe. To come so far and still risk failure!)

(We risk a look.)

She has suffered no serious damage. (Fifty-three of our bladders have exploded.)

She is limping. She kicks the shoe into the wardrobe.

(We apologise for our outburst. Please understand, the circumstance is exceptional.)

Localtime: 22:15:41 Kyne Indicators: 98%.

SO is in bed asleep. Many nights, we observe her wake as she turns over. When she sees her midsection glow blue, she shuts her eyes. We believe she prefers to think this is a nightmare.

Her avoidance is ongoing. Since her initial ultrasound, she has not returned to her doctor, nor booked into a hospital for the birth. Contrarians believe this shows that at some level she knows the truth.

The progeny is pulsing!

Localtime: 00:17:11 Kyne Indicators: 99.6%

(We have fully repaired ourselves and are ready for the extraction.)

SO's midsection emits deep indigo light and has now reached full saturation.

We dampen our arrival to reduce the disturbance to only the flapping of curtains. This is unfortunate since her window is shut; still, it is the best we can achieve. We emit a bright white-light at soothing wavelengths. SO's eyes open; this is unavoidable.

To limit her perception to her immediate surroundings, we increase the light emission from her sheets and pillows. At the same moment, we take SO and her bed out of time. She cannot correctly perceive or comprehend dimensions beyond those her senses are designed for. Her rationalist tendencies must be extremely strong to maintain her mind. Some would panic. She will seek denial. This will calm her.

Localtime: Irrelevant. Kyne Indicators: 100%

We perform the Kyne Extraction. The progeny is pulsing in perfect unity with the Higher Concerto! Our first-ever final stage extraction! (We are using the new techniques and the new subject selection profile.)

In accordance with our mandate, Improve the Universe and Treat All Creatures with Respect, we enhance her metabolic rate. In future she will maintain her optimal body weight with no effort. We neutralise the undetected cancer cells in her right breast. We extend her natural life by the term of seven point five Earth months, to compensate for the time we have used. We achieve a NIL. In fact, allowing for the medical enhancements, we achieve a PIL (+44). We have never dared imagine such a thing.

SO is sleeping again. We return SO to her bedroom.

Localtime: 06:23:11

We follow up. It is morning and SO has woken. She rubs her eyes. Temporary blurred vision is to be expected. She is sits and holds her head in her hands. The throbbing will fade as soon as she adjusts to her new state. She is sweating. The air temperature is still warm from our visit. She removes her t-shirt, puts on a bra and underpants, and opens the window. Her senses are still exhibiting confusion.

She enters the wardrobe and pushes the garments aside. She picks up the teddy bear from the pram and hugs it. This is an emotional prop that will aid her recovery. She fetches down a pair of black denim jeans. Her new metabolism is beginning to function. She will feel a renewed sense of energy.

She has dropped the emotional prop. She is pulling the jeans on and is zipping them up. This is now easy for her.

She is looking for shoes in the pile beneath the hanging garments. She appears to favour a pair of Italian sandals with cork soles. They will elongate her figure and make her look slimmer, in a style that humans find attractive. She is crouching down to pick them up.

Localtime: 06:28:22

She has stopped moving.

Localtime: 06:29:22

She is still not moving.

Localtime: 06:30:01

She is looking down at her body and making choking noises. This is harmless.

She is patting her midsection. She is screaming, "Oh God oh God oh God." Her blood pressure is high but it will return to normal.

She is picking up the emotional prop and hugging it to her chest. She is crying.

Subject Omega has survived without damage. She is a good candidate for repeat insemination.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Fi Michell lives in Sydney, Australia, and has also lived in New Zealand and London. She has had careers in Architecture and e-commerce, but her first love has always been science fiction and fantasy. When she's not writing, she enjoys the gym, coffee and good wine, abstract art and innovative buildings, and the kind of black humour found in B-grade movies. You can find Fi Michell online at http://fimichell.wordpress.com.

# The Bellwether

# By Kellelynne H. Riley

# Art By: Luke Spooner

Jane pulled on her muck boots, mindful of the syringe in her jeans pocket. A whole weekend alone—just peace, the sound of sheep grazing, and endless cups of tea. She breathed in the warm caramel scent of the katsura tree and a hint of smoke from distant burn piles. Later she'd drag the spinning wheel outside and sit under the maple tree, drafting fine wool and watching the crimson leaves pool around her. But chores first, and a look at that wound on Oakley's flank.

Four pumpkins grinned at her from the porch steps, crooked mouths spewing forth masses of stringy flesh and blackening seeds. One was staved in where Pete had shoved it off the porch, muttering about commitment and family, before he'd loaded up the kids and taken off for his parents'. She considered tossing it in the compost, but it might upset Annie to come home and find it gone.

"A few more days then," she told it, and drew a finger across her throat, mimicking its horrified expression.

From the top of the hill she could look down on the barn and the sheep in their rolling fields, a scene that usually stilled her mind and offered her a few moments of solitude. But today the animals bunched unnaturally in a far corner, skittish black faces shifting right and left over the backs of their fellows.

She scanned the spreading pastures to the north and south, frowning. There hadn't been coyotes prowling the orchard for years. Last year there'd been an attack on a Nubian goat the next farm over, by a half-feral dog that had turned on the goat's owner as she tried to chase it off. Jane grabbed a stick as she walked down the hill toward the barn, but the road was empty, the valley drowsing in sun-drenched quiet.

At her approach, one sheep broke from the herd: Atticus, sly treatmonger, her odd man out with his dark fleece conspicuous as a smudge of dirt on a pile clean linens. He trotted across the field and stood staring up at her expectantly.

"Sorry, old man." She held out empty hands, wishing she'd thought to bring him a windfall apple from the old Braeburn tree in the yard. Always optimistic, he leaned into her legs, his fat wooly stomach inflating then deflating with a sigh. She scratched his chin. "Looks like it's just you and me for a while." He wagged his stubby tail, so much like a dog she felt a warm flood of affection.

He snuffled at the penicillin in her pocket and she laughed. "That's not something you want. Off you go." She gave him a friendly push back toward the others, searching for Oakley's horned head in the mass of wooly faces. He wasn't there amongst the agitated ewes, wasn't milling in the relative safety of the herd.

It was unusual for the bellwether to separate himself, and Jane shaded her eyes against the bright morning. In the center of the pasture, the black walnut tree cut a bold silhouette against a blue sky. A murder of crows jostled for position in its branches, calling insults. One bird fluttered to the ground, plucked a nut from the litter of golden-brown leaves and rotting walnut husks, and flew off toward the street.

He was there, under the canopy, his head twisted sideways and nearly touching the ground. As she approached, he pushed forward and slammed himself into the tree trunk.

"Hey!" she yelled, surprised. She ran toward the tree, feeling her pocket for the syringe.

Oakley staggered back and charged again. _Bam!_ _And again._ Over and over his horns beat the dark wood, the bell around his neck ringing madly. The crows in the branches screamed each time the tree shuddered.

"Hey! Knock that off!" Jane grabbed his fleece and straddled him, forcing his head back over one shoulder and easing him to the ground. He fought, and she used her weight to press him into the ground. "Easy, now. Easy. Calm down." She spoke in a low voice, frowning at the smear of blood on his nose as she waited for him to settle. Once he was quiet, she twisted around and examined the wound on his flank. It was healing poorly, still oozing blood and pus, the fleece around it matted. Hopefully a couple more days of antibiotics would fix him up.

She slipped the syringe out of her pocket and uncapped it. Ignoring a twinge of queasiness, she took a quick breath and pinched a loose flap of skin behind his front leg, then slid in the needle and depressed the plunger. Without warning the wether bucked, threw his head back and knocked her off.

Jane sprawled sideways, felt her hip slam into the damp ground. "Damn it!" The heavy dew saturated her t-shirt. She sat up, cursing, and felt something give way under her fingers.

_Oh, God._ A dead crow, black feathers ruffling alongside a mangled body, lay almost beneath her. Its head twisted off to one side, tethered only by rope of red flesh. She grimaced and scrubbed her hand on the wet grass.

Bobcat? A neighbor's dog? Possibly the same animal that tore a chunk out of the wether. She looked around, imagining a dark shape skulking in the rhododendron bushes or under the barn stairs, cracking tiny skulls between its teeth, and half-grinned at her own imagination.

Most likely the poor thing died of natural causes, then got trampled. Still creepy, though. She shuddered.

Oakley had found his feet, and he rammed the tree again. The crows shrieked, and several late walnuts hit the ground with a dull patter. Jane scrambled up, grabbed hold of the sheep's horns and yanked him toward the barn. He resisted, letting out a loud _baaa_ , and she had to jerk him along behind her, grunting with effort. He put up a pretty strong fight, but finally she got him inside, the stall door rough under her hand as she slammed it shut. He collapsed on the floor.

She put down fresh bedding and filled a bucket with water. As she scooped grain into the feeder, a mouse skittered away into the straw underfoot. Time to bring the traps down from the garage and get them reset. The barn could use a good cleaning before the cold weather set in, too.

Oakley rose from the hay, ignored both food and water, and began to throw himself head first into the stall door. Jane watched him for a moment. It might be best to tie him up, to avoid injury. The last thing he needed was a broken horn. But a few minutes watch assured her he couldn't back far enough away to build any real momentum. He'd be fine. She sighed and checked that the bolt was securely shot, then left him alone in the barn.

The sound of the wether's horns battering the old wood siding followed her all the way up the hill to the house. Inside she made herself a cup of tea—Earl Gray sweetened with honey, in a mug the color of coneflowers. She carried it out into the sunshine and set it on a stump, then carted out the old spinning wheel and a stool and settled in to enjoy the late morning. The banging had stopped. Oakley must have calmed down.

She'd dyed the fleeces in shades of goldenrod and merlot and blended it with a handful of Atticus' dark fleece for texture. Perfectly carded, it slid through her fingers as though buttered. She found an easy rhythm and began to spin, the single ply winding in even threads on the bobbin.

The finished yarn would make a beautiful stocking cap for one of the kids. She imagined a Christmas card with a photo of them—just Annie and Gabe this year, not a family shot—on the front, smiling under hats made from their own sheepswool, the green of the Douglas firs in the upper pasture so perfectly seasonal.

When the phone rang her fingers slipped. The roving parted and the end of the yarn untwisted. Jane looked up at the open window, struck with a sudden rush of loneliness for the children. She stifled the urge to race into the house. She'd never make it in time anyway.

After three rings the answering machine clicked on and she heard her mother's voice. "Jane. Please pick up."

To the north the sky was shading from autumnal blue to chill gray. Jane took a sip from her cup and settled herself more firmly onto the stool.

"I know you're home. Please, Jane. I just want to help. Call back."

The heat in the cup had fled, the tea bitter on her tongue.

~

By morning the sky was overcast, the fog creeping in sleepy tendrils through the boughs of the fir trees. Jane stood in her plaid barn coat watching Oakley nose hopefully through the straw. The antibiotics seemed to be helping, and he'd perked up, left off head-butting the walls. His fleece looked awful, though, matted and dirty, the smell somehow worse than the usual odor of confined livestock.

She trapped him in a corner of the stall, injected the last dose of penicillin, and examined the wound. It still looked raw and bloody, and now it was _squirming._

Maggots.

Shuddering, she found a pair of scissors in the tack room and used them to clip away the fleece around the wound, trying to remember what she'd heard about maggots being beneficial to wound healing. But no, they were too horrible to leave festering on his skin. She smeared the area with insecticidal cream. If this wound didn't heal up soon, she'd call the vet.

As she pushed open the stall door, Oakley squeezed past her and bolted from the barn. She started to follow, but he made for the rest of the herd and not the walnut tree, and she shrugged. It wasn't like the maggots would spread to the ewes, and he'd be less stressed with the herd where he belonged.

Reunited with their leader, the flock drifted uneasily through the simmering fog. Jane moved in amongst them, doing a quick field check before heading back up to the house for breakfast. One ewe had a spatter of crimson on the side of her muzzle that looked like a bite mark, but when Jane caught her and wiped away the blood there was nothing underneath. Puzzled, she searched the rest of the flock. Several ewes were bloodstained, but all appeared perfectly sound.

Atticus circled the flock, on the outside as always. Jane called to him and shook an empty hand in her pocket, feeling guilty. It always worked, though. He came running, and she pressed her hands over his stocky little body. A few thistles tangled into his wool and soon he'd need his horns trimmed again. The deformed one was getting too close to his eye for comfort. Otherwise, though, he seemed just fine.

"No blood on you, old man? Where are those ewes finding it?" She scratched the base of his horns and he let out a contented belch. A few yards away Oakley sniffed a wide-eyed ewe, who shied away from him and melted into the pale belly of the flock.

Giving Atticus one last pat, Jane cut back through the pasture and angled up toward the house. A spine from one of the thistles had lodged in her thumb, and she tried to work it loose as she walked. "The Bloody Sheep Mystery", she whispered to herself, feeling a bit like Nancy Drew. "A case both intriguing and ominous." Half amused, she began running through the possible sources of blood.

It took a moment to register, as she passed beneath its outermost branches, that the walnut tree was oddly silent. No harsh caws scolded her approach, only the thin wail of the wind whistling through the loose handle of the well-pump.

Looking around she saw that the ground was covered with mounds of feathers, as though the entire tree full of crows had been struck dead in the branches and fallen from their perches. She bent to examine one—a forked foot stuck straight up, tiny yellow claws clutching at empty air. A glistening strand of blood-red intestine ribboned across the dark feathers. Her stomach clenched. Avian flu? Could that spread to livestock? Have the sheep been eating contaminated grass? Could they be vomiting the blood?

She ran up to the house and stood with her hand on the phone, wondering whom to call. The vet? Animal control? The Audubon Society?

When the receiver rang in her hand, she nearly dropped it. Without thinking she pressed the talk button. "Hello?"

"I've been calling and calling."

Jane cursed silently. "This isn't a good time, Mom."

"It's never a good time."

"I really can't do this right now."

"You're being selfish. Pete's a good man."

Jane sighed. "I'm not happy, Mom." She had a sudden vision of her mother, sipping espresso in white cashmere, perched on a wing back chair, admiring a vase of dahlias.

"For heaven's sake, you're just depressed. Marge's daughter Chloe had a bad spell, and she started getting those vitamin treatments. Straightened her right out."

"I'm not depressed." She tried to imagine her mother spilling the espresso, a brown stain spreading out across the white sweater, but the image wouldn't come together.

It never did.

"And what about the kids?"

"Jesus, Mom! I'm leaving Pete, not the kids." Very faintly she heard the ringing of the sheep bell.

"And you can't keep wasting your life with those dirty animals. You and Pete should move to town. There's a cute little bungalow for sale just two streets over..."

Jane took the phone from her ear and muffled it against her leg. Yes, she did hear the bell, and it was coming from the front yard.

"I have to go, Mom." She dropped the phone on the table. The bell rang insistently, as though it were being shaken with intent, as though someone— _or something_ —wanted her to hear it. She shuddered.

She'd left the front door open, and as she moved into the hall she could see him: Oakley, standing in the driveway, wafting the smell of decay. Behind him the fog twisted damp and wicked.

Jane fought down a wave of fear. "How did you get out?" she asked him.

He took a step toward her.

"Did you duck under the fence?" She could hear the shake in her voice, and tried to steady it. "I thought that was a sneaky ewe's trick."

He took another step, head thrust forward, and let out a wretched _baa_.

She forced herself to move in and take hold of his collar. "Let's get you back down with your girls."

The sheep planted his feet and refused to budge. She grabbed a handful of the fleece on his rump and one on his shoulder and gave a good yank to get him moving, but the wool came away in a damp, stinking mass. Her knuckles skidded across his wet, squirming flank. As she stumbled back, he turned and sank his teeth into her leg.

Shocked, she kicked out and felt her foot jam square into his nose. He backed off, shaking his head. Jane ignored the throbbing in her leg, took off her belt and looped it into a makeshift noose. She slipped it fast around his neck and fought to drag him all the way back down the driveway to the pasture.

~

All night she dreamed of the wether's bell. The sound threaded in and out of her sleep, sometimes as far away as the barn, sometimes as close as her bedroom window. She dreamed of the flock creeping...creeping...up through the shifting mist, pulling it behind them up the dark drive, smothering the house.

When she woke every window was uniformly padded in white, the barn invisible. She lay in bed, white sheets and striped pajamas, trying to shake off the chill that possessed her, hand and bone. _Why hadn't Oakley choked and coughed as she pulled him down to the barn? That belt had been wrapped tight around his throat._

She threw off the blankets and tugged on an old warm pair of sweats.

In the kitchen she ate Captain Crunch straight from the box and dialed Pete's cell phone, longing for the children's voices, but he didn't pick up. Damn him! He always had that phone in his pocket. The light on the answering machine was blinking, and she deleted another message from her mother and several from her sisters, all of them saying so much the same thing she imagined them practicing the words in unison.

"Happiness doesn't mean Pete," she said aloud to the machine. "Not anymore." But she could feel their thoughts crowding round her, pressing in.

She threw on the warm barn coat and stepped outside. Frost rimmed the skeletons of the pasture weeds and edged the bronze oak leaves that carpeted the drive. Frosted gravel scraped underfoot as she walked down to the pasture and fumbled with the metal gate. In the barn, she separated several flakes of hay from the bale and carried them outside.

Normally the catch pen would be milling with hungry animals, but today it was empty, and the hay from the previous day sat untouched. Jane dropped her armload near the stock tank and walked out into the misty pasture. She called for the flock, whistling and clapping her hands, but the sounds felt damp, suffocated. Not even a single bleat came echoing back through the blinding white, and she picked her way over the rough ground, stumbling and searching.

She found them, finally, in the old arena, clustered in a tight circle. Their massed bodies seemed to draw the fog, their fleeces swirling around them, insubstantial. As she moved into the herd, a sheep in the center raised her head, muzzle dripping with blood.

Jane forced herself to breath. _Oh, God. So much blood._ Heart pounding, she pushed through the crowd, slapping rumps and yelling, barely recognizing her own hoarse voice.

The ewes scattered. In the center of a trampled circle of grass, a sheep's body draped over a small rise of ground.

_Atticus_.

A gaping hole in his side, wool and blood and organs scattered on the ground around him. Jane folded and retched into the weeds until her stomach was empty. She wiped her mouth with a shaky hand and stood hunched over and stunned, unable to look again. "Poor old man. How did this happen?" And suddenly she was crying, tears and snot dripping onto her hands, thinking how awful it all was and how she'd miss him. Thinking too of the wreck of her marriage and of the kids, stuck in the middle of all this misery.

The flock flowed back in around her, the itchy wool press of them making her skin crawl. Cold noses pushed into her from all sides. Some of the ewes began to nose around the corpse. Gasping, at once angry and afraid, she pushed free. She chased the ewes into the catch pen and shut the gate. They began to bleat, raggedly at first but then all together, a row of identical blank faces thrust through the electric wire of the fence. She watched them for a moment, a chill running up her spine, then turned back to the body.

Oakley stood over it, pawing at the head. His fleece dragged in muddy clumps on the ground, and his flesh hung in festering shreds, revealing the pearly gleam of bone. He looked up, a grisly mouthful of gray stuff dripping from his teeth, his vacant eyes fixed on her face. The stench stung her nose. He took one clumsy step forward and baaed, the sound hollow and somehow _hungry_.

Jane fled.

Inside the barn, she bolted the door and collapsed on a hay bale. Her breath came in hard gasps. She fought to pull herself together, choking back sobs of betrayal and grief. Somehow she had to get back up to the house. Call animal control. _Get the rifle from the safe._

Then, from just outside, the cold ring of a bell.

Jane struggled to her feet and looked out the window. The rotting bellwether stood blocking the bottom of the stairs. He stared at her through the glass, planted one hoof on the first step and let out a long, low bleat.

And behind him the perfect white flock, whole fleshed, pure fleeces shimmering away into the fog, echoed in unison.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Kellelynne H. Riley lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in Poetry Quarterly, Flashquake, and Shadow Road Quarterly, and she can be found at kellelynnehriley.com.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Luke Spooner a.k.a. 'Carrion House' currently lives and works in the South of England. Having recently graduated from the University of Portsmouth with a first class degree he is now a full time illustrator for just about any project that peaks his interest. Despite regular forays into children's books and fairy tales his true love lies in anything macabre, melancholy or dark in nature and essence. He believes that the job of putting someone else's words into a visual form, to accompany and support their text, is a massive responsibility as well as being something he truly treasures. www.carrionhouse.com www.facebook.com/CarrionHouse

# A Better Way to Live

# By Eliza Hirsch

Clarissa slumped in the hospital bed, breathing hard. Her body ached. Pain radiated from her elbow, where an IV drip clung to her vein. She closed her eyes while a tech removed the needle. She might have fallen asleep, if the room hadn't been bristling with FBI agents, technicians, nurses. One of the nurses pulled the curtain next to Clarissa's bed, a faint hiss of ball bearings on metal. The suspect lay unconscious in the other bed, IV still stuck in his arm, pumping sedatives into his blood.

After what she'd seen, Clarissa wanted to keep him that way.

She motioned to the lead agent on the case, a tall, dark haired man with a weak chin and watery gray eyes. Terry Hertz, FBI. Her partner, in a way.

Terry sat down next to her bed, pulled out his memstick, and turned it on. After a tinny chime, the screen lit up.

"Welcome back, Dr. McGowan," he said. She smiled weakly. Hertz dipped his head forward and spoke into the mic. "April 13th, 2045." He glanced at his watch. "0350. Agent Hertz interviewing Dr. Clarissa McGowan of the PsySearch facility."

Clarissa sucked on a chip of ice while Hertz recorded his introduction.

~

Lily met Clarissa at the door with a glass of wine and a cheery smile. Despite the late hour, Lily looked happy to have her big sister home. Clarissa dropped her purse and gave Lily a perfunctory hug, and took the wine.

"You're my favorite sister," Clarissa said after a sip.

"I'm your _only_ sister."

"Exactly." Clarissa slipped off her pumps and walked into the kitchen. Lily turned the lock before following her.

"I ordered Chinese." Lily said. "Sound good?"

Clarissa wrinkled her nose. "In the middle of the night?"

"Well, I—I didn't know what you'd want." Lily began to play with the ring on her right hand, the ring Clarissa gave to her after their parents died last year. A single ruby, set in platinum. Her friends said the setting was too much for a fifteen-year-old girl to wear, but Clarissa disagreed. She thought it was perfect. Exactly what Lily needed.

"I'm not hungry." Clarissa said. She drained her glass, and then refilled it from the bottle on the counter.

"Okay...more for me." Lily's cheer sounded forced, but Clarissa didn't argue. She'd spent too many hours scouring the minds of criminals; she didn't have the energy to muddle through the psyche of a teenager.

"How was school?"

Lily busied herself with the cartons of food, not answering.

"What about that boy...what's his name? Darren?"

"David. We broke up."

"Oh, sweetie..." Clarissa put her glass down and started to get up, wanting to comfort her sister. Lily snapped a set of chopsticks apart, shaking her head.

"A month ago. I _told_ you."

"I..." Clarissa frowned. "You know, I work all day, sometimes I can't keep all these details straight."

"Details? He's the only guy I've dated since the accident." _Since mom and dad died_. "It's a little more than a _detail_."

"Lily, don't wave your chopsticks around like that." Clarissa pushed Lily's hand down to her side. "You might hurt someone."

"Right. I'm going to eat in my room."

Lily grabbed her plate and stomped upstairs. Clarissa sighed. She understood how a man could murder his own mother, or how a woman might poison husband after husband, but she had no idea how to deal with a sixteen-year-old girl.

Clarissa finished her wine, and went to bed.

~

The drugs used in the PsySearch Navigation left Clarissa groggy, and dependent on Lily as an alarm clock. When she woke to sunshine instead of Lily's insistent voice, she knew something was wrong.

"Lily?" She called from her bed. The house echoed silence. She slipped out of bed, moving slowly. Her muscles ached, a symptom she chalked up to the drugs. She didn't often get stiff, but it wasn't unheard of.

She checked Lily's room first, finding only the usual mess but no sign of her sister. The house seemed deserted.

_Well_ , she thought, _She's upset about last night_.

She messaged Lily, and then set a pot of coffee on to brew. She started on her second cup; still no Lily. She logged in to the PsySearch database and activated the criminal tracking application. The criminals got their chips implanted behind their left ears; Lily's tracking chip lay hidden under the ruby on her finger. She'd never used the program to find Lily before, but she was suddenly glad for her own paranoia.

_NOT FOUND_.

The message blinked on the screen. Clarissa tried again, checking her purchase records against her memory.

_NOT FOUND_.

She stared. How was that even possible? Lily would have to be hundreds of feet underground, or hidden behind a yard of steel, to lose her connection.

Or...Clarissa shuddered. If someone destroyed the chip...

She brought up the message dialog on her computer, and input Agent Hertz's code. His image popped up within seconds, set against the familiar backdrop of his office at FBI headquarters.

"Dr. McGowan, I wasn't expecting—"

"I need to report a kidnapping." Her voice cracked, and she pressed her thumb to the camera for a moment, steeling herself. Before she'd caught her breath, though, she noticed a line of dirt caked under her thumbnail. She leaned in to look closer, but Hertz interrupted her.

"Clarissa? Are you all right?"

She jerked her hand away. "Can you send someone to my home? My sister..."

"I'll be right there." The image disappeared, leaving the words _NOT FOUND_ to mock her from the screen.

~

Morning stretched into night, and back into day. No leads. No ransom call, no sign of forced entry. The words _runaway_ and _delinquent_ bounced around in Clarissa's head, though she ignored them. When Lily had been missing three days Hertz took Clarissa into his office and leveled with her.

"You need to consider the possibility," he said. "Kids her age leave home all the time. Wouldn't surprise me if she shows up any minute, hat in hand."

A few days came and went, without Lily. Clarissa's health began to wane. From day one she had headaches, which a steady stream of painkillers kept mostly at bay. Then her strength left, making her hands shake like an old woman's as she got strapped down for routine Navigations. Finally, mid-session with an accused child molester, her body rebelled; a seizure ripped her out of the man's mindscape with painful and dangerous abruptness. Her replacement arrived within the day.

"Dr. McGowan."

Clarissa looked up from her hospital bed to find a memory standing in the doorway. Albert Munfred, with a few extra pounds and much nicer shoes; his eyes still glinted with the playfulness that coaxed her into bed almost a decade earlier.

"They got _you_ to fill in?" She gave him a lopsided smile, expecting him to grin back. Instead, he shifted his weight and glanced at the floor.

"How are you feeling?" He'd lost some of the confidence she remembered. Then again, she must look a lot different than the last time he had seen her. A few years older, a whole lot sicker.

"Stress," she said. "It does a body good."

His eyes narrowed. "I heard about your sister."

"Who hasn't?" She shrugged. "They're convinced she'll pop up any day now."

"You're not?"

She went still; her jaw tightened around the thought of Lily running away.

"My sister was happy. Something happened to her and—" She sucked in a deep breath. "And I'm sure the FBI is doing everything in their power to make sure she returns home safely."

Al came a few steps into the room. "It's good to see you. I wish it was under better circumstances."

"Well, I'm glad they chose you to step in. Couldn't think of a more qualified candidate."

"Thanks. Speaking of..." He glanced toward the door of her room.

"Go. You have big shoes to fill."

"It's only temporary," he said. "You'll be up in no time."

Clarissa shrugged, too tired to answer.

"I'll stop by again tomorrow." A hint of a smile curved his lips.

"I should be going home tonight. Come by the house. I'll order pizza." She smoothed her hair. "We can catch up."

"Sounds great." Al pulled the door shut as he left. The click of the handle sounded as loud as a gunshot as a migraine flared behind her eyes. She clenched her teeth and laid back, thumb on the nurse's call button.

~

Clarissa couldn't go home. That night took her lower, so weak she couldn't roll her head, so sick she couldn't keep down water. No one knew what was wrong or how to fix her.

Except for Clarissa.

She had a theory, at least, which was more than the doctors had. The pain originated in her head—in her brain, to be exact. She felt something there, beyond the flashing lights and pain. Something wrong. If she got in there, she might be able to use her skills as a Navigator to figure out what was causing her so much grief.

She knew what a tumor looked like, and burst blood vessels and tiny pockets of air. They were all problems she'd found in her time as a Navigator. Occasionally, the anomalies explained the aberrant behavior of criminals; now, they might explain her body's attack against itself.

Getting the drugs to go under was a hurdle. From an objective view she was in no condition to attempt even a rudimentary investigation. The attempt might kill her, but the thought of lying there with Lily missing was worse than any risk to her self. Clarissa summoned her strength and pressed the call button.

"Hertz...bring me Hertz."

~

Agent Hertz twisted his wedding band around and around as he paced at the foot of Clarissa's bed.

"Why can't someone else go in, check things out?" He said. "Does it have to be you?"

"No one would get clearance," she said. A few hours' rest had buoyed her strength a little, but she still felt like a dinghy battered by a hurricane. "No one else is as _good._ "

"That Munfred guy. Couldn't he..." Hertz paused and wrinkled his nose. "On second thought, I wouldn't trust him near my tender bits. No reason to sic him on you."

"You don't like Al?"

"Ah...well, you know." Hertz shrugged his shoulders, making his ill-fitting suit coat bunch up around his neck. "Gives me the heebie-jeebies is all."

"He's very good at...what he does." Clarissa closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing, while a surge of icy flame fluttered over her skin. When she opened her eyes, Hertz stood next to the bed, glaring at her.

"You can't even hold a conversation, and you want me to steal drugs for you. Help you kill yourself?" He grabbed the rail of her bed and shook his head, once. "No way. I couldn't face my wife, much less the girls. I've never killed a man, in all my years in service to this country, and I'm not going to get my first notch in with a lady Navigator."

"I'll be fine."

"You'll be _dead_." He started to turn, to leave, to walk out and take her one chance, the one ear that listened to her. She grabbed his wrist. Her fingers trembled with the effort. He could have pulled away, easy, but he stopped, his eyes focused on the exit.

"I'm dying already. No one knows...what's wrong. No one has the... _guts_ to find out. Please, Hertz." She dropped his wrist, her fingers going limp. "I have to find my sister and I'm in... _no_ condition to do that."

"We have a dozen men looking for her."

"Looking for a runaway...you mean." His silence confirmed her suspicion. "Just one dose, Hertz. Just...one."

His shoulders sagged. She had her chance, then. One chance to figure out what the hell was wrong with her and maybe, if luck was on her side, fix it.

~

Clarissa woke from a dream to find a warm, plastic syringe in her hand. Hertz had been and gone, probably not wanting to witness a suicide. Clarissa didn't blame him for running away. It would be easier without him, she told herself. No witnesses, no one to answer to. Part of her wished he'd stayed, though. That way, when she came out of her mindscape, she would have someone familiar waiting.

The corridors outside her room were quiet. Only a few shuffling footsteps and the gentle, not-quite-there murmuring from the nurse's station down the hall. She was as alone as anyone got in a hospital spanning two city blocks.

She drank a glass of water, alarmed at how much liquid sloshed over the lip of the cup, onto her blanket. Her tremors were getting worse, threatening to shake her heart loose. She had to do it now. Any longer and she might not be able to get the needle into a vein.

She ripped one of the strings off the back of her hospital gown and wrapped it twice around her upper left arm. Pumped her fist a few times until a creamy blue vein surfaced in her elbow. After a deep, centering breath, she poised the needle over her arm, slid it in, and pressed the plunger.

Fire bloomed in her skin. The room tilted first one way, then the other, like being inside a ship caught in a storm. The first time Clarissa experienced the leap from reality to mindscape, she'd been sick for two days and vaguely nauseous for nearly a week. Now, after countless leaps into the subconscious, her own and others, the vertigo felt familiar. Nostalgic, even. She rode the waves until they deposited her on the shore of her mind.

~

Every individual creates their own scape, colored by their unspoken desires, their hidden fears. Most people never witness the inside of their mind. This is a good thing. Navigators are chosen for their ability to resist base temptation, as well as their strength under pressure. The mind can create a world of intense beauty and perfection, or it can craft a place populated by one's own inner demons. More often than not, the two extremes mix to create a bright, alluring surface crawling with unseen dangers. Clarissa's scape was no exception.

She walked along a street she recognized from her childhood. Clean, modern houses lined the street. Occasionally she caught a glimpse of movement behind a curtain, or the far-off laughter of a child, but she encountered no one. The streets were as empty as her home.

Clarissa noticed the path shrinking as she continued into her scape, and the sky overhead turning dark with clouds. The houses looked less and less like memories, with steeply pitched roofs, screen doors hanging on a single screw, shattered windows and violent graffiti. Tall, unkempt hedges sprang up around her, keeping her on the narrow path. The air became thick, tinged with smoke. Ahead of her, the road turned a sharp corner. Tendrils of smoke curled around the corner, moving like an entity with a will of its own.

She stopped a few yards from the corner. One of the first lessons potential Navigators learn is how to deal with dangers in the mindscape. Essentially, nothing created solely with the mind can harm a Navigator's body; their mind, however, is in constant jeopardy. The easiest way to harm the mind is to make it believe the body has been hurt. Navigators who have forgotten their training can come out of the scape physically intact but forever lost in their own terrors.

She hadn't created this smoke. The sense of a dark presence around the bend rolled over her, setting her skin tingling. None of it came from her mind. An intruder lurked, and it wanted her dead.

"You cannot hurt me." She walked to the corner, and turned to face the smoke.

~

A small, one-story house sat a sprawling, otherwise vacant lot. Smoke and wisps of delicate fibers waved around the house's broken windows, but she saw no flame. No wind ruffled her hair. She stood at the end of the cul-de-sac, assessing the house, not quite ready.

The front door slammed open, and the street shrank away. The house hurled towards her, ready or not. The base of the stairs stopped inches from her toes. Smoke clouded her eyes and the fibers from the windows caught on her skin, pulling her onto the porch. She stumbled up the steps and landed on her knees at the threshold.

Though she knew she had no choice but to go inside, Clarissa hesitated. She'd never seen the elements in her scape behave so aggressively. On the rare occasions she'd allowed a Navigator inside, their presence had always been distant and respectful. Until this moment, Clarissa hadn't known this kind of invasion was even possible. Someone strong lay behind this mess.

The doorway hung thick with the same gossamer fibers hung in the windows. Clarissa stood and barged through. Tiny, black bodies fell on her shoulders, in her hair, and tiny, black legs raced over her skin as she broke the sticky strings.

Spiders. Dozens of them. Falling from a _web_.

Clarissa screamed, thrusting her way into the house, her hands rushing to pull the web off, to shake the spiders out of her clothes. Pinpricks of heat sprang up on her neck and wrists where the spiders sank their venomous fangs into her skin. She screamed again, blind to everything but the attack, and fell onto carpet. The impact brought a moment of clarity, and she closed her eyes.

"You cannot hurt me. You cannot hurt me." She spoke the words like a spell, over and over, until the last tickling leg disappeared.

When she opened her eyes the smoke, the webs, and the house were gone as well. She sat in the middle of an empty lot, holding a clear plastic box. Inside, a furry tarantula, as big as a tea saucer, scuttled back and forth. The sense of invasion emanated from the spider. She set the box down, then searched the lot for a rock, a pipe, anything her mind might have left. She found the head of a shovel, separated from its handle, a few yards away.

When she opened the top of the box the spider scrambled out, faster than she'd expected. She plunged the shovelhead into the ground, missing the spider by an inch. Her second shot came closer, lopping of two legs, slowing the beast down. Her third attempt, more controlled, drove the edge of the shovelhead through the middle of the tarantula's body. It vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving behind a faint smell of burning chemicals.

Clarissa slumped over, waiting for the drugs to recede and pull her out. Her scape felt clean, but she knew she hadn't won. Not yet. Whoever had planted that... _thing_ in her wouldn't stop. Not until they got her where they wanted her.

Dead.

~

"Clarissa McGowan." A man's voice, husky and business-like. Clarissa blinked her eyes. "You're under arrest for the murder of Lily McGowan, and the unauthorized use of Navigator issue psycho-narcotics."

"What?" The hospital room came into focus. A uniformed police officer stood next to her bed. He held handcuffs, one end attached to her wrist. The other end he locked around the metal bars of her bed. Another officer stood at the foot of the bed. Behind him, in the doorway, stood Hertz. His arms were crossed, eyes narrowed.

"Hertz, why—"

" _Shut up_." His hands turned into tight fists. "You lying little—"

The officer at the end of the bed stepped in front of him and urged him out, leaving her alone with the arresting officer.

"My sister? What happened?"

"You have the right to remain silent."

"Where is Lily? Why are you arresting me?" She yanked on the handcuff. "Take this off immediately."

"Everything you say is being recorded," he tapped the device stuck in his ear, "and can and will be used against you in a court of law. An attorney will be provided for you by your employer."

"What are the charges?" She yanked again at the cuffs. The officer's lips twitched.

"I am advising you to calm down, Dr. McGowan. As the chief suspect in a murder investigation—"

"Murder?" Tears blurred her eyes, hot and quick and painful. "Lily?"

"As well as charges lobbied against you by PsySearch Incorporated regarding the illegal use of company property, and the unregistered consumption of Level 3 psycho-narcotics."

"Lily is..." She ducked her head, not wanting to look at the officer, or the hospital room, or anything outside the safety of her own mind.

Except now, even that wasn't safe.

~

The hospital discharged her, on account of her "miraculous recovery," leaving the officers free to transport her to the nearest holding facility to wait for her intake paperwork to process. She shut out the world, focused on walking, or signing her name, or taking deep breaths. Not on the lurking specter of Lily.

Her attorney spoiled everything.

"Call me Candy, please." The woman wore her dark hair in a messy bouffant, like a halo around her head, matching orange nail polish and lipstick. Clarissa had a hard time paying attention to the words coming through those bright lips, and a harder time ignoring them altogether.

"I don't need an attorney," Clarissa said, as Candy took a seat in the standard issue steel chair, across the standard issue table, in the standard issue interview room. Everything looked like Clarissa imagined: clean, yet somehow grimy, and homogenous.

"You know what you're being accused of?"

"I didn't hurt my sister."

"I see. Well, they found her body in your basement—"

"What?" No. She didn't want to hear this. Not yet.

"Wrapped up in somebody's pretty wool coat. Shame," Candy tapped her nails. "Waste of a good coat."

"But I didn't—"

"Which is why you need me, sweet cakes. They don't want to sic a Nav on you. They think you know tricks. So we have to start this the old fashioned way." Candy reached into her briefcase and pulled out a manila folder, which she slapped in front of Clarissa. "Go ahead. Take a look. Better you know now than down the road. You need to be prepared."

Clarissa pushed the folder away.

"Uh-uh." Candy shoved the folder right back at her. "You get those out and you study them. I want to see your reaction."

When Clarissa didn't move, Candy sprung up, snatched the folder and upended it over the table. A stack of glossy photos fell out, a few sliding to the floor, onto her lap. Lily, eyes blank and filmy, face mottled with blood and bruises and death, glared up at her. Clarissa flinched, sending the photo to the floor with the others. She squeezed her eyes shut, but she felt Lily, pleading for help from the silent photos.

"I can be very patient when it suits me," Candy said. A moment later Clarissa heard a click, then the smell of burning filled the room. It took her back to the house with the spiders and the webs and the acrid smoke. Lily went missing the same day she started getting sick. That couldn't be a coincidence. Whoever put that house in her head had something to do with Lily's murder. But who would want to kill her sister? And why?

Clarissa cracked open her eyes. She let herself look at the photos through the blur of eyelashes awhile, until she saw them clearly, almost dispassionately. The image in the photos wasn't her sister. Her sister was dead. The photos captured a body and a crime scene, not a life. Not her sister.

~

Clarissa dismantled the photos, circling anything that might be important with a thick red pen, making notes on the back. Then Candy left, and everything she'd managed to gloss over in the photos hit her with the force of a wrecking ball. She stumbled back to her cell, a guard on each side keeping her from falling down. She wanted to crumple in the musty hallway and scream until her throat bled, sob until her body withered into an empty husk.

The night crawled by. She drifted in and out of sleep, plagued by nightmares featuring her sister's battered face, and a whirl of smoke and spider webs. Morning came, signaled by a bowl of congealed oatmeal.

She stared at her breakfast until a guard tapped on her cell.

"Dr. McGowan." The guard unlocked her door. "You have a visitor."

~

Albert jumped up when Clarissa entered the interview room. He wiped his hands on his thighs, managed a shaky smile.

"I know what you're thinking," she said. He took a little step back, eyebrows raised in surprise. She smiled; it felt like a lie. "Green isn't really my color."

"I'm so sorry." Al pulled a chair out, motioned for her to sit. He sat across from her. Leaned forward so his hands sat between, something like an offering. "I came as soon as I heard. This is the last place I expected to find you, Clarissa."

"It wasn't on my to-do list." She folded her hands in her lap, ignoring his gesture of communion.

"Yeah..." He leaned back, moving his arms apart as his hands slid off the table. She saw a flash of ink on his wrist before he crossed his arms over his chest and frowned. "I'm afraid they're going to call me in."

"And cut our little visit short?" She winced at the rancor in her voice.

"To interview you." He kept his tone even, though his shoulders tensed, hiking closer to his ears.

"I don't think they'll bother. I'm too slippery." She shrugged. "I know how to hide things."

He put his hands on the table again, and Clarissa saw his wrist more clearly. She bit the inside of her lip to keep quiet. Less than an inch across, marked indelibly over his pulse, a spider clung to a stylized web. Clarissa took a deep, steadying breath and caught a hint of wood smoke.

"You smell like autumn." She forced a wistful smile. "Like burning...leaves."

He ducked his head and surreptitiously sniffed his shirt.

"The place I'm staying in has this old stove in the living room. I guess I'm not too adept at tending a fire." He laughed a little.

"How long have you been staying there?" _Since my sister was murdered? Before? How long would it take to make me sick?_

"Not long. It's just until...things settle down." He shifted in his seat. "How are you faring?"

"Well, I was thinking about getting some prison ink." He stiffened. "To mark the occasion. Something sweet, like a heart or a puppy." She locked her eyes on his. "Or a spider."

"Not very sanitary conditions." He broke eye contact and jumped out of his chair. "I need to be going."

She wanted to stop him, make him turn back time and undo what he'd done. But her breath turned to ice before she could speak. Then he was gone, and she was back in her cell, tasting bitter, unspoken words.

~

Time in the holding facility passed differently than time on the outside. Clarissa woke when someone else decided it was time, ate when everyone else ate, saw the sun during the same half hour every day. She started to forget what deep shadows looked like. Hours crawled on broken minutes and each day felt both longer than possible, and strangely short. Candy came once a week to brief her on the proceedings, wearing a new, shocking shade of lipstick each time.

Two months after she'd been arrested, after trying a dozen different ways to tell her attorney about Albert and her suspicions, the bastard returned. This time, he came with armed escorts and a warrant to search her mind.

"Sufficient time has passed to make a Navigational foray potentially valuable to the prosecution _and_ the defense," Al said, speaking to Candy. "The procedure will be monitored by skilled professionals. We believe it to be an essential step in discovering the truth."

"You could start with a thorough investigation of the evidence," Candy lobbed back. But she couldn't stop the procedure. Al would be inside Clarissa, more intimate than he'd been when they shared a bed, and not nearly as welcome.

~

Everything about the setup of the hospital room felt inside out. Clarissa was used to being on the other end of the Navigator relationship, used to staring into the dark heart of murderers and thieves. She felt a sudden, deep empathy with the criminals she examined. Did they all feel as she did now, like a rat in a lab?

A nurse covered her with a light blanket and hooked her up to an IV drip, filled with a special concoction of drugs and hydrating fluids. Almost at once her eyelids started drooping, her muscles relaxing. The sound of the nurses and Al grew distant. She closed her eyes, opened them through sheer force of will, and saw a familiar figure leaning against the wall.

Hertz. She hadn't realized until then how much she needed to see him. He wore an expression of disgust but also hope.

Clarissa slipped into a drugged unconscious toying with one thought: did the rat ever fight back?

~

Her scape was just as she'd left it: the air vaguely sweet, like the honeysuckles that grew on the fence in her childhood home, the sky a clear, aching blue. The same sky she remembered from her twelfth birthday, when her father returned from war as a present. The houses were a mixture of youth and travels; two story one-car homes nestled next to thatch roof cottages, sharing lawns with crumbling Roman ruins.

There were no skulking shadows or hint of smoke. The only things hiding in her scape were things she'd hidden there. Lily's bronzed baby slippers. The bracelet her first boyfriend gave to her for Valentine's Day.

Clarissa tilted her head back and let the sunshine of her mind warm her cheeks. She had a few, sweet moments in this world, where she could almost pretend the last two months of her life never happened. She meant to cherish her time.

It wasn't enough.

The sky tore open, spewing black into her perfect blue. A howling wind swept down, sucking up roofs of the houses shingle-by-shingle, spewing sulfur and wood smoke. Only Clarissa remained untouched. Not a hair on her head moved, or a scrap of her clothing. The streets were torn, asphalt rushing past her. Trees screamed and splintered; her memories collapsed.

With a final shriek the sky closed and the wind dropped to an eerie stillness. Al stood amidst the wreckage, not ten yards from her. He wore the white jumpsuit of a Navigator.

"You know," he said, "in the mindscape, no one can hear you scream."

"Is that supposed to scare me?"

Al chuckled, shaking his head. The distance between them halved and halved again until he stood within spitting distance. Clarissa cringed; the world around them cringed with her, became smaller, more frightening. Al glanced up, smiling.

Clarissa threw herself at him, taking advantage of his distraction. She clung to him, forced her head up against his, and willed her mind to latch onto the traces he spread throughout her scape. She'd never tried something so radical, had never needed to try until now. She'd heard plenty of rumors, though. Time to find out if the rumors were true.

She gathered all of his markers and pulled her own scape in. Smaller, smaller, focused on his energy, his thoughts and the wild emotions leaping all over her scape. She heard a sound like tires on asphalt. A bright flash of light blinded her. She fell, suddenly holding on to nothing.

When her vision returned, she found herself in a scape not her own.

~

Al was nowhere and everywhere. Clarissa sat on cold concrete, a sidewalk at the edge of a school playground. One set of swings, with a few battered chains and one swing left intact. A jungle gym rusted and falling to pieces, the school itself little more than a pile of rubble. The building had been gutted by fire, and the acrid stench of smoke clung to the air.

The whole scape felt deserted. Nothing moved. No breeze stirred.

Clarissa got to her feet. She had to move, but didn't now where to go. Abandoned buildings stretched down the street, curving off at wild angles.

Al was in there, somewhere, his essence distilled into a single, ideal image of himself. At that thought, she looked down, and almost laughed. She wore the clothes she'd had on the first time they met. Short black skirt, tall black boots, and a leather motorcycle jacket. Never mind she's never been on a motorcycle. He wanted to relive the past, when things were simpler. Before she'd passed him up, first in academics, then position. She ripped off the coat and threw it to the ground.

"Come out you worthless son of a—"

Lightning cracked across the sky, a dozen arcs at once. Thunder shook the air. Clarissa clamped her hands over her ears and screamed for Al to come out of hiding and face her. She knew it wouldn't be easy. He wanted to play, and all she wanted to do was rip his murderous heart out.

~

Clarissa ran down the street, away from the playground, and found herself facing—the playground. She turned around and found—the playground. She squeezed her eyes shut, counted to ten. When she opened her eyes: playground. Only now, on the lonely swing, sat a boy, a few years younger than Lily.

He had his head bowed as he pushed himself back and forth with the toe of one shoe. His lanky brown hair fell in a sheet, obscuring his face. She approached, her boots crunching in the gravel.

"Al?" She stopped just out of reach. The boy looked up, eyes flashing. Clarissa took a step back, pushed by the anger in his face. His nostrils flared, eyebrows scrunched together. He seemed ready to claw at her with his bare hands. She steeled herself, preparing for battle, when his expression softened.

"You found me." He shrugged. "You shouldn't be here, you know."

"Are you expecting company?" She glanced around. The boy seemed harmless now. Sadness clouded his eyes, but the violence had fled. Which meant Al, in his present form, was still out there.

"No one visits." The boy scraped his shoes in the gravel.

"I'll visit you." She closed the gap between them by a few feet. Maybe the boy could lead her to Al, or draw him out somehow.

"No one visits," he repeated. His feet scuffed deeper in the gravel. Back and forth, back and forth. Digging.

"No one stays." He dug deeper, until his sneaker brushed something that wasn't gravel. Something softer. Two thin fingers poked out of the ground. He continued digging, uncovering more fingers, a hand, a wrist.

"Not even you, Clarissa."

Clarissa tore her eyes away from the hand and stepped back as the boy—not a boy anymore but _Al_ , all grown up—jumped off the swing and landed on her. His nails scrabbled over her bare legs, scratching jagged lines in her skin.

"There was one, then another and another and none of them _stayed_." He sunk his teeth into her arm. Through the rush of burning pain Clarissa grabbed at her training.

"You cannot hurt me. You _cannot_ hurt me. Agh!" She jerked away as he bit her again. She should have kept the coat—armor to protect her from his gnashing teeth.

He hauled himself up so his body covered hers. His face shifted, at once becoming young, childish, then aging, wrinkles and gray hairs emerging and receding. He had no idea who he was, where he belonged in the world. Here in his mind, he could be everything.

"You were the only one I let go." He crushed his lips to hers.

His tongue pushed into her mouth, gagging her. She clamped her teeth together, felt tissue resist then tear. He convulsed against her; Clarissa shoved him off and rolled to her feet and spat him out. She tasted him, darkness pooled on her tongue. Survival instincts told her to run, fast, but this was not the wilderness, and she couldn't escape by fleeing. Lacking any better ideas, she drove the sole of her ridiculous party boots into his face.

She stomped until he stopped moving, plus a little more for good measure. It wouldn't stop him, not altogether, but she hoped the psychological trauma of _feeling_ like he'd been mashed to a pulp would make it difficult for him to gather his strength. With any luck, the drugs would wear off, and she would be yanked out of Al's scape before he could regroup. Before she left, though, she had to do one thing.

~

The gravel tore at her fingers. Every time she brushed the clammy skin of the buried body she shuddered. Still she dug, finally taking off her filthy boot and scraping at the ground with the heel. The gravel moved slowly, rolling back into the depression almost as soon as she'd moved it out. She kept looking over her shoulder at Al, but he didn't move. Not yet.

A forearm...an elbow...scraps of cloth covering the upper arm and shoulder and, eventually, the head a girl, preserved in this halfway house of memories. It wasn't anyone Clarissa recognized, which served to both relieve and infuriate her. If it wasn't Lily, and it wasn't her own face, then who?

Clarissa risked another glance at Al. Bloody gravel stained the place where he had lain. Her eyes swept over the playground, searching. No Al in sight. Underneath her the ground seemed to shift. All around her tiny rocks skittered against each other. Little mounds began to grow in the gravel, pulsing like heartbeats, and one by one hands crept through, clutching at the sky. At least a dozen, maybe more.

How many bodies? And why the hell wasn't she waking up?

She yanked off her other boot and threw it away, then stood and ran for the sidewalk. The playground stretched and grew, keeping the concrete just out of reach. Fingernails grazed her ankles. She jumped, only to land on another creeping hand. Soon, the playground writhed with clutching fingers.

"Kind of like a garden," Al said behind her.

"What have you done?" She said, jerking away.

"Five petaled flowers, each unique and yet, really, all the same." He wore the face she'd known in college, still young, full of promise. "I planted them. I made them grow. They're beautiful."

"They were someone's children. Someone's _sister_."

"Oh...oh, yes." He grinned, reaching out for her. "I know. But not _your_ sister, Clarissa. That's what you think? I killed your sister?"

"You _did_ ," she said, retreating. Al shook his head.

"I infected you because I wanted you gone. I wanted your job. I'm tired of the risks." He waved his arm to indicate the playground. "It's so much easier to let someone else do the crime, when we can experience them so vividly, in safety. Isn't it amazing? We can sneak in to someone's brain and get _anything_ we want."

"I only want the truth."

"You're limiting yourself. Good thing you won't be wasting such a valuable opportunity, anymore."

"I'll tell them, when I—"

"You'll tell them what? I'm a murderer? And they would believe that, coming from you?"

"We can find evidence you killed Lily. They'll employ another Navigator to find her...in here." She choked out the last word, imagining her sister buried in Al's garden.

"No, I'm afraid they won't. Lily is not in my scape, but in _yours_. Why would I treasure something I haven't been a part of?" His grin widened. "You know, I've seen many Navigators pulled because of psychological problems, but I don't think any of them ever did what you did. Bravo. Always best to go out with a bang, if you're going to go at all."

"I didn't..." Clarissa faltered, not trusting herself. She thought back to the last time she'd seen Lily, the ridiculous fight over Chinese food, the bottle of wine.

The blood.

"Oh, my god..." Her knees gave out, and she struck the gravel hard. Hands clasped around her thighs, holding her in place.

"Good." Al settled down an arm's length from her. The hands near him pulled back into the earth. "Now we wait, and when we emerge, I tell them you did, indeed, murder your lovely sister. And you tell them I've done the same. One of us will drive home, and one of us will go to prison. Care to place a bet?"

"I don't remember..." She tried to push the flashes of memory away, but as soon as one left another piece of that night came back, stronger, until the whole scene played out for her.

Arguing, going to Lily's room, pushing her down the stairs—she hadn't meant to hurt her, but once she'd started, she found she couldn't stop. She'd tried to burn the body, get rid of evidence, but the flames kept dying in the damp basement. She'd rolled her up in some tarpaulin, took a shower, went to sleep. Her subconscious did the rest, covering up the night under the guise of a nasty dream. And the spider...?

"How did you..." She touched her forehead. "That was you, wasn't it?"

He took a deep breath, looking almost jolly. "Yes, like I said, I wanted you out of the way. Just dumb luck my efforts coincided with your break. Makes your removal rather more permanent."

Clarissa slumped over, suddenly exhausted. She felt defeated; by Al, by herself, her treacherous mind. All the training, all the therapy, for what? She turned out just as bad as the men and women she examined.

They sat together in silence until the sky began to waver.

"Almost time, now," Al said, as his scape dissolved around them.

~

Clarissa told Candy everything, from her brutal night with Lily to Al's secret obsession. The only part of her confession that made a difference was the part that put her away.

Prison was a lonely place for Clarissa. She was the reason—at least in part—many of the women were locked up. They took it out on her with threats and bruises. She considered herself lucky.

Al took her job. She hoped the secondary pleasure he took from the other killers served sufficient to keep his own inclinations in check.

She started having nightmares about Lily, and a valley filled with clutching hands. The doctor at the prison gave her drugs, something light. When that didn't work they changed the prescription. Clarissa figured the doctors either didn't know what they were doing, or didn't care; the new pills were lowered doses of the drugs used for Navigation.

Clarissa slept through the night for an entire week. No dreams, no nightmares, no cold sweats or bile. Just sweet, empty sleep.

She started hoarding the pills, wrapped in toilet paper, stuffed inside her mattress. On the seventh night she swallowed her dose, then returned to her cell and took the hidden pills. She slipped, without struggle, into her scape.

In her mind, she found the rows of houses almost as she remembered them. She struggled for a moment to figure out what had changed, and realized with a start that all the windows were open, hung with frothy lace curtains. The lace moved a bit on a gentle breeze that tickled her arms and smelled of honeysuckle.

She walked down the street, reveling in her escape. As she turned a corner, she found herself staring at the empty house Al placed inside her, months before. There was no hint of smoke, or spider webs, but the place still emanated darkness. Curious, Clarissa mounted the steps. As she reached the porch, the front door swung open. Lily, wearing the clothes Clarissa last saw her in, stood in the doorway.

"Welcome back," she said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Eliza Hirsch is a science fiction and fantasy writer living in the Seattle area. She is a Clarion West alum, loves cats of all kinds, and collects deep thoughts about serial killers. You can find her online at exploringeliza.com.

# Book Review

# Shards of History

From the Amazon.com Book Description:

"Like all Taakwa, Malia fears the fierce winged creatures known as Jeguduns who live in the cliffs surrounding her valley. When the river dries up and Malia is forced to scavenge farther from the village than normal, she discovers a Jegudun, injured and in need of help.

Malia's existence—her status as clan mother in training, her marriage, her very life in the village—is threatened by her choice to befriend the Jegudun. But she's the only Taakwa who knows the truth: that the threat to her people is much bigger and much more malicious than the Jeguduns who've lived alongside them for decades. Lurking on the edge of the valley is an Outsider army seeking to plunder and destroy the Taakwa, and it's only a matter of time before the Outsiders find a way through the magic that protects the valley—a magic that can only be created by Taakwa and Jeguduns working together.

Now Malia is in a race against time. She must warn the Jeguduns that the Taakwa march against them and somehow convince the Taakwa that their real enemy isn't who they think it is before the Outsiders find a way into the valley and destroy everything she holds dear."

This issue I decided to review _Shards of History_ , by Rebecca Roland. Roland is a New Mexico fantasy and horror writer (http://rebeccarolandwriter.blogspot.com/). I have not read anything by Roland before. This is her first novel, though she has several short story credits to her name.

This novel was picked by me more on a whim than anything. The publisher had asked if I would pick one of their novels to review, and the cover art on this one mesmerized me. When I read the book description, I really wanted to read it. Lately I've found myself wanting to read good fantasy novels and the premise of this one sounded solid.

Malia is a Taakwa, a more alpha female society. And Malia is training to be the clan mother, an important and crucial leadership position in their group. The Taakwa live in "the valley" and rely on the falls to feed the river that provides water to the villages. The cliffs of the waterfall are inhabited by the Jeguduns, flying creatures that the Taakwa have come to fear. So when the waterfall slows and the river levels drop, the Taakwa naturally blame Jeguduns.

Malia discovers an injured Jegudun nearby her village, and discovers an unlikely friend. The problem comes when her new friend shows her some truth, and she finds out the history of her people and the Jeguduns is wrong. Now, Malia must try to save her people from death by trying to convince them of the impossible.

Roland takes the fantasy genre in her hands and blows some fresh new life into it. Her ability to create great imagery in my mind was stunning. I could see the events and landscape unfolding through her words and it was something that truly amazed me. Her ability with words makes for a strong foundation to this novel.

Malia is the main character of this novel, and I liked her. She was believable, I enjoyed her personality and I found that she was driven to succeed even when she thought she couldn't. Her husband, Dalibor, on the other hand was flat. There was nothing to this man other than rage from some unknown source. Since many of his actions were catalysts for Malia, I would have liked to see more to him. The stereotype abusive husband mold was just not enough for me to believe him. There are several other characters throughout the novel, some with a brief stay and some that stay through most of the novel. Truthfully Dalibor was the only weak character in the group.

Kushtrim is one of the Outsiders, the leader of them. His character is strong, he has real struggles to face, and he had purpose for his actions. And, as the "bad guy", I liked him. He wasn't evil. His actions were undertaken in a believable way so that in some cases I really hoped him might find a way to help his people. The story of his struggles becomes a side story to the main novel the eventually intertwines with the main story.

The story here is very strong. As I just mentioned we follow two separate story lines. Malia's main story line and Kushtrim's side story are told very well. And when these two stories come together, they collide for an epic climax to this great novel. I don't know if this novel could have done anything better with the story telling.

The story is available on Amazon.com for the Kindle right now, but the publisher tells me the novel will be released in trade paperback in May. You can get this for your Kindle for $5.99. If you have read my reviews you know, I am not very lenient on eBook pricing. For a debut novelist, and an electronic file, I just don't understand this price point. When you factor in the talent of Rebecca, the price is far more bearable. Hopefully the paperback is far more reasonable, as I would love to add this to my collection.

Rebecca Roland has a magnificent story to tell us with Shards of History. Her style is remarkable, her characters are amazing, and the story is worth every bit of time you spend reading it. This book is a must for any fantasy reader.

The summary:

Shards of History

By Rebecca Roland

Published August 20, 2012 (Kindle) May 2013 (Paperback)

ASIN B0090BVCWK

Available on Kindle at: Amazon.com

US: www.amazon.com/dp/B0090BVCWK

UK: www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0090BVCWK

My ratings:

Prose: Excellent

Characters: Excellent

Story: Excellent

Value: Okay/Good

Overall: Excellent

Prepare to be taken by storm with Rebecca Roland fever. This novel will amaze you and you will find yourself reading it more than once. The fantasy genre has a new gem with this novel.

# Respect

# By Jay Caselberg

# Art By: Teresa Tunaley

Howard the Gimp usually shied away from Waterfall. He went there in the Season of Knowing—the time when Mother Century took the knowledge and molded it to shape the season. That woman held the embers of change within her frail old hands and blessed the world. Normally Howard kept away from the town. Mother Century was the only thing that could draw him there willingly, and today was the day.

Howard struggled up the hill, arching his back for balance, his bad leg dragging behind him. The wind breathed chill in his face and puffed his hair up in loose strands. The rush of air made his eyes tear. He wiped the tears away with the back of his hand and prayed quietly that today there would be no children.

Not today.

The children threw clods and laughed; laughed at his twisted limbs and labored gait. A mother might drag her child away and shake it by the arm, but Howard would see it looking at him over its shoulder and laughing still. Only Mother Century did not laugh. That was because she was wise. She held the key to the world.

He could see the house at the top of the hill, the two large trees like pillars on either side. He strained up the hill towards his goal, keeping to the edge of the dirt road, avoiding the ditch. He had fallen once, lost his footing, to lie in the chill mud, barely able to scramble up through the long grass and slush with no one to help him. He would not make that mistake again.

He reached the top and stood panting while the sweat cooled upon his brow, his breath making clouds in the chill air. Mother Century's house lay before him, just the same as it was every season. Ten years he had been coming, and for ten years, it had been the same, ever since his sixth year. It seemed impossible that anything could change—but since the Practicalists came, things had changed anyway. Their words spoke of logic and science. They preached against things like the Knowing, and now, today, he knew they were in the town again. They roved from place to place, spreading their word, and today, once more, it was the turn of Waterfall.

Howard wiped the back of his hand across his forehead and summoned the effort to walk to her door. His bad leg dragged behind, leaving a temporary trail in the long grass leading to the porch. The cottage was built of old wood—old like Mother Century.

He grunted with the effort, and wished the way he always did that there were railings beside the stairs to support him. Step by step, he ascended. He stood before the plain wooden door and knocked twice.

For a long time, there was no response, and then he heard the sound of shuffling from within. Slowly the door creaked open, and Howard blinked his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Mother Century stood, her hand resting on the open door, her parchment face smiling at him.

"Why, Howard," she said. "I'd almost given up hope."

"I'm not too late?" he asked.

She shook her head and motioned him inside. She wore a shawl draped around her shoulders, vaguely patterned and dark, like the rest of her clothing.

"I'm sorry I kept you waiting," he said as he followed her into the room and she closed the door behind him. Thick curtains covered the windows. Simple furniture decorated the room and a row of ornaments sat upon the mantle.

"Is your leg troubling you again?" she asked, concern upon her face as she reached up a frail hand to rest it on his shoulder.

Howard shook his head.

"No, no. That isn't what delayed me. I have to pass through Waterfall to get here from my house. There was a group of Practicalists gathered in the town. I didn't want them to see where I was going."

Mother Century clasped her hands in front of her and slowly nodded her head.

"So, they've spread as far as Waterfall have they?" She sighed, then peered up at him. "You know if they succeed, Howard, it could mean the end of the world. They would banish the Knowing." She gave a slight shrug and a shake of her head. "I have heard those stories before," she said with another brief sigh. "Come, anyway, there is little we can do about it now. Let us take tea."

Howard followed her into the kitchen, a little bemused that she seemed to have dismissed it so readily. Mother Century fussed about setting water to boil over the fire. He lowered himself carefully into one of the simple wooden chairs around the rough-hewn table. The kitchen got the most light in Mother Century's house. The windows looked out over the woods behind, stark now in the dormancy of winter. Without the Knowing, they would remain that way forever.

Mother Century finished preparing the tea and sat. She placed a steaming cup in front of Howard and one before herself. She looked across at him, wisps of white hair making a nimbus round her old, lined face. She sipped, watching him over the rim of her cup. Gently she placed the cup back down.

"What is it, Howard?" she asked.

Howard paused before answering. "I hate the Practicalists, Mother Century. Hate them with their flat hats and their long coats. It's not just because of the things they preach. It's just, well...I just hate them."

"And what has given you this hate? Hmm?" She tilted her head a little to the side, then lifted her cup with both hands, waiting for his response with a penetrating gaze.

Howard reached out to his own cup and twirled it slowly round and round.

"Well, they come to our places and they preach their science, but they don't know. They think they understand the way things work, and that we know nothing. They say they want to change the world for us with their _Method_ and their _Science_."

She narrowed her eyes, then smiled. "I think it's something more than that, isn't it, Howard?"

Howard looked around the room at the pale yellow walls, at the fire, at the simple wooden bench and rocked gently back and forth on his chair. He avoided her eyes.

"When I was coming here they saw me. They stopped me in the middle of the town. They said they could fix me—that they had the way to fix me so I'd be _Normal_ ," he said, his voice catching at the last word. He looked down at the floor.

She shook her head. "How little the ignorant know. You have been you for sixteen years, Howard. How could anything _they_ could do change what you are?"

"I don't want them to change me. That's not what I want. I know that. But for them to say they could make me _Normal_. What does that mean?"

He didn't tell her how much—just for an instant—he had wanted what they promised.

She leaned forward and patted him on the leg. "It means nothing. What it means is that _they_ are different, that they don't understand the ways of the world."

"Nobody understands." He wiped at the bottom of his eyes with one finger. "Only you."

Her face grew serious. "Someday, Howard, they will understand. They will all understand. You have to know that. You're a very special person, and no matter what they preach, regardless of their method, that won't change. You are what you are within. Do I complain about my frail body and the pain in my bones? No. I have lived a long, long time, and each year, this body gets a little older. It changes, but so do I. I grow inside, as do you.

"Drink your tea, Howard. Nothing they can say or do will make you a better person. And I like you just as you are." She smiled.

Howard bit his lip and nodded his head, knowing she was right, but the pain and frustration lived within him still.

They finished their tea in silence. Howard watched Mother Century and saw the way her hand trembled as she lifted her cup. Her eyes carried a thin filmy veil and a touch of purple tinged her lips. Traceries of blue marked the veins beneath the skin of her forehead. Mother Century was old, but she was getting older. What would happen when she was gone? She caught him looking at her and he quickly looked away

She eased herself to her feet and cleared their cups away. While she busied herself, Howard looked out the window to the chill woods behind the house. A group of blackbirds rose from the skeletal branches and flew into the air.

"It's time," she said and walked calmly out of the kitchen.

Using the table to lever himself upright, Howard stood and followed her into the small back room. His foot scraped across the wooden floor. The room was bare except for a low table in the corner. Shelves lined the walls and they were full of packets and bottles. Mother Century reached up and retrieved a lantern that she placed on the table and proceeded to light. She lowered the glass over the flame and turned to face him.

"Help me will you, Howard? It's not as easy as it used to be."

She crouched down and felt along the floor. Howard leaned down beside her and found the thick iron ring set into the wood. He hooked his fingers through it and pulled. Together they opened the trapdoor and lowered it gently backward to the floor. Wooden steps led down into the square of darkness. This close to Mother Century, Howard could smell her scent. She smelled of leaves and earth, but underneath it, there was something new— musty sense of something that had not been there before.

Painfully she got to her feet, retrieved the lantern, and then lowered herself into the hole, step by step. Howard followed behind, down to the dark earthen cellar he had visited with her so many times before.

The lantern cast a yellow light upon dark, packed-earth walls. They were ribbed and uneven. Large roots protruded from the floor and flowed around each other in the middle. They ran from wall to wall like fingers, intertwining. All but in the center.

In the very middle of the floor lay a flat open space. The roots circled round it and built a ridged wall marking its edges. Mother Century shuffled over and placed the lantern in the center of the circle, then lowered herself to sit on the earthen floor. Howard hobbled over to join her. He reached back a hand, and supporting himself on the low wooden wall formed by the roots, lowered himself slowly down to sit opposite.

Mother Century reached out a hand, and Howard clasped it firmly within his own. She closed her eyes.

"Very soon I will reach for the spark," she said in a low voice. "But not yet. There are things I want to say to you, here, close to the source of the power. I know you have felt the spark. I have been there and felt it touch you."

Howard made to take his hand away, but Mother Century gripped it tighter.

"Things are changing in the world," she said. "I grow older, and soon, the Knowing will be gone from me. I know my time is not far away. Maybe one year, maybe two. Who can say? The time has come for you to learn the algorithm—to touch the spark of life and send it forth through the network around us so it can fill the world."

"But, Mother Century—"

"No, Howard, I know you can feel it. I know you have touched it. Now it's time for you to learn how to shape it for the first time. When you can hold it and send it shooting through these roots and up through the trees outside, then I will be content."

Howard pulled his hand away this time. "But how can I possibly take _your_ place? What about the others?"

Mother Century opened her eyes and fixed him with a steady gaze.

"There are no others," she said. "One by one they have drifted away. One by one they have been seduced by the world. You are the only one who has stayed, Howard. You are the one who knows." Still she held him, her gaze unblinking. "Now do it, Howard."

Howard had no answer. She was right. There had been others who came to the house, but the last of them had stopped more than a year past. He reached out, clasped her small hand within his own, and closed his eyes.

He sensed her presence beside him, and felt as she drew him with her, down through the earth and rocks, further and further away from the small circle within which they sat. The layers of the world raced past him till they were deep, deep within. She hovered beside him and pointed.

A tiny glow punctuated the darkness. It pulsed with bright energy. This was the spark that gave life. Mother Century reached forward to cup it in her hands, and she began to mould it. Howard watched as she shaped it, using the pressure of her palms. She reached out and took his hands, then placed them carefully around the spark. She guided him as he caressed its shape and the knowledge of how to form it grew within him. Then together, they moved beneath it and pushed.

The spark moved upward, through the solid earth. A long thin trail streamed out behind it, connecting to the powers below. Together they flowed up through the layers, pushing with all their might. Howard felt the natural energy of the Earth charge through him, touching him and making him feel whole—making him feel a part of...everything. His chest felt tight, and he caught his breath. How could he feel so...? But there was no time for thought; Mother Century dragged him onward.

Finally, they neared the surface, and gently, gently, Mother Century guided the spark toward the root system that crossed and tangled in the earth above them. She drew him along and bade him push. The spark flowed into the roots and beyond, spreading out, filled with the essence of life. Mother Century's voice came to him from far away.

"So, it is done." she said.

Slowly Howard opened his eyes. Mother Century sat, her eyes still closed. Her breath came in short gasps, and blue shadows sat around her lips. Her hand within his own was cold. Outside, the sap was beginning to stir within the trees.

Howard helped her upstairs as best he could, then he made her tea. Gradually, as she sipped, the color began to return to her face, but she looked so tired.

"I don't know if I have the energy left for another time," she said. "Though the spark fills me, it takes away from me. You may not feel it yet."

Howard frowned.

"Each time the Season of Knowing comes," she continued, "I finish a little weaker. That is part of the change. Eventually there will be not enough left of me to do what needs to be done. When that time comes, you must take over. The world moves in cycles."

"But—"

A shout from outside the cottage cut off his response.

"You in there! Come outside!"

Howard looked at Mother Century and she returned his gaze steadily.

"Can you hear me in there? Come out!"

Mother Century struggled to her feet, a concerned expression etched across her brow. Howard pushed himself to his feet and followed her out to the front door. She opened it, not even bothering to peer out through the curtains. She walked out onto the porch and Howard hobbled after her.

A semi-circle of townsfolk stood at the edge of the roadway. Some of the faces he recognized. Someone pointed at him and spoke to his neighbor. In the group's center stood three marked as Practicalists by their broad flat hats and long dark coats. The middle one was shorter than the other two and portly. It was he who spoke.

"Old woman, we have come for a reckoning."

Mother Century stepped forward to the porch edge and stood at the top of the stairs.

"How is that, friend?" she asked without raising her voice. "There is nothing for you here."

"We have had enough of your old ways. The time has come for change. For too long you and your kind have shackled the minds of these people with your superstitions. The time has come to banish the reminders of ancient ignorance. We would have you gone from Waterfall." The words were loud, and he spoke them through bared teeth.

Mother Century lifted her hand to rest against the wooden post at the top of the steps, and spoke calmly back at him.

"I told you there is nothing for you here. Let these people go back to their homes. Have you nothing better to do with your time? I am merely an old woman. What harm can I do you?" Howard heard the weariness in her voice.

"I told you we would have you gone from here. Either you leave of your own accord, or we drive you from Waterfall. Which would you have?" He rested fists upon his hips and thrust his chin forward.

One of his companions reached down and plucked a stone from the roadway. He hefted it and looked across at the third of the group. A murmur swelled among the watching townsfolk.

Mother Century sighed and Howard bit his lip.

"I have seen your kind before," she said. "Your type come and go with your threats and blusters and still I'm here. Why don't you learn?"

"You are here because you sway the mind of innocents and keep them from the truth," the fat one said. There were mutters of agreement from the assembled townsfolk.

Mother Century sighed. "It is your kind that keeps them from the truth with your method and your talk of science. You deny what is within you, and you would have them do the same." She shook her head again. "I have no more time for your philosophy nor your childish ways." She dropped her hand, turned and started to move back toward the door.

Just as she turned, the one who held the stone raised his arm and threw. The stone arced through the air and struck with a sickening thud against Mother Century's forehead. She gasped. The blow had staggered her, and she struggled for balance. Howard stretched forward trying to reach her, but her foot went from beneath her and she fell. Howard watched in horror as her frail old form tumbled down the steps.

Howard gave an involuntary moan, staggered across the porch and down the steps. He fell to the ground beside her, looking down at her twisted shape. He reached down and brushed the dirt from her cheek. Her eyes flew open and she looked up into his eyes. There was shock and blood upon her face. Gently, so gently, he cradled her head in his hands.

"Mother Century!" he cried.

"Howard, the time has come," she said between ragged breaths. "Your time is now. Look after the world." And then she breathed her last.

The rage grew within Howard as he held her still small frame to his chest. How could they have done this? He looked up at them, up at these Practicalists, and narrowed his eyes. He opened his lips and formed a snarl. How could they have done this?

The crowd had grown quiet now. The stood in silence and watched. The fat one took a step forward.

"We know you, Howard the Gimp. Leave now. Leave unless you want the same."

Howard harnessed the rage within him. He knew the spark that carried life. He reached out and clawed his hand. He felt within the fat man and touched the spark of life. He grasped it in his hands and squeezed, pressing with all his will. He ground his teeth and closed his fist tighter.

The smug control on the fat one's face faded, to be replaced by a look of shock. The color drained from his face and he clutched at his chest. Then he fell to his knees, wavered for a moment, gasped and toppled forward. Howard released the pressure just in time, before he crushed the life completely from him.

One of his companions leapt forward to turn the fat man over, then looked up at the other of the three. The last man, the stone thrower, stepped forward, growling.

Howard looked at him and held him. He reached out his hand and snarled back. He found the spark of life in the man and squeezed. The man's anger faded and his hand shot to his chest. The other hand swept up and threw the wide hat from his head. It tumbled to the ground, circled on its edge, then fell flat on the dusty roadway. The stone thrower took a step backward.

Howard relaxed his grip. The stone thrower took another step backward, and Howard relaxed his grip some more. He could crush the life from this one just as easily.

He looked down at Mother Century's still face, at the blood seeping from her forehead, and the sadness welled within him. He looked up at the crowd. He looked at the two Practicalists who still stood, and he spoke in a ragged voice that carried shards of ice.

"Now go!" he said. "Do not return." He looked back down at Mother Century's face and his tears began to fall. One of the Practicalists made to step forward again, but Howard lifted his hand, clawing his fingers and snarled. "Go! I warn you!"

The man stepped back. He looked at his companion, and there was fear on his face. "This is not finished," he said.

The Practicalists left, slowly, dragging the unconscious weight of their companion with them. One of the crowd made to advance, but Howard fixed him with a gaze of winter. The man paled and withdrew. One by one, in silence, the crowd drifted away. Howard sat in the long grass alone, rocking Mother Century; rocking her cooling body till darkness fell. The tears dropped from his face and fell to wash away her blood.

It took most of the following day to bury her between the trees, and then he was alone.

~

Howard sat in the yellow kitchen and sipped his tea. It was funny how he had never thought to ask how Mother Century lived. Only two days after the time he laid her to rest, the first package had appeared on the front porch. It was full of food and other things, so much that it could not have come from just one source. The packages had appeared regularly ever since. They had appearing for over twelve years now. Howard smiled to himself, smiled for the people of Waterfall. Respect was a curious thing. He didn't believe the leaving of the offerings was based in fear. Within those people, the old knowledge still stirred. Some of them remembered. Some who had been, spent their own time with Mother Century, and then drifted away. Some who just knew and remained silent but watchful. They did not forget, and that knowledge filled him with subtle warmth.

But now the Season of Knowing was almost upon him and he sat drinking tea alone. A tinge of sadness still touched him as he thought of Mother Century. She had said that things came in cycles. One day his own time would come, and then...

A noise from outside interrupted his musings. He listened and heard it again. Putting down his tea, he struggled to his feet and shuffled to the front door. There, at the base of the steps, stood a young girl. She wore a simple cotton dress and strands of lank, dark hair fell around a pale face. Tears shone slick upon her cheeks.

Howard fumbled with the door handle and dragged himself out to the porch. She looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. No trace of fear or nervousness marked her face, only sorrow. She stood and looked at him, trembling with the cold.

"What is it you want here?" he asked.

"Y—you're the one called Howard?" she stammered.

"Yes. Why do you ask?"

"I came to see if you could help me. They say you know things. Th—they tell stories about you in the town."

Howard shrugged. "They have told stories about me all my life."

The girl took a deep shuddering breath and swallowed. Her pale face held a pleading look. Her next words tumbled out in a rush.

"I see things. I feel things and they won't go away. People laugh at me when I tell them. They say I'm m—mad. I—I didn't know who to talk to. People said you understand things. I came to see if you would understand—if you could help me. Can you help me?"

Howard looked down at her. He remembered a small misshapen boy who had stood so long ago on that very spot.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"L—Leonora."

Howard reached out a hand to call her forward.

"Come here, Leonora. Come inside and let us get you warm," he said. "Everything's going to be just fine."

The girl hesitated, then swallowed and took a step toward him.

"Do you like tea?" he asked.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jay Caselberg is an Australian author based in Europe. His work has appeared in many venues worldwide and in several languages. His current novel EMPTIES is coming soon from White Cat. Recently his work has appeared at Abyss & Apex, Lovecraft e-Zine, and soon in EXTREME PLANETS, HALLOWEEN: MURDER, MYSTERY and the MACABRE, AIRSHIPS & AUTOMATONS, Stupefying Stories, Chizine and others. More can be found at http://www.jaycaselberg.com

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Born in the UK, Freelance artist Teresa Tunaley now resides in the tropical Canary Islands. Here she finds time to devote to her love of art, painting online and on canvas, creating pieces full of colour and life. During her 30yr career, she has produced countless illustrations, book covers and paintings...credited with awards for her most recent works in oil which were exhibited around the islands. Her work can be seen across the UK, US, Canada and Europe. 'I like to think that I am very versatile in my choice of subject matter - my new surroundings provide the inspiration for me to paint on a daily basis and the fact that others may enjoy my work gives me the confidence to continue. Website: www.artstopper.com

# The Alien Experience

# By Jessica Meddows

"An alien," she said, hands on her hips and an eyebrow raised.

Always her left eyebrow, just like her mother, Jim thought.

The urge to pull at the collar scratching his throat was almost overwhelming. Sweat trickled down his temple to his jaw. He ignored his collar. He ignored the sweat.

"Well?" Her voice rose an octave higher.

Jim raised his head. Apparently her alien statement was a question.

Fresh sweat beaded on his temple. "They prefer being called extra-terrestrials."

Her eyebrow lifted so high it was in danger of being swallowed by her hair-line. "I want an explanation, not a lecture on political correctness."

Her face was red. It always started at her chest, coloring her collarbone, rising up those sparrow-like shoulders, flushing her slender neck, and then filling her face.

Did she really want to know the details? He was still surprised she'd found out, she must have gone through his emails. It's not like he was cheating on her with another woman, he was just...curious.

"I told you. It was a mistake. Won't happen again." Damn right it won't. A shudder ran through his body. He tried to suppress it, worried any twitch or prickled skin would set Deidre off again.

"And how do I know that? How can I trust you? How can I—"

"Deidre, I promise. What more can I say?"

Silence.

Her shoulders slumped and she turned away from him. He knew she was folding her arms across her chest, probably trying to suck up tears. She wouldn't want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. He'd only seen her cry two, maybe three times, in their twenty years together. She was furious at him, but he still wanted to hug her, cradle her in his arms and let her know that everything was going to be alright.

Her bare shoulders heaved up and down. Jim reached out and touched one.

"Don't you _dare_ touch me," Deidre spun around as if scalded. "Not with those hands."

Jim's heart sank. Deidre looked at his hands like he'd used them to murder their first-born. His hands hadn't touched the alien, but now was not the appropriate time to tell Deidre that detail. You didn't insert your bits into their bits, or theirs into yours. Turned out it was some weird mind-meshing experience. Made him feel like someone had inserted an ice-cold hand into his brain and squeezed gently. How'd it go with that alien-bird after the pub, Donovan's email had said. You said you were gonna get lucky. Lucky is one word for how I did with her, Jim had responded. Alien sex is something else. That's all Jim could remember from their exchange. He'd racked his brains, wondering if it had gotten any worse.

Goddamn, how much did he wish he'd just been honest with Donovan and not bothered with the bravado. All she did was touch my forehead, he should have said. No hugging, no kissing, no exchanging bodily fluids. How could he explain that to Deirdre? Would he have thought any different if he'd read an email trail like that?

Jim stood there with his thoughts in the silence.

Deidre shook.

"I want to know what you did," she said quietly, turning to face Jim. "All of it. How you met her. How many times you slept together. Tentacles, whatever."

"It's not what you think, honestly." There wasn't much point in explaining when she wouldn't even believe him. And it's not something he could easily prove. Aliens from UX84s were quarantined in that desert facility for six months after arrival. They tended to keep to themselves after that. Jim was always surprised Earth had even received extra-terrestrial contact after they'd sent that atrocious Will-I-Am's music into space. He'd taken the lack of contact as a definite sign that there _was_ intelligent life in space, and that intelligence was keeping them far, far away. But the alien planet's resources were running out and that had forced them to look for alternatives. Earth was the closest planet.

"I have her number," Deidre said.

"How did—"

"Donovan. I told him I'd tell his wife what he was doing with you at the bar that night."

Now it was Jim's turn to shake with anger. Manipulative cow, she had no right.

"If you don't tell me, I'll go see her and find out myself. Don't think I won't do it!" Deidre said.

That was the answer.

She wouldn't believe him, but she'd believe another female, even if it wasn't from her own species.

Jim's brow felt cooler, his collar less restrictive, his heart slower.

The aliens were pan-sexual. His alien-friend would probably mind screw Deidre before she even realized what was happening.

"Why don't we go speak to her together?"

Jim grinned. It might not be how he'd always pictured it, but today just may be the day he got that threesome he'd always fantasized about.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

In a previous life, Jessica was the legal counsel for a property company in Australia. These days, she is the fiction editor at Parable Press, a freelance writer, and a speculative fiction writer. John Klima is kind enough to let her read slush for him at Electric Velocipede. She's also a pain in the ass strict vegetarian, and loves swimming.

# Boom Town

# By Milo James Fowler

# Cover Art By: Laura Givens

The town of Arroyo Seco was a rowdy, crowded place filled to overflowing with miners, gamblers, whores, and drunks. There were no laws to be kept—besides the Code of the West, and it was more a set of unwritten guidelines that only those with an ounce of integrity actually followed. There were no lawmen, and few feared God, let alone man. Few parsons had ever dared set foot in town for fear of their lives. These men and women cared for only one thing besides their unguilty pleasures, and that was striking it rich. Anything or anyone that stood in their way? Quickly removed without a second thought.

So it goes without saying that Arroyo Seco was no place to bring up a child. These folks knew it well enough, and that's why there were no children in town. Except for one.

His name was Calvin.

Twelve years old, smart, strong, and tall for his age, Calvin wore his sandy hair pulled back in a stubby pigtail and kept a sharp Bowie knife sheathed at his belt. Trotting along faithfully beside him was a wild coyote, his best friend in the whole world. He looked out for himself. So did the coyote.

Once upon a time, his mother had worked at the town's most popular saloon—the Mother Lode. Her unexpected pregnancy scared off his father, the coward. She'd been left all alone, working to raise her son the only way she could. There was no charity in Arroyo Seco, and she'd been bound by contract to the saloon owner, a vicious drunk by the name of Jake Salas. He was a dangerous man, and she would have risked her own life and that of her unborn child by attempting any sort of escape.

You'd think she would have been ashamed of her profession, and many a time she was, but the heaviest burden she bore was the memory of giving birth to her newborn son out in the wilderness and leaving him there to die.

She'd come to realize there was no way she could possibly raise a child in this town—not in her line of work anyways, and not with the men she serviced. She'd drunk herself to sleep that night after staggering back into town bloody and miserable.

But when she'd woken up the next day, she couldn't believe what she had done. So she went out to where she'd left her baby only to find a mess of tracks from a pack of coyotes. There'd been no blood. Believing she'd left her son to be devoured by wild animals, she returned to her room above the saloon and wept until she could no more.

But that's not where the story ends, of course. In some ways, that's right where it begins. For you see, a few years later, a young boy walked right into the middle of Arroyo Seco buck naked. The poor woman recognized him straightaway with some magical power only a mother could possess. Five-year-old Calvin couldn't understand human speech at the time, but she took him in and cared for him, her long-lost son. How he'd managed to survive in the wild remained an unsolved mystery to her dying day, which arrived six years later, when she fell prey to the tuberculosis. Shaken by her sudden death, Calvin found himself all alone in a town full of ruffians and none of them close to his age.

Sometimes he wondered about his father and tried to imagine what the mongrel was like. He knew he'd never meet him, and for the most part, he didn't even want to. But it would have been nice to know he was related by blood to somebody on this earth. Even so, somehow it helped to wear the silver necklace the man had given Calvin's mother. Dangling from it was a silver heart with her name inscribed upon it and some lettering in too fine a script for him to make out.

Just before she'd died, Calvin's mother had drawn the necklace from her bosom where she'd always worn it close, and she'd slipped it around her son's neck.

"Don't you forget me, boy," she'd whispered.

He hadn't taken it off since.

~

Calvin lived alone out in the mining camp a little ways from Arroyo Seco. The men in town made him feel unwelcome, especially when he came into the Mother Lode. He was the last person they wanted to see as they caroused with the women there. It was as though he reminded them of their sins, the seeds they were sowing and would someday reap. Often he bore the brunt because of it.

"Go on, beat it boy!" Jake Salas, the bloated, one-eyed saloon owner towered over the table where Calvin sat drinking a glass of water. The Mother Lode was the only place good water could be had, and it cost. "Am I gonna have to belt you a few?" Salas belched, staggering forward with a bottle of whiskey clutched in one hand. "Get out!" He drew back his brawny arm to box the boy's ears.

"Lay off, Jake," one of the women intervened, stepping between the big man and the much smaller boy. Her name was Alice, and she'd been a friend of Calvin's mother. Although _friend_ might not have been exactly the case, as every woman who worked for Salas saw the others as competition. He liked it that way, thought it made them work harder. But truth be told, Alice had always treated other folks fair, and she'd never been anything but kind to Calvin, often letting him have his glass of water for free. "Leave him be." She leaned her ample curves up against Salas and fondled his ear lobe. "He ain't hurting nobody."

"No?" Salas belched again, and Calvin imagined foul, green gas erupting to merge with the saloon's thick haze of cigar smoke. "He's taking you away from your job ain't he?" He slapped her hard across the face. "Get back to work!"

Alice held her sore cheek and stepped back from her boss. She put one arm around Calvin, her knit shawl draping his shoulders. "You're not gonna hurt this boy." She narrowed her eyes.

His chapped lips parted with a drunken grin. Locking his bloodshot eyeball on her, he set down the bottle of whiskey with a hard thud and adjusted his eye patch. Then he deliberately tugged off his belt.

By now everything in the saloon had stopped: the tinny piano music, the laughter, the gambling, the carousing—every eye focused on the big saloon owner and the two unfortunate souls who dared oppose him. Salas held his belt ready, snapping it between his two large fists, and chuckled.

"Go ahead." Alice was a brave woman, much braver than Calvin felt at the moment. "Beat a woman and a boy. You coward," she spat.

Salas teetered backward, then lashed out with the belt. It struck her neck, and as she gave a short cry, lurching away from him, Calvin jumped up to take on the big man. The leather slashed his cheek, and he cringed as Salas came down for a second strike. But that's when a hairy form leapt out from under the table and into the air with a ferocious growl. The creature sank its fangs into his forearm, and he dropped the belt with a shriek.

"Get it off!" Salas howled as Calvin's coyote made lunch of his arm.

"Here boy." Calvin couldn't hide the proud smile that crept across his lips.

Salas groaned on the floor, cursing as he clutched his bleeding arm. "Somebody go fetch a doctor!" he screamed.

Alice stepped over him with her arm around Calvin. "Never been no doctor in Arroyo Seco, Jake." She turned away and led the boy upstairs to her room.

~

"You'd best be clearing out, Cal." Alice dabbed at the cut on his face with a wet cloth. "Jake's drunk as a skunk, and when he gets that way, he's likely to do anything." Leaning over him, she took his cheeks in her hands and looked him square in the eye. Her whole face was tight with worry. "He'll kill you, boy."

Calvin nodded grimly. "All right Ally," he said. "I'll go."

Where to? He had no idea. The mining camp wouldn't be far enough, not if Jake got it into his head to finish off the boy—and his coyote—once and for all.

Tears sprang to her eyes as she tried to smile. "I'll sure miss you, Cal."

"I'm gonna miss you too." He tried his best to look brave.

With a short sob, she kissed his cheek, then pulled him to her heart and held him close. He clung to her suddenly, and in the warmth of her embrace, all the emotions he'd been keeping a lid on for months now spilled out with tears that drenched her cotton blouse to the skin.

~

The night was dark, quiet as an empty coffin. Only the chirping of the katydids came from the tall grasses on the outskirts of town. Arroyo Seco slept; it was time to rest from one rough day in order to wake up bright and early to battle through the next.

Calvin stepped through the dark, vacant street. Everything he owned was strapped to his back, this being the first time he'd found himself glad of his lowly station in life. It meant less to carry. He looked around as the coyote by his side snarled low at the darkness.

"What is it boy?" Calvin rested his hand on its head and peered through the dark for whatever had startled it. "You see something?"

Its wild eyes gleamed in the moonlight as it stared straight ahead at Salas's saloon. Calvin froze, trying to distinguish whether he'd caught a pair of shadows moving thereabouts. The coyote's throat rumbled as it let loose another growl.

"All right, boy." Self-preservation would have dictated he steer clear of the Mother Lode and hightail it out of town while the hightailing was good. But Calvin didn't have a strong self-defense instinct. What he had instead was a powerful sense of youthful curiosity. "Let's go and take a look."

~

The back door to the Mother Lode opened with a creak as two gunmen stepped inside from the night into deeper darkness.

"What's the big idea?" one of them growled, unable to see a thing.

"Shut your mouth," Salas hissed as he shut the door. "My girls are upstairs asleep. We've got to keep things quiet." He tiptoed to the cellar door and gestured for them to do the same. Glancing at each other with a shrug, the two gunmen tiptoed behind him. "We'll talk down here. I got somebody for you boys to meet."

Down in the cellar, Salas shut the door tight and lit a lantern. The two greasy-haired, bushy sideburned, weasel-faced gunman found themselves in a giant liquor storeroom. They gaped in awe, licking their wind-chapped lips with sudden thirst.

"I could go on about how these bottles are genuine imported booze and that I'm the only barkeep in the Wild West who's got such a fine assortment, but where would that get us?" Salas said with a shrug. "Instead, let us discuss our plans."

There weren't any chairs, so they sat on the floor Indian style. Salas closed his one good eye and started to breathe deeply, his open palms resting upon his knees. Then he started to moan, and while the two gunmen stared with eyes that widened more with each moment that passed, Jake Salas started to recite some sort of guttural incantation. And before they knew it, a fourth member of their meeting had arrived—in the form of a ghostly specter from beyond the grave.

"Welcome." Salas nodded in deference to the shimmering ghost of a man dressed all in the finest black attire and wearing a smart black Stetson. "You must forgive my friends here. I doubt they've ever met a soul from the other side." He chuckled at the gunmen's reaction: stupefied awe.

"No matter." The ghost's voice echoed unlike anyone else's in the cellar. "Tell me. What did the railroad company man have to say?"

Salas raised the brow over his eye patch. "He said the deal's approved. Soon as we get this town leveled, they'll be paying us top dollar for the land—every square acre of it."

"Excellent." The ghost rubbed its spectral hands together in subdued glee. "Then I shall have my revenge."

"About that—" Salas paused to glance at the gunmen, still frozen with idiotic looks on their faces. He wasn't sure if they were even aware that a conversation was going on. "There's been some trouble. With the boy, that is."

"Nothing you can't handle, I'm sure."

"It's just that, no disrespect, but he's getting to that age when he don't mind his elders like he should, and I'm thinking it might be best if we just get rid of him. He's a real pest, truth be told."

The ghost scowled down at Salas. "You leave him be. I have plans for that boy. He will be the greatest outlaw the Wild West has ever known! Born of a whore, left for dead, raised by coyotes—let's see Billy the Kid top that kind of backstory." It scoffed. "The amateur."

"Right." Salas winced a little. "But I'd just feel a whole lot better if he were dead, y'know? That boy chafes me something fierce."

"Deal with it. When the Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy, and Wyatt Earp formed their League of Justice, they sent me and most of my dearest friends to early graves. Little did they know I had friends in the lowest of places—namely you, Jacob Salas, Warlock of the West—as well as a bastard son. I _will_ have my revenge. That boy of mine _will_ become my legacy. The Wild West _will_ be purged of all its heroes!" The specter's voice resonated in the men's chests, and they clutched at their palpitating hearts. "But first," the ghost continued, more subdued. "Blow up this town. We'll need the money to pay our minions." With that, it dissipated into thin air.

Salas collected himself, blinking and swallowing. Glancing at the two gunmen who remained struck dumb with consternation, he gave a sudden whoop and grabbed a fresh bottle of whiskey.

"Arroyo Seco, get ready for a real big boom!"

~

With the coyote on his heels, Calvin charged up the saloon's unlit stairway to the bedrooms upstairs. He'd heard just enough through the cellar door to know what Salas was planning, and he couldn't believe it. He had to tell somebody.

"Ally!" he hissed, rapping on her door. "Ally it's me, Calvin. Open up!" He glanced over his shoulder as the cellar door creaked open downstairs.

A groggy moan came from inside Alice's room, followed by shuffling feet. A pair of bolts slid aside before the door cracked opened.

"Ally, are you . . . busy?"

"Yeah," she groaned, rubbing the eye that peaked out at him. "But never too busy for you." She smiled sleepily, then frowned. "I thought you'd lit out."

Calvin swallowed. "I was on my way, but these two men snuck in to meet with Jake down in the cellar, and—and they're going to blow up the whole town!"

Her eye blinked at him. " _What_?"

"C'mon, we've got to do something!" He pushed open her door.

"Hey now," she cautioned. "I ain't exactly dressed, boy."

He blushed a little. "We've gotta hurry!"

"All right," she said, pulling her robe on tighter and joining him in the dark hallway. "Let's see what this is all about."

Calvin took her arm and led her down the stairs with the coyote trailing after them. As they reached the last step, Salas and two strangers came into view, speeding by on tiptoe in single file and headed straight for the back door.

"Hold it!" Calvin turned up a wall-mounted lantern, and its glow stopped the three men dead in their tracks. Calvin narrowed his gaze as courage burned within him. "What's going on here?"

Salas's bulging eye pulsated at the sight of the boy. Angrily he spewed curses, his face flushing crimson, but he stood still, eyeing the vicious coyote he'd dealt with earlier. Splotches of blood soaked the crude bandage on his forearm. The two gunmen, however, didn't see the boy as anything significant. In their eyes, he'd be easily crushed.

"Stupid kid!"

One reached for his holster in a flash, but the boy's draw was too fast. His Bowie knife hurtled through the air and pinned the gunman's shooting hand to the wall with a hollow-sounding thud, muted by the man's wild shriek. The other one went for his gun in like manner, but just then the coyote sprang forward with a mighty growl and sank its fangs deep into the horrified gunman's shooting arm. Seeing the creature otherwise engaged, Salas barked a wild laugh and drew his gun, leveling it with the wild animal.

"No!" Calvin lunged forward.

The gunshot exploded, and the coyote sank limply with a whimper. The bleeding gunman rolled to his feet and backed away from the animal, clutching his arm with wide eyes. Calvin dropped to his knees beside the wounded coyote, his eyes tearing, blurring his vision.

"Real smart move, Jake," Alice sneered. She clenched her jaw, pained by the boy's grief. "The whole town heard that shot. They'll come running like pigs to slop."

Salas growled at his mistake. Then he back-handed the woman with the butt of his gun, and she collapsed unconscious beneath the blow.

"Let's move." Salas charged for the back door.

"What about the kid?" The gunman with the pinned hand groaned dizzily as he freed himself and held his bleeding hand to his chest.

Salas cursed. "You heard the ghost. We leave him alone!"

"Yeah, about that." The other gunman screwed up his face in thought. "Ain't it against the Good Book to go speaking to the dead?"

"You read the Good Book?" Salas scowled.

"Well, uh—I—"

"Shut yer mouth and bring the boy." Salas bolted out the back door and went straight for his horse, tethered nearby.

The two wounded gunmen staggered toward Calvin, reaching for him. He jumped to his feet and backed away, unarmed and exposed.

"Come here kid," one snarled, barely missing the youth and stumbling after him with a flurry of curses.

"I don't care what no ghost says. You're dead!" the other one roared, but then his eyes rolled up into his head and he passed out from all the blood he'd lost.

Calvin took the chance he was given and raced for the saloon's front doors.

"I'm gonna get you, kid!" The other gunmen staggered after him like a speedy, half-dead monster.

The boy yelped as the man clamped a bloody, viselike grip on the back of his neck. Having reached the doors and fought to slide open the bolts, Calvin threw one of them open with all his might. It hit the gunman square in the nose, and he yowled, losing his grip. Calvin dashed out into the street, yelling and hoping to get the townsfolk's attention. Lights in windows blinked on, doors screeched open, groggy folks staggered out. The boy ran up to a well-respected gambler looking much less respectable in his striped nightshirt.

"Hurry," Calvin gasped. "Salas is gonna blow up the town! He's—"

The boy turned to point, but just then he caught sight of the big saloon owner galloping away from the Mother Lode as fast as his mount could carry him, disappearing beyond the tall grasses in the distance.

"No!" Running to a nearby horse, Calvin leapt into the saddle and urged it into a fast gallop to intercept Jake Salas. "Hyaa!"

Shaking his head in their dust, the gambler cursed and shambled back to his bed muttering, "So now he's a horse thief. Did we really expect anything else from that little bastard?"

~

Grunting and bouncing in his saddle, Salas steered the galloping steed over a grassy hill and down toward a gurgling stream. Arriving at an abandoned shack about a mile upstream from the mining camp, the warlock/barkeep dismounted and charged inside. His breath came heavy as he stormed around in the darkness, fumbling for a match to light the dusty lantern in his grip.

Suddenly the sound of hoof beats pounded down the hill outside. A rifle fired, and Salas cowered as the shack's only window crashed with glass shattering in all directions.

"Come out, Salas!" Calvin shouted as fiercely as he could, leveling the Winchester he'd found in the horse's rifle boot. "We've got you surrounded!"

"Who's _we_? You got a mouse in your pocket, boy?" Salas threw back his head and roared with laughter. Then he chugged a little from his hip flask. The whiskey burned down his throat, igniting the devil within.

Calvin knew his bluff had been called. "Alright Jake, you win. Go ahead and blow up the town."

Salas chuckled and winked at his flask. "Yeah, I'm gonna make a really big boom."

"But if you plan on turning Arroyo Seco into a blazing inferno, you'll have to get past me. Cuz I'll still be right here, and you'll still be right in there, and you won't ever come out without me gunning you down right where you stand."

Salas slurred to himself, "I sure do hate that boy."

With an unexpected shimmer of ephemeral light, the ghost returned, its face so close to Salas that he could smell the phantom's lingering decay.

"Let him kill you," the ghost commanded. "This is where it begins. The first life he takes." Rotten teeth appeared as the specter chortled, "But it won't be his last!"

Shaking all over, Salas grabbed his flask and gulped down the whiskey in a frenzy. There was nothing quite like liquid confidence to settle one's nerves when eye-to-eye with the supernatural.

"Get out here, Salas!" the boy shouted. He squeezed the rifle's trigger, and the bullet punched through the plank wall just inches from the barkeep's head.

"Nothing doing," Salas grumbled, squirming in the dark.

The ghost narrowed it spectral gaze. "I think you may have a sudden change of _heart_!" The phantom plunged its hand into the warlock's chest.

Salas yowled, glaring up at the ghost. "Alright, I give up! Just don't shoot me!"

The specter roared in victory, shaking its fists in the air as it watched the warlock charge out of the shack with brawny arms waving in surrender.

Calvin shrugged his apologies. "Sorry. I can't trust you otherwise." The next shot sent the big saloon owner onto his face with a howl as a bullet tore into his leg. After a belch, he passed out.

"Kill him!" the ghost hissed into the night, advancing on the youth.

Calvin took a deep breath and slowly let it out from astride his borrowed mount. He gazed down at the big saloon owner's unconscious body. Up to now, he hadn't thought about being afraid—he'd just done what he had to do. But now he felt awful cold, and he could almost hear voices—or maybe it was one voice. The cold breeze brushed past him, chilling his bones in the darkness. He couldn't keep his eyes from staring at Salas's body. Had he killed the man?

Unseen by the lad, the ghost came right up beside him, fingering the silver chain around the youth's neck. "Say the words," it breathed as cold as death. "Recite the inscription backwards, and you'll see me for the rest of your life. I have great plans for you, Calvin."

Dismounting to give Salas a wide berth, the boy kept his Winchester at the ready as he stepped into the dark, musty shack. He struck a match, and in the flickering yellow glow, his eyes widened at what he found: a wired dynamite plunger sat on the floorboards and a dozen half-open crates of explosives lay scattered about the shack. There was more than enough here to destroy the entire town of Arroyo Seco—maybe ten times over!

The flame burned down the match and scorched his fingers. He dropped it with a yelp, then gasped as the fire spread across the floorboards, devouring whatever flammable substance had been spilled by Salas and racing straight for the dynamite. Panicked, he tried to stamp out the flame, but it was too late. Fire started licking up the sides of the wooden crates.

Calvin dove out the door and scrambled for his life on all fours, casting furtive glances over his shoulder until he lunged headfirst into the grass and shielded himself with both arms. The tremendous explosion behind him tore through the night as the shack erupted into a giant ball of fire, sending flaming debris in every direction and a billowing cloud of smoke into the black sky.

Calvin peaked at the inferno under his forearm. His gaze fell on Salas, and his stomach turned over at the revolting sight. The saloon owner's big skull had been crushed by a flying piece of lumber—one of the posts which had supported the shack. Calvin groaned, getting up and whistling for the horse.

The ghost glowered. This was not how it had hoped things would turn out. Not even close. "You haven't seen the last of me," it hissed as it vanished into the night.

But truth be told, Calvin had never seen it at all.

~

"Well, Salas was planted in the ground, those two gunmen were run out on a rail, all the dynamite was destroyed, ol' Buck's gonna buy the saloon, and it's time for me to move on." Alice wore a pretty nice dress for once, and it made her look respectable. Her suitcase lay open on the bed as she went through her things. "What do you think?" she asked Calvin coyly, holding a piece of red and black lingerie up against herself. She grinned as he blushed. "Guess I'd better leave it for the new girl."

Calvin reached down beside him and rested his hand on the alert coyote's head, running his fingers through its short hair. He was so glad it had pulled through and was now on the road to recovery. "Where do you think you'll go, Ally?"

"Oh, I don't know." She looked all around the room for anything she might have forgotten. "One thing's for sure," she said, slamming down the suitcase with her full weight and slapping the latches shut. "I ain't staying in this line of work no more." She shook her head and faced the boy, raising her chin. "Gonna get me a right good job. Start out fresh, you know?" She came over and sat beside him, taking his hand. "You taught me something, Cal—to pay no heed to what folks think, to stand up to their talk. You let them know you was somebody, and that's what I'm going to do." She squeezed his hand. "I'm going to be somebody. I'll show them all."

Calvin nodded. "Yes you will."

With a tearful smile, she pulled him to her heart and kissed his forehead, holding him close. He hugged her tight.

"What about you, boy?" she asked him, wiping her eyes with a sniff. "Where you headed?"

Calvin looked down at the coyote, and its wild eyes locked with his. He thought for a while before he said, "I think we'll stay away from towns and people for a bit." He met Alice's gaze. "But we'll keep in touch with you, Ally."

"You'd better." She winked. "You be careful. Both of you."

He nodded as he stood. "We'd better go. I'm in enough hot water already on account of that horse I borrowed."

Outside, the horse in question was waiting for them, hitched to a light buckboard. Calvin heaved Alice's suitcase into the back with all his might and then helped her up onto the bench. As the town of Arroyo Seco went about its raucous business, ignoring them completely, he climbed onto his side and picked up the reins. With a flourish, he slapped the reins lightly against the horse's back and cried, "Hyaa!"

The magnificent steed charged headlong in a graceful gallop, breaking free of its harness and leaving the buckboard behind in the dust. Those few townsfolk who noticed the spectacle laughed out loud, and Alice couldn't help herself, joining in and covering her mouth as Calvin's face burned crimson to the tips of his ears.

"Well, I guess this is how it goes when you're not a hero," he muttered.

"Not yet." Alice gave him a kiss on the cheek. "But I see great things in your future, Cal!"

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Milo James Fowler is a teacher by day and a speculative fictioneer by night. When he's not grading papers, he's imagining what the world might be like in a few dozen alternate realities. His work has appeared in more than 60 publications, including _AE Science Fiction_ , _Cosmos_ , and _Shimmer_ , and many of his stories are now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iBooks. Stop by anytime: www.milo-inmediasres.com.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Laura Givens is a Denver Based artist and author. Her art has graced the covers of numerous publishers' books and magazines. She has provided story illustrations for _Orson_ _Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, Jim Baen's Universe, Talebones, Science Fiction Trails and Tales of the Talisman,_ among others. Her work may be viewed at www.lauragivens-artist.com . In 2010 she naively decided she could probably write stories as good as many she had illustrated. She has sold tales ranging from zombie stories to space operas. She was co-editor and contributor to _Six-Guns Straight From Hell_ , a weird western anthology, and is art director for _Tales of the Talisman_ magazine.
