The Tones of Shadows Are Not of Any One Being

It was dark and still out on the open prairie. The kind of new moon that makes the starlight seem distant and useless. You can't see farther than toe of your boot, and lighting up a cigarette is the only way to shake the jitters that you're not so all alone. There's been men who've walked right into one of them walls of absolute darkness never to return.

Three ranch hands sat around a campfire after a hard day of honest, manly work. Miles away from the main house, they were playing cards for stakes, drinking and singing and raising all kinds of racket but most of all they were laughing until one of them said something really stupid.

A sudden wind gust completely extinguished their campfire. It felt like a wave had swept in on them, and they were all underwater.

"I can't breathe!" Bill complained.

A luminescent shape drifted toward them.

"Who's interrupting? You some kind of angel or something?" Sam challenged.

Growing nearer, they could all discern the shape of a man with hair long as his shoulders and knotted with skulls. With exception to rags, his body was also covered from head to toe in thick, coarse hair.

"What are you supposed to be? Some kind of mountaineer wild man?" Them was Jake's last words. He was snatched up, turned inside out, and his innards were carved out with a switch and put on like a shiny, red coat.

Sam looked over at Bill who was a tall, strong man known to rodeo ride and watched him go from wan to plain livid. It was as if, in an instant, all his life's blood had been sucked clear out of his body. He tumbled to his side in a lifeless heap.

"I've been through hell and back. I ain't afraid of no nine foot high warlock. I ain't no bible thumper neither. For generations my kin have known how to make it rain when it's needed and who and what to call on when they've been vexed by stupidity or been downright double-crossed." He added some spit to the necromancer's blood-splattered feet. "Where I was raised, the kin I've known are twenty feet tall!" Sam bellowed or was it the sudden sound of thunder.

The warlock lurched to make his kill.

"I don't know if you've noticed yet." Lightning flashed in the demon's eyes. "I'm telling you that I'm not only the best ranch hand around but the master's best card player, and like I warned you . . . I'll see your hellfire and raise you rain!"

For those who watch at the portals of hell, it is wise to turn away from those who have passed through its gates, walked there, and returned to tell the tale, for they have earned powers and permissions that grant them eternal respect and all earthly compensation.




©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.



[genre: horror fiction]