Estimated reading time — 22 minutes

The frontier, that section of the world where the roots are soaked by blood and tears rather than rain. Grampa told many stories: the be the immortal, mist-swimming striga, the covens of witch and warlock, or my own least favorite yet most constant nightmare appearance: The trees of skin and bone, wailing in constant agony even while they made your flesh and blood unto their own.

So why am I going out there?

I haven’t been in this town long, I’m not even certain of its name. All I know is that it’s the closest to the ranch. Down the line I’ll have to make a note of its name. The people are friendly enough, none of them have even heard of the pillaged ranch some miles away. Doubt they’d even care.

The only thing to happen of any note while I’ve been in the town is a notice on the board in front of the building that serves as the town hall, jail, and sheriff’s station:

Military conscript for The Company headed out from Cannon City to explore the frontier. Hefty wages, high danger. New recruits will be asked to qualify for the journey.

There was a hand-scrawled note below the finely printed advertisement that read, in very uneven handwriting:

Extra muscle for the initial trip to Cannon City not necessarily needed but appreciated. Apply at the wagon.

Cannon City. Not too long of a journey, but it’s right on the border of the frontier. That proximity to the border is apparently enough for even the outlaw trails and isolationists you see on this side of the country to not even touch it. Dangerous, is what I mean to write.

Yet… I want to go. The money is too much for a vagrant like me to pass up. There was so little left from the ranch, and if it’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that I don’t want to spend my days in some speck of dust on the desert. So I applied.

The wagon was just outside town, a tent city with little fires going blooming out into the evening sand. Trying not to shake like a rattle, I knocked on the door of the wagon that looked almost as big as my room back at the ranch. Beyond the wagon there were at least two dozen people with shaved heads and burlap clothes lacquering and preparing what looked like blessed wood you might find outside of a church.

“Ee-yah?” An old voice called from beyond the door.

“Here about your notice,” I said, and oh it makes my face burn to write it, but I’ve nowhere else to confess the truth: I was lowering my voice and putting on some sort of airs. “Got a fairywood rifle with me, and I need the money.”

“Can you shoot a target at three hundred yards?” The voice called back.

In my state, I remember thinking, I doubt I could hit the broad side of a fifty foot barn.

“Easy.”

“Ha! You’re hired; we leave in the morning.”

And that was that. With a kind of numbness throughout my body that I’m starting to get very tired of feeling, I went down and played a few hands of poker with people I should know the names of by now. I won a few pennies, as well as the very notebook and charcoal pencil I write this with. Couldn’t tell you why, but my head seems calmer when I’m focusing on getting the day down on the page.

I’m stalling my own rest. I’ll write more tomorrow afternoon.

*

The old man I spoke to last night only nodded at me this morning. Not knowing what to say, I just nodded back. The entire morning was spent yelling at the people in burlap while they cleaned up their camps and got ready to move. Nobody said a word to me when there came a snap from the wagon’s reins, they just expected me to follow.

And I did. It’s better than nothing, I hope.

I keep asking why I’m doing this, what I even think I’m doing, but that forward momentum as the wagon led those people seems enough of an answer to me. Better to keep going than stay still, I suppose.

*

I saw a jackalope this morning, right outside my tent, while I’d been emptying the night’s water. For the first time in my life while caught unawares, I didn’t reach for my rifle. The thought of skinning it and bringing the old man (who doubles as the herd’s cook) a no-longer-living legend of an animal didn’t appeal to me. He’d give me that look, the same look some of the squirts have when they think I don’t notice.

“Oh, the little upstart finally contributes? Why doesn’t her highness deign to get off her ass and help with something else around camp while she’s at it?”

The words sting, which is so silly because the cook hasn’t said a damn one of them. I know he hasn’t, none of them have, but I see it in them anyway. That feeling straight from the hallows of my upbringing. When the men of the ranch would ask me for a helping hand, yet shoot me looks when I got more work done than them. It wasn’t only jealousy but an indignance that shamed and chastised me. Not only for trying but for succeeding.

The squirts are all younger people around my age. They can’t refer to each other by name, most likely some sort of herd mentality strategy the Company is using. They all seem to get along, and from the wages I’d seen on the advertisement, it seemed they all really were going headlong into the frontier for the company. I wish I was one of them sometimes, but I’m just some pathetic cowgirl, only picked because my fairywood rifle is the only weapon of its kind for miles upon miles. Not even part of the herd.

Yet even so, why the constant glum looks that so closely resemble my brother’s and cousin’s back on the ranch?

I suppose that’s really why I’m writing this. Grampa sure as shit would’ve seen right through me, the way I build my own little cooking fires at the edge of the herd’s camp every night, as close to the burning torches hewn from blessed wood that makes up our perimeter. Turns out that isn’t a myth, rather a cornerstone of our safety and one of the few things that keep the creatures of the night from crushing my skull between their teeth. That’s why I’m here now, writing my pitiful woes next to this meager flame with a cheap charcoal pencil and an honest-to-God notebook I happened to win in a hold ‘em game the night before I left with the company.

Pretending, even up until the tip of this pencil started scrawling on this page, that all I wanted to write about was the jackalope outside of my tent this morning.

It’s because I’m scared.

Scared of what Mom will say when I get back home. Even though there’s no more home. No more “mom”, either.

Scared that I’ll wake up with a knife to my throat from a highwayman that somehow saved me for last. Or the squirts, for as terrible a time as they’re having, might come to the somewhat logical conclusion that robbing that main wagon and high-tailing it to Barclave and buying their way into sovereign safety.

Maybe it’ll be the tongue of a monster, savoring the desert sweat on my skin before it makes my scant few seconds of life left full of terror and pain. The most frightening thing of all was really seeing that jackalope this morning. A cute little rabbit with the antlers of a buck was all the confirmation I need of stories and fantasies I’d heard all my life. There’s no denying myself any more: I’m out on the frontier. If a jackalope exists, anything I’ve heard of could too. It pains me to write this, but that’s why I didn’t kill the jackalope.

It’s silly and nonsensical, but I hope that whatever we run across on our way North can see the mercy I gave that creature.

*

It’s taken me two days of helping these people to learn that the man who’s been serving food is none other than the vice captain of the entire Company. With that wagon I expected maybe a captain’s equivalent of a position, but one of the head honchos? No, I couldn’t help but drop my jaw a little.

“Should I hunt the jackalopes?” I asked him when I was at the front of the line for that morning’s breakfast of honey and oats. Just the odd one out trying to make conversation with the cook, that’s all. After I finished my first entry in this notebook I spent the rest of the night thinking about that jackalope and what, if anything, could be done about it or my situation in camp.

He snorted, which I swear sounds like a harmonica the way it travels through the thickest moustache I have ever seen.

“Ya better not,” he said with the muddiest, most drawled accent you can only imagine. “‘Less you wanna make the squirts more weary ‘a ya than they already are.”

“Why’s that the case, anyway? Some superstition?” I asked.

“Naw,” he said, re-adjusting his seat of sugar boxes and off-handedly tossing some provisions he hadn’t used into his big boxed wagon, the only wagon in our outfit. “We don’t have need for critter meat, I always pack prepared.”

Pack prepared? I still don’t know why he predicated “prepared” with “pack.”

“No, I mean why are the squi- why are the recruits weary of me?”

“More’n likely because you spend so much time cleanin’ your rifle and whispering at it. That and,” he grinned so wide I almost saw his teeth. “I might’ve told ‘em you were a wandering bounty hunter.”

“You didn’t! Did they believe you!?” My face went beet red, only because I had nothing to defend myself with when it came to my habit of constantly cleaning and talking to my rifle. Look, with as little time I had away from the ranch during my formative years, I’m surprised I didn’t manifest even weirder tendencies.

“‘Course they- oh, thanks.”

I’d surprised him by helping him pack his cooking equipment into the wagon. Thankfully he didn’t make a big deal out of it and accepted my help.

“Anyhow,” he went on,” yes they ate the story right up. Some of ‘em, won’t say who, wake up in the middle of the night and look to your tent half expecting you to have come back from a late night hunt for fresh blood- oh, real quick, pass me them jugs of honey.”

After everything had been loaded, I stuck to his wagon instead of the edges of the herd. Eventually the cook told me his name, “Cass,” and so I told him mine. I didn’t give them my first name, it would have been too much of a giveaway, but Blanche seemed enough for them. By the end of the night I’d finally introduced myself to the squirts properly. They were easy to talk to, especially after I let them hold my rifle. Of course they wanted to fire it, even if most of them didn’t have the power to make use of a fairywood rifle beyond one shot. When Cass heard of their desires he shut them down quick. According to him we were close enough to the frontier to attract unwanted attention from the sound of gunfire.

“From creatures?” One of the squirts asked him.

The slightly merry and jovial mood was thinned by Cass’s cold-as-ice response:

“Yes. The kind that could kill us all without getting a scratch.”

My tent still gets pitched near the border of the blessed torchlight, but I’ve moved a bit closer to the squirts. The darkness at the far end of the protective light is starting to look more and more like a creature itself. One that could yank me from where I sleep, where I now write, out into the void without anyone else knowing.

*

It didn’t take hours after I’d written last for the situation to go tits up. A crass thing to say, but there are nothing but crass words to describe everything that’s happened. But I can’t mince my words. That would be even worse. I might very well be dead by the time the sun rises again, and I can’t afford to put anything down but honesty. Not that I wasn’t being honest before, rather, I was being polite.

My mother hated cursing. Damn myself if I don’t picture her reading this. My will and testament, being written and read by a dead woman. It’s a hard concept to shake.

One of the squirts was found outside of the perimeter this morning. Nobody could recognize her, and all that was left was a trail of blood and intestines that colored the brown desert pink and red. The trail ended at a drop off of a mesa we’d been camping on. I went down myself to see if there were any other remains. There were – but only drops of blood and a bit of burlap. The squirts only wore burlap pants and thin white shirts.

Her name was Wendy Cumbridge. She’d talked to some of the others about bowel problems, and that’s all we can come up with for reasons why she’d go outside of the protective light after dark.

Cass gathered everyone around his wagon. Before I could sit on the ground cross-legged with the squirts, the old cook patted a box of sugar next to him, and there I sat.

“Nothin’ much to say,” he began, “But I reckon it’s a good time to say it loud and clear for Ms. Blanche and any one of you shits that had their thumbs in their god damn ears like the now-late Ms. Cumbridge: Nobody goes in the dark. Even invalids I’ve met in this business understand this much. Yet Ms. Cumbridge, god rest her soul, decided to take a night trip anyway. Now she’s dead and we are officially on lockdown. That means twenty-four-seven watch.

Cass’s language and flippancy shocked me. I know the Company and those that sit atop it are blunt and matter-of-fact, but that was too much.

“Y’all can pick out who takes watch at night, and you bet your scrawny little asses that I’m gonna keep my eye on every single one ‘a ya. Anyone that disobeys any of my orders from here on out will be, at the very least, out of consideration for the Company’s journey into the frontier. And if I catch anybody doin’ somethin’ to put the rest ‘a us in danger, well…”

Cass seemed to consider something. Even now I don’t know if it was genuine.

“I’ll feed you to whatever is on our trail. And there is, especially with that amount of blood in the air. Not a doubt in my mind. Ms. Blanche?”

“Yes?” I jumped a little and stood up straight as if I were one of the squirts being called to attention.

“Can I count on you to have understood everything I’ve said? To follow my orders and do everything I tell you until we hit Cannon City? Unlike these ‘specimens’”, he glowered at the squirts with what definitely was a bit of theatricality, “you’ll be given a hefty bonus. Does that sit right with you?”

“Yessir,” I said. I haven’t called a man “sir” since my gramps, but it seemed appropriate.

“Thank you. Alright, let’s get movin’. Double time from here on out and no breaks. With luck we’ll hit Cannon City in three nights.”

The squirts all looked despondent but didn’t protest. From then on Cass has set the pace with his wagon and two horses at the lead.

I’ll tell you, whoever “you” are (most likely and hopefully my future self) that the old man was not messing around when he said we were double timing it. Even as lightly packed as I am, I’ve been huffin’ and puffin’ ever since we stopped for the night. Cass offered me a spot on the wagon and, like an idiot, I turned him down to show some solidarity with the squirts.

Cass called for camp as soon as the sun touched the low desert hills that surrounded us in a little bowl-like valley. This evening I really watched the colors of the desert go from tan, to dark green, and finally to a blood orange. If nothing else, admiring the scenery did help a tad in keeping my worries in check. The squirts worked harder than ever to get the ten blessed fires going around the camp well before the stars started to shine. They even sprinkled salt and silver between the fires, and here I thought frontiersmen using silver was a myth.

After dinner (jerky stew seasoned with salt and garlic) I ignored the weight on my eyelids and went to Cass’s wagon for a word. Imagine my surprise when I saw he was perched on the back of his wagon, hunting rifle on his lap, keeping the first watch for the rear half of the camp. My first question after setting a seat out with a box of sugar was if he’d seen anything. I’d been half joking, and even now I lament that I didn’t keep my god damned mouth shut.

“Sure do,” he said, his mop of hair only turning slightly as he looked at me out of the corner of his eye, “don’t move too suddenly. Take a seat next to me and don’t panic.”

What a gaffe. I’m still panicking as I write this. But I picked up said box of sugar, my lips taught as a pressure wire, and took a seat next to him. My eyes were on my shoes, too scared to look out into the night.

“Didn’t see it?” He asked.

“No,” I whispered, “see what?”

The old man chuckled, the kind I’ve heard at funerals among older relatives after remarking on their own grave plots.

“Something’s watching us,” he said, tapping his spectacles. The lenses were full of an inky greyness that should have been very hard to see through. Then I finally noticed their frames.

“Fairywood,” I said.

He nodded.

“Only reason the company keeps an old shit like me around.”

The greyness dimmed a little. Cass drew in breath, slowly and carefully, concentrating his life energy through his body and into the frames. The lenses lit back up. Just like my rifle.

“It’s been watching us for a while now,” he said softly. “Just a few yards beyond the edge of the firelight. Every now and then it’ll wave its right hand slowly at me. Something’s in its left hand, some kind of tool I reckon.”

“Do you know what it is?”

His head shook very slowly.

“One of the company heads, Coddack, once told me about a somethin’ he’d seen out in the frontier similar to this. Can’t be sure though. Looks the same to me: human shaped but furry everywhere except the face. And its eyes are…” he frowned, “very focused, yet… Empty.”

My shoulder slumped forward a little while my hand moved reflexively towards the butt of my rifle strap. Cass shook his head, eyes still locked on to that thing in the darkness only he could see.

“Better be cautious about startlin’ this one. ‘Specially with that tool of his. I tell ya, that’s what I like the least about him. Don’t like it one bit.”

“Do you think this is what killed that girl?”

“No,” he said without hesitation. “Whatever killed her either had wings or fins.”

Fins…

“What if it attacks us?” I asked.

“Well, either it kills us or we kill it.”

There wasn’t anything to say to that. I just wish it didn’t make as much sense as it did. Because that’s how it is out here, isn’t it? Either they kill us or we kill them.

Eventually I left, Cass urging me to get some sleep while I could. Again, a gaffe and a half, because I’ve been slowly writing this since I’ve gotten back to my tent. What I’ve been half-wondering while moving this charcoal pencil is whether or not I should be here. Not in the sense of my own survival, rather the people I’ve been paid to protect. If things get intense, will I even contribute? Will I lose my nerve? Someone else should be where I’m sitting. Somebody more… Qualified.

*

What I’m now writing is doubling as an “incident report” for the company. I’d been content with throwing my notebook in the fire to forget about what has happened. The report… Well, now that I’m writing, I’m grateful they asked me. There’s already something inherently therapeutic and relieving about putting what’s been wreaking havoc in my memory down on the paper. It’s a miracle this thing, won out of a blind poker game, survived the blood and fire of that night when so many others didn’t.

I’m becoming upset. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’ll help prevent the night terrors that have woken me up screaming the last two nights. Cass told me it’s normal, and I believe him, plenty of the surviving squirts have been doing the same.

God.

We’d made camp in the valley of some very low hills close by. The reasoning at the time was that the hills would be easy to defend and funnel any intruders into. There were some watering holes near us, too, full of dusty-but-clean-enough water.

It all started with a homesick squirt that had decided to cut and run for the nearest town. Nevermind the unknown territory, the distance, or even his duty. There were only a few guards on the border while everyone slept, and tonight was his night to keep watch, and for whatever reason that we’ll never know, he decided to make a break for it. He made it a few steps beyond the perimeter, still visible in the fireglow, when he screamed bloody murder for maybe a quarter of a second before it was cut off. Then something else screamed, high and piercing, in what could only have been a bloody fervor.

The squirts woke up quickly, some of them tripping over themselves to take defensive positions around the entire perimeter. I didn’t have a set position like they did, so I ran out of my tent and took up a crouching stance next to the wagon. My rifle was shaking like crazy, hell I remember praying from the moment my eyes opened that everything was just a very vivid dream. The firelight from the blessed stakes were much too bright, while the outer darkness was an abyss that stretched to the ends of the universe. The squirts were too loud, shouting callsigns to tell everyone else that their position was filled and that every part of the circle was guarded.

I inhaled, concentrating the nerves and muscles in my body and coursing the energy into my hands. When I exhaled, I pushed that energy from my fingers into the space between the bolt and the chamber. My fingers pushed forward, snapping the bolt closed with something that resembled a bullet, all the way to the chemical makeup, into the chamber.

That’s what took half of the training back on the family ranch. Visualizing and creating the cartridge is the most difficult part of the process, not that handling the rifle was a cakewalk. I will say, there was just a moment of calm as I put the cartridge in the chamber. Like putting the practice that had taken blood sweat and tears into was enough to calm me down.

The eyes floating in the darkness took that calm from me. Dead, unfocused eyes set in a pale head, both reflecting the firelight. It had huge jaws set tight, frowning slightly. Looking at me, right at me. Hungry. I don’t know how, but they were. Hungry as hell.

My rifle began to shake.

“There’s something out there!” The squirt in front of me yelled, “should we-”

“Keep your head forward!” I screamed, my voice quavering. The squirt had been turning his head to look at me, no doubt out of fear from what he was seeing. It was the last thing you should do when securing an area. Still, I don’t blame him at all, even when he turned again after Cass’s half of the circle erupted in small arms fire and shouts. At least… Well, at least his death was…

God.

When the squirt’s chin was turned far enough to touch his shoulder, a clawed hand darted out from the darkness. It was huge, the palm covering the squirt’s shaved head as the slimy claws dug into the man’s eyes and mouth. His cries were muffled and hard to hear for how fast it took him into the shadow, but I heard them. Still hear them.

My first shot of the night went wild and didn’t hit a damn thing. A few other shots went off as well, some of the squirts had primitive and cheap pistols instead of swords and spears, but if any of those made contact I couldn’t tell.

Scaley arms began darting out from the darkness, swiping towards the squirts but reeling back with furious screeches after the scales sizzled and quavered under the glow of the blessed firelight. It only dawned on me then that there were more than one of the things, and just as soon as I had that realization, lightning struck the horizon.

There were a dozen, each perched somewhere in the hills that surrounded us. What we had thought to use for cover was now boxing us in. Just then I felt a tap on the top of my head. I screamed, just briefly, until the reality of what I’d felt made my psyche sink so deep into despair I couldn’t even think to keep screaming. The tap was cold and slid down to the back of my neck. In front of me, a raindrop hit the top of the torch that served as the barrier. The flame flickered, if only for a heartbeat.

“Oh lord,” one of the squirts said. “Oh lord!”

Lightning flashed again. In the flash I saw the creature that had taken the squirt by the head diving into one of the watering holes with its jaws around the squirt’s neck. The others were slowly, very slowly, walking towards us. They might have been grinning, or maybe that’s what their hooked teeth looked to be doing in my imagination.

“Hold fast!” Cass screamed from the other side of the wagon. “Don’t panic!”

The idiot that I am, it took Cass screaming to remind me to reload. My breathing was uneven and it was hard to concentrate, but somehow I managed to manifest a bullet.

The protective torches weren’t waterproof, but water resistant enough to withstand mild rain. Half of the squirts either didn’t know this or were too scared to remember. They tried shouting to each other, a few turning their heads just a little to check behind them. Fear was spreading like lightning.

“Don’t move a god damn muscle!” Cass could hear loud and clear even above the clap of thunder. “If the torches go out we are DEAD! If any of you squirm any more I’ll kill you myself!”

The rain was cold and steady. One of the things came into the firelight enough that I could get a clear bead on it.

Please… I prayed, exhaling as slowly and steadily as I could. I aimed for the thing’s heart even though I wasn’t sure if the damn thing had one.

Bang!

A hole petaled the thing’s scale-covered chest. It went down screaming, its cohorts diving back into the cover of darkness and giving their own brief screeches of surprise. The smell of blasting powder, the kick of the rifle into my shoulder, and that thing’s screams of pain, it was more than enough to kick me out of my fugue state. The squirts cheered. Cheers that died quickly after an injured thing jumped from the ground and screamed towards us. It moved quickly towards the spot between the torches, skin boiling from the torch’s effect yet it didn’t care, it loped forward, jaws open for me, not taking any mind to the pain it should have been feeling.

The rifle kicked into my shoulder again. My life might be owed to that shot being a miss, but it was. Instead of hitting the heart area again, my bullet went into the thing’s gut. Its scream changed pitch as it fell forward onto the ground, a sort of mucus-like water pooling out of its stomach and boiling in the light of the torches.

They could be killed. But god damn if for a moment there I was assuming the opposite.

“Their weakness is their bellies!” I yelled to the squirts in front of me and, hopefully, to Cass and the others on the opposite side of the wagon.

“Squirts!” Cass yelled in response. “Close the circle by ten paces, now!”

Most of the squirts, surprising me with their competency in such a horrible situation, fired their pistols and jabbed their spears at the approaching creatures. In the darkness it was hard to see them make their mark. The shrill screams of pain the injured one let out must have given them that shot of courage that I’d just gotten.

Despite the rallying of our forces, one of the squirts cut and ran for the wagon instead of helping move the protective fire closer. I’d be a lot less upset writing this if that boy had been the one to pay for his cowardice, but no. It was the boy he’d left behind, the one damp with rainwater and screaming for his battle partner to hurry up and help him. He’s the one who paid.

They came for him, running hunched over and dashing from cover to cover to protect their soft bellies. It did shit all for a few who’s stomachs and heads were destroyed by my bullets, but it wasn’t enough. Despite the lone boy getting two rounds through the stomach of the closest attacker, it had enough strength to hook its claws into the mouth of the boy and-

And rip his jaw out from his skull, a patch of skin and a fountain of blood coming along with it.

The creature, I’m certain, knew it was soon to be deceased. Grinning, colorless eyes somehow rolling with ecstacy, shoved its jaws into the squirt’s exposed throat. Its own throat undulated as it took in what it could before going rigid and collapsing dead with the kid before I could have the satisfaction of finishing it off.

The squirts on my side of the circle didn’t stop, gawk, or panic, but they did hesitate.

“Keep moving!” I screamed, pleaded rather.

They moved. Slowly and shakily, but they did move. The few with rifles hunched over their weapons awkwardly to keep the powder dry. My gun was constantly going off, a piece of myself burning away with every shot as my Will was consumed. With every rack of the bolt it became harder and harder to keep my arms steady and my aim true.

“Miss Blanche!” Cass shouted. “Status!?”

“The flames are ten paces away,” I shouted back, “but my will is running low!”

“How low!?”

“Ten rounds, maximum!”

Cass shouted something else, but I didn’t hear it. One of the torches went out.

I ran out to them. It was a horrible, foolish decision that put me and the others in needless danger. There’s no addendum to that, even with what came out of it, but it’s a decision that’s earned a lot of scrutiny from the Company.

The two squirts nearest to the now-extinguished firelight jumped for the wagon, hoping that the protective light was concentrated enough to save them. It must have been quite the sight, a crazy lass jumping out into the darkness while they crawled on hands and knees. Yet I was just in time, because one of the attackers had pounced for the exposed prey. So this crazy lass, not having racked a bullet into the chamber, shoved the stock of her rifle down the thing’s throat.

I twisted my body and pushed the stock as hard as I could against the huge cheek of the creature. At the same time I jumped backwards, hoping to whip us both back into the firelight. It screamed and… “sizzled”, there’s no other way to describe it. Scales and skin sloughed off in clumps as it gagged on the butt of my rifle and thrashed with horrible convulsions. Even though it was clearly dying, I put the slimy butt of the rifle back against my shoulder, focused my Will, and racked one final bullet into the chamber. The thing crawled onto its hands and knees, maybe hoping to run off into the darkness. I’ll never know, I shot it so that it’s head blew outwards like melons I’ve sometimes shot for target practice. Within a dozen seconds, the thing had melted into soup in the firelight.

There was plenty more shouting, cries of alarm, and nearly all of us staying up for the rest of the night to keep watch, but the creatures never made another attempt on the wagon. The light, already being protected from the rain by tarps and burning even brighter from fuel thanks to the squirt’s efforts, was too much for the things to handle. We didn’t know that. For hours all we knew was the burning stakes and the darkness beyond. All we heard were the cries of those few that were only lightly maimed. One of them, a girl that was nearly my own age in my imagination, lay raving and begging for family members only she could see before finally dying just before the sun came up. We collected what bodies, or what remains, that we could and set off.

Before we made it to town the following day (yesterday), I heard some of the squirts whispering amongst themselves, telling and re-telling stories of that night. Endlessly repeating the horror and tragedy that, when all was said and done, took place within half an hour. Me and Cass kept each other company, even if we didn’t talk much. About all he said was that he’d heard of these types out near the oceanside of the frontier. “Water vampires,” he’d heard them called, or “saha-ghin.” I’ve glanced at my notebook countless times, yet only thought to write to you after Cass said he’d like a written report of the encounter.

You…

I still don’t know who “you” are.

Well, whether it’s for my past or future self, my mother, or some other third party I can’t begin to imagine, I thank you for listening.

I feel a little better now. I think I’ll try and sleep again.

*

During breakfast, I got word that Cass wanted to see me. There were six eating areas for different parties of the Company, the Company’s starting point for the foray into the frontier. Well, I write city, but we’re not even in the city proper. Rather, a nearby ranch that didn’t mind us being on their property, on the walls outside Cannon City. The other groups have been giving us either a reverence or a sort of superstitious caution. I don’t really blame them.

Cass was sitting at his wagon on the far edge of the Company campground. He was talking to a man with bronze skin wearing a fur coat even in the sweltering heat of the desert.

“Not enough squirt’s blood,” the man said, spitting out into the desert. “You’ll bring us bad luck.”

The man shot me a pity-filled look on the way back to his section of the makeshift tent city the Company had made.

“Most of the other members of the Company,” Cass said after offering me a tug of his smoke, “don’t approve of my methods.”

“What methods?”

“Of not wanting to grind the squirts into dust,” he sat squinting off into the brightness of the desert, frowning and tapping his foot against a box of sugar. “The fuckers are saying I brought too many ‘live squirts’ to the starting line.”

“Too many?”

He nodded.

“If you think our journey was hard, it was a summer picnic compared to the other squadrons. They were basically led into their own pockets of hell in the frontier. Separates the chaff, according to the others at least. Accordin’ to them, not nearly enough of our chaff was seperated.”

“That’s bullshit,” I said without thinking.

“That’s the name of the game,” said Cass, “especially when you have different parties vying for top spot, and top paycheck, from whoever is funding this expedition.

The silence lingered for a bit. I smoked enough of Cass’s cigar to start feeling lightheaded, but I didn’t care.

“What happened to the squirt that fled from battle?” I asked, referring to the boy that had left another out for dead during the battle.

“Being transported back to Elainelle,” he said, “to be hung as soon as possible for ‘aiding and abetting one’s death.’”

“I… Feel sorry for him,” I said after another lungful of smoke. My own words surprised me. I’d been so angry at the little shit.

“He’s getting justice, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Sure.”

Cass stared at me, waiting for me to add something. When I didn’t, he gave me a nod and a humorless smile.

“I’d like you to come with us. Co-captain to my captain, as it were.”

I don’t remember much else from our meeting, other than being damn certain the old man had gone insane. I even told him so, but he just slapped his knee, laughed, and told me to “think about it for a while.”

And I have been.

When I got back to my tent, still in a bit of a daze, I saw something fifty feet or so away from the tent city. A jackalope, standing upright and still, looking at me. Maybe even curiously, though that might have been in my head. It’s the damndest thing. A rabbit, tall on its haunches, sprouting antlers the same color of the desert dust. An incredible creature. Something I’d heard about around grampa’s campfires. Now it seems almost… Normal. Like any other creature.

Which I suppose it is, at least out here.

Credit: Chance Kimber

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