Okay, this is some writing I've been doing in my spare time, mostly for fun, off and on for a long time, because I like the characters I made for it. I've used them in many other stories, but they all have their origins in this one, and I'm currently rewriting it, after years of leaving it on a back burner.

It deals with some supernatural subjects, and some of a religious nature, and there's admittedly a little bit of blood here and there, but it's almost impossible to write supernatural fiction at all these days without a little bit of that stuff here and there. I hope the levels are acceptable. It actually has less blood in it than a lot of movies I've seen on television, but either way, if you hate anything and everything dealing with supernatural or horror fiction, you'll not like this story.

If you do like such things, I apologize for what I've done to them.

I admit this is not necessarily my best work to date, but I enjoyed writing it, and I'm enjoying rewriting and editing it into some sort of readable form, and perhaps not everyone who sees it will be utterly repulsed and run away, their faith in storytellers shattered forever by my mediocrity. It's unfinished work, and posting it semi-publicly will force me to finally do something about it.

Oh, and I know witches and ghosts aren't original, but nothing is anymore, anyway.


So, here goes nothing...


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The Coming Forth Out of Darkness, being a True and Accurate Account
of the Life, Afterlife, Etc. of Black-Eyed Mary, Who May or
May Not be A Ghost (working title)

a Novel by Veronica Dark (Pseudonym)

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According to the most modern of archaeological authorities, who, in spite of having made their share of mistakes and miscalculations, generally can be considered to have it pretty much together on the subject of archaeology, the world before the Great Collapse of Civilization as We Knew It was very different from the world we know today.

As strange as it may seem, it really wasn't all that different from what things were like during the period now referred to as the Restoration (just prior to our Current Era), except that instead of everyone trying to get everything organized and stop everyone else from killing one another long enough to do something constructive in the aftermath of an apocalyptic event, people generally got on pretty well and didn't, as a rule, have to watch their backs every time they had to use the toilet or felt like taking a short nap. That and all the libraries hadn't been burned down yet.

For all that they lacked our modern technologies and conveniences, the Ancients had many of their own arts and sciences, some of which we still have today. In fact, our modern Wizards' and Spiritists' Unions claim a direct line of descent from the ancient sorcerers' and necromancers' guilds.

Our story concerns an aspect of ancient life which even today permeates modern society, and although some might call it a form or branch of an art or a science, and some call it utter rubbish, it is actually something quite other. Our story begins with an ancient religion.

In the area formerly known as Anatopolopoulous, in the mountain range known as Eleuthisinia, there was once a great temple devoted to an Oracle. She was revered as the speaker for the Gods, and a caster of Fortunes, and was worshipped by many.

Legend has it that a young girl was out tending her goats one sunny afternoon and something... happened to her. What that something was is still debated by the few who have nothing better to do than debate such subjects, but all agree that she must have come back quite changed, for within a year they had built this lavish temple in her honor, and she was regarded as an Oracle of the Gods, with the power to see and commune with the denizens of the Unseen World.

She was also credited with other mysterious powers. Some of her legends say she actually flew in the air and could kill with a glance, and many other strange happenings were attributed to her as well. We, of course, in our enlightened times, know that these effects were probably produced using theatrical techniques, or were illusions cast using knowledge of the laws of nature, but at the time these things must have been wondrous to behold. Imagine the excitement of seeing what you believed to be a person flying!

If the stories can be trusted (and why shouldn't we trust stories culled from fragments of pottery and assembled piecemeal with the missing bits filled in by countless individuals over many decades, each with their own academic agendas?), the shepherdess-turned-goddess-on-earth wasn't exactly happy with all of this, and soon grew discontented. Nothing could please her, she began staying out later and later doing the Gods knew what, and her oracular utterences became more and more clipped and short, sometimes to the point of being bitter or outright snarky.

Sometimes she simply refused to see anyone, and yelled at anyone who came near.

In short, like many young women her age, nobody could seem to make her happy. Her problem was simply that she had become a teenager, and got fed up with everyone constantly pestering her with all of their stupid problems. She had godlike powers, and her life was being run by morons.

From what we've been able to gather, the last time she was seen she was on a boat headed west. Nobody ever saw her again, and the temple eventually became one of those tawdry affairs with dancing girls and loud music and lots of fire and sacrifices, because apparently everyone preferred that sort of thing anyway.

All of this happened about a thousand years before the Collapse. Her name is unrecorded. Nothing further is heard of her in History's pages.

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Fortunately for us, these aren't History's pages you're reading, but the words of one with first-hand experience. We'll get to that eventually.

Part two of our tale actually takes place many centuries later, towards the end of the Restoration. In an entirely different part of the world (halfway across it, in fact, on another continent, coincidentally to the west) settlements had formed, made alliances with one another, and Civilization was all but back on track.

In some areas, explorers had been making inroads into areas where the only human inhabitants were considered savages, barbarians. The need for land pushed the borders of the so-called Civilized Areas, and more and more people were daring to form settlements outside the safe zones. This led to the eventual expansion of the newly restored Civilization into the grand edifice it is in modern times.

One of these settlements eventually became a small town, which still exists to the present day.

If you've ever been south of Rupperton, you've probably passed close by it. The town I'm referring to, in case you've never heard of it (and you probably never have), is called Pickettsville. In those days it was called Pickett's Hope, and was no more than a small village made up of perhaps 300 persons, led by one Rev. Harding Pickett, a Puritanical minister. Today it boasts nearly ten times that population, and occupies an area roughly twenty-five miles across.

Rev. Pickett was a charismatic figure, a great bear of a man with a booming voice and a stoic constitution. His word was Law, and penalties were harsh, because he spoke for the New God, and the New God was tired of how everyone was messing about instead of getting on with rebuilding Civilization. Minor infractions merited public floggings and nights in the stocks, and major ones were met with the death penalty, right after a good old-fashioned torture session, just for good measure. Anything in the grey zone between tended to simply get one whipped and banished.

Banishment consisted of taking the condemned into the deepest, darkest part of the forest (accompanied by a heavily armed entourage, of course) and leaving them there. They were usually too messed-up by the flogging to protest much, and it's generally assumed that none of them ever survived very long, as the woods were full of wolves and savages, both of which were rumored to delight in the eating of human flesh.

If those didn't get you, exposure to the elements surely would.

The only person ever to have been acknowledged to survive, though they covered it all up later, was a girl named Mary. Nobody remembers what her last name was, but I have it on good account that her family survives to this day.

Mary was a peculiar child, prone to wandering, and was known for spinning fantastic tales and lies. Over time she must have felt a need to prove that what she was saying was true, because she began pulling elaborate hoaxes and practical jokes on everyone. Some began to believe her, and when she announced that a girl who had made fun of her was going to die of snakebite, and it happened, everyone must have finally had enough, because the village elders decided to accuse her of Witchcraft.

The stocks and a few lashes would be a slap on the wrist, but death by hanging seemed a tad harsh for an eight-year-old child, even if she had killed someone. They decided that since she hadn't publicly mocked the New God during her interrogation (unlike most accused of Witchcraft) they should perhaps be lenient, so they decided on banishment instead.

Against her parents' sobbing protests, Mary was publicly flogged and excommunicated from the flock. Her banishment was a severe one, because it took place in the dead of winter, and the wolves and savages would have been quite hungry indeed, but at least they had the comfort and satisfaction of knowing they hadn't killed her directly.

Strangely enough, she didn't die. Or perhaps she did, nobody really knows. Either way, something... happened.

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"You will survive, for you are under my protection," the glowing lady said. "They come for you now. I will join with you and you will be mine."

Through a haze of dull pain and falling snow, Mary saw them approaching. The savages. They were scantily clad for this sort of weather, but they were rumored to feel no pain or discomfort. They looked hungry, though. She closed her eyes and waited for the worst to be over, waited to die horribly. The glowing lady was there, Mary could feel it, but nobody seemed to see her. Perhaps she had been dreaming while still awake; she had heard the dying often saw things that weren't really there.

The fur-and-bone-clad men had seen the trail left by the Outsiders and followed it, because one never knew who or what the Outsiders were going to dump in the Sacred Wood. They were in the habit of releasing their insane and their worst criminals out here, and more than once the Raccoon Clan had been forced to dispatch them. It wouldn't do to have savage people crapping up the Sacred Wood, setting fire to things and eating the protected animals. Besides, some of them were just really rotten fellows. You just couldn't get through to them, no matter how hard you tried.

This time the Outsiders had apparently left a small and bloodied girl out here to die in the cold. Broken Snake, the Clan's chief hunter, was outraged.

"What kind of people could do this to one of their own, and one so young?" he said, tears in his eyes. "Children are innocent, favored of the Gods, who would do such a thing?"

"You know exactly who would do it, Broken Snake," Red Feather said. "The Outsiders did this. Look at her, she's obviously one of their children. Their new god delights in such evils as this."

Broken Snake gently wrapped the girl in a blanket he generally used as a pillow to ease his backside when he sat, and brought the shivering, bleeding child to the Spirit Woman, to see if she could save the girl's life. He hoped frostbite hadn't set in yet, because he knew the soft Outsiders were extremely susceptible to the effects of nature.

In her tent, the Spirit Woman spoke to Mary in a gentle voice, soothing away her fears and tending to her wounds. Eventually the girl was healed, and being young and finding new things easy to learn, she soon grew accustomed to their language.

The Spirit Woman raised the child as her own daughter, teaching her the ways of the Clan and their secret magics. She taught her how to make the paint and pigment that identified a member of the Clan (the Raccoon Clan's face paint had big, black rings around the eyes and the rest was white except for the nose and lips, which were also black), how to read the weather, how to track while remaining untrackable (she called it seeing from the invisible), and how to pray to the Spirits, even the Spirits of the Ancestors.

Mayrie (for they called her that) was a quick study, and had soon learned all that the Spirit Woman had to teach her. She began improvising her own magics, learned to call wildlife out of the woods in times of famine when hunters had no luck, could conjure fire out of nothing, and once even caused a flock of geese to fall from the skies like fat, feathered, honking hailstones. Her power was respected and revered even by the people of other Clans, and as a result the Raccoon Clan's status was elevated among them, and their territory was enlarged.

Mayrie's power was unlike anything any of them had ever seen, and nobody wanted to get on the wrong side of her, because nobody knew what she might be capable of. Even so, as formidable as she seemed, she was kind and gentle, following the example she had been shown when these strangers had rescued her from certain death at the hands of those whom she'd considered her own.

She never mentioned the glowing lady to anyone, and never saw her again, but when she had finally been restored to health Mayrie was a different person entirely. She felt as if the lady was a part of her, that somehow she had saved her life by uniting with her. At death's door, one often meets things not of our world, and if brought back from the brink of oblivion, sometimes these things stay, becoming one with those who ferried them over. Sometimes these things just happen for no apparent reason.

Either way, she was now exactly the sort of person she'd been accused of being by the residents of Pickett's Hope. Mayrie was an insanely powerful Witch, something the world hadn't seen in over a thousand years. She had mastered the Eight Magics of the Ancients, and nature itself and all the spirits of nature were subject to her will.

Instead of doing what most people might have done and using her incredible powers to revenge herself on those who had beaten her and left her to die, Mayrie realized that if they hadn't done so she'd not be the person she had become, and she rather liked the person she had become. She bore them no grudge, having evolved beyond their ignorance, and she forgave them, as any spiritually advanced person would have done. They were no threat to her, so she tended to think of them as harmless. She learned otherwise.

When she reached the age of thirteen, and assumed her rightful place as the new Spirit Woman of the clan (allowing her adopted mother to retire and get some housework done, finally), the entire region suffered one of the worst winters in memory. It was all the Clans could do to ensure their own survival without disrupting the natural balance, possibly beyond repair. Some voluntarily took their own lives in order to spare everyone else the strain of supporting them. Love can make a person do extraordinary things sometimes, I'm sure you'll agree.

Pickett's Hope had already expanded to nearly twice its size, and the surrounding area was hunted to desolation. More and more trees had to be cut on a regular basis, both for fuel and building supplies, and the winter winds hit them hard. They began to die of cold and starvation, and against the better judgement of her peers in the Clan, Mayrie decided to help them.

Perhaps she thought that she could open their eyes to the truth, that she was not evil and had not died a criminal in the woods, that she still cherished them, and had a place for these simple folk in her heart, despite their previous loathing of her and their ill-treatment of her. Perhaps she even thought that her former people and her new people could live in peace.

Whatever her motivations, she began leaving gifts of food on the doorsteps of hungry families. On several occasions she was spotted doing so.

Like most ignorant people, they were neither delighted nor enlightened to discover that the same person they'd banished for Witchcraft was the person who had been feeding them. Many refused to eat anything found on their doorstep, fearing poison, or a curse, or something even worse than mere evil magic.

Eventually, the hysteria was beyond even that which had driven them to banish her, and under the guidance of Rev. Pickett a hunting party was formed to do away with the Witch, once and for all. Fifty-six of the village's best huntsmen gathered in the village square, lit their torches, and, guns gleaming in the torchlight, set off into the night to slay the demon child and end this outrage. The Reverend Pickett, of course, stayed behind to tend his flock. He was a man of peace, as everyone knew.

Rev. Pickett's reasoning was logical, in its own deranged way. Mary had caused the famine and cold, she must have, and she was using these gifts in an attempt to bring Pickett's Hope under her sway. She would corrupt their hearts and minds and lead them astray from the path of the New God, the God of Order out of Chaos, and so she needed to go. They would finish the job this time, and the world would be safe from her wickedness and sin forever more and everyone would be happy.

This was not to be the case.

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"Mayrie, the Outsiders are coming, our scouts have seen their torches in the Wood," Red Feather said. "Tell us what you would have us do."

"They're coming to take me away and kill me, the little birds have already told me so," she replied. Red Feather nodded, he was used to this sort of thing by now. Mayrie knew the language of each and every thing.

"Then we must assemble a war party immediately! I will give the call!" he said.

"No!" Mayrie shouted, scowling. "Nobody has to die! If we kill them, then we're no better than they are! We're a peaceful people now, and I intend to keep us that way! I don't want anyone to get hurt!"

Red Feather knew she was right. The Clans had stopped warring in recent years, and had even formed alliances where before there had been nothing but feuding and discontent. All were concerned more with the Outsiders and their annoying encroachments than with squabbles over whose turn it was to hunt in a certain area or who was supposed to marry whom and didn't want to, and all were united as they had never been before. Peace prevailed, and they avoided the Outsiders whenever possible in order to avoid conflict.

Lately, however, things had been pretty bad all around. The Outsiders were destroying the forests, killing all the game, and just generally being bastards to everyone else, often killing and burning entire villages. Red Feather really, really wished Mayrie would give in just once and declare open season on her former people. These Outsiders had to go, whether she thought them redeemable or not.

And why not? Look at what they had done to her! But her ways were mysterious, and her words on love and forgiveness were compelling. Most were of the opinion that whatever she said was true, simply because she said it. Red Feather himself was of this opinion. She was their Spirit Woman. She spoke the truth.

He still disliked the Outsiders though, the land-stealers, the despoilers. Something had to be done.

"What are we going to do, then?" he asked. "I trust your wisdom, but I cannot see what you see. We could at least try to frighten them away. What would you have us do, Mayrie?"

"Nothing," she said. "I'm going to let them take me."

"This is madness," Red Feather exclaimed, "they'll kill you!"

"I've something to tell them, and depending on how they respond, I shall decide the proper course of action in dealing with them," she said. "Promise me you won't do anything rash while I'm away."

"As you wish, Mayrie," he said. "I only wish I understood."

"hopefully, by the time I'm done, you won't have to, and we can all go back to what we were doing," she said. "There has to be a peaceful solution. They're human beings just like us, and we all want the same things, don't we?"

When the hunting party arrived, Mayrie was calm. Her Clan stood behind her, bristling with spears, arrows, and all manner of pointed and deadly things, watching them as they approached. Mayrie stepped away and slowly, calmly, drew closer to the heavily armed Outsiders. They trembled visibly, either from cold or fear or both. Some of them were so starved she barely recognized them.

"I'll go peacefully," she said, "nobody has to do anybody any harm. Do not fear my people, for they are not the savages you think them to be. Leave them in peace, and I will come with you willingly."

She heard an angry outburst and a shouted warning, and turned just in time to see the thick wooden stave swinging towards her face. The next thing she saw was stars swirling on a field of blackness, and then she saw nothing.

In the morning she awoke in chains, head throbbing, skirts damp with her own water. Her ribs hurt, and her left leg was twisted unnaturally. She could only move one arm. Mayrie raised her bloody hand to her face, and winced as she healed the split and swollen flesh that she felt there. Soon she was able to stand up on sturdy legs again, and her ribs were repaired as well. The final touch was fixing her dislocated arm. It popped back into place, and she healed the sprain.

The shackles were easy enough to remove, she simply felt around inside them with her mind and released the latches that held them shut. They fell to the floor, inert.

When the guards came to check on her after hearing the noise of falling chains, they recoiled in shock. She stood before the door of her cell, it swung open, and she stepped forth.

"You can take me to see the Reverend Pickett now," she said. "I believe I have an appointment."

They slowly complied, still dazed from their witnessing of her Witchcraft. Outside Rev. Pickett's office, they encountered his wife, who had just been leaving, a worried expression on her face. She withdrew in horror as Mary entered.

The Reverend Pickett looked up, surprised.

"I wasn't expecting this for another hour at least, and I swear I was told they'd beaten you senseless," he said, a bemused look on his face. " You don't look like anyone's beaten you; I shall have to see that they remedy this. But first you're going to tell me what exactly you've been playing at. Banishment is permanent. Are you trying to subvert my flock? Have you anything to do with this execrable weather? And where have all the animals gone? We're starving here, but you look as healthy as a fatted calf. Why are you doing this to us? Because we banished you?"

"Your way of life is why you've got it so bad," Mary replied. "No trees left to stop the northern winds from blowing you blue, no habitat for the wildlife, which you've hunted practically out of existence, and at least up until now you've bred like rabbits, eating up everything in your path. It's perfectly obvious to me why it's all happening to you."

"I disagree," Rev. Pickett said. "Those savages you've fallen in love with are the only thing standing in the way of civilized people having enough of everything. There's enough for one or the other, and which is the logical choice as to who is going to survive, and indeed deserves to? Is it not the duty of all to advance civilization? It's our world, not theirs."

"You may not see it, but in many ways those people you call savages are more civilized than you are," Mary said. "All of you have the wrong idea about them. They're peaceful people at heart, quite decent, really, and they never ate anybody out there in the woods. They used to try and save them, because they didn't know what sort of people they were. You've got to believe me, they don't wish you any harm at all."

"Well, all that's done with now," Rev. Pickett said. "I think we've sent those savage tribes quite a message this time, and at least we'll have more to go around now that we've got that bit of forest under control."

"What are you talking about?" Mary asked, concern creeping into her voice. "What did you do?"

Before Rev. Pickett could speak, she got her answer. Before her stood the spirit of Red Feather, looking at her with a great sadness in his eyes. Around the room, behind him, she immediately saw more of her Clan, all in spirit form. That meant only one thing. They were dead.

"You've killed them," she said, tonelessly. "You've killed them all."

And then Mary did what anyone would do in such a situation. She went insane.

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The entire village of Pickett's Hope turned out to see the procession. It wasn't every day the men of the village caught a real live Witch, let alone one as evil as this one. This Witch was the Witch who had brought the fierce winter winds, and had driven all the game away. She was the one who had been starving them all. And now the evil would be lifted. It was a time to celebrate.

"This great new town of Pickett's Hope has seen many Trials and Tribulations," the Reverend Pickett called forth from his lectern on the platform in the middle of the square, "but none so trying as those which have been cast upon it by the Evils of Witchcraft! Yes, this Witch has brought upon us the Plagues of Starvation and Privation, Death, Disease and Demoralization! And now the Judgement of the One True God is upon her! He has, in his Mercy and Loving Kindness, given our Enemy over to us, and we have felled the Armies of the Unrighteous in the Wilderness!"

The crowd roared its approval. As weakened as they were by hunger, they found new strength in the Reverend's words. At least now maybe there would be enough to eat.

Mary/Mayrie was being held upright by a pair of guards. She slumped limply in their grasp, staring with unseeing eyes. She hadn't resisted the torture session she'd just been brought from, hadn't made a sound, in fact, during it, and had remained catatonically motionless throughout. The guards fastened her chains to a thick wooden post and wrapped some more around her to hold her in place. She hung from the post like a filthy rag doll soaked in blood.

"You have been sentenced to death for the crime of Witchcraft," the Reverend intoned. "You are to be broken with iron bars and then hanged until dead, and your body burned, the ashes scattered to the four winds. Have you anything to say before we execute your sentence?"

Mary appeared to be trying to say something.

"Speak up, Witch! We can't hear you!" someone called from the crowd. There was a titter of laughter.

With a wrenching crunch, Mary stood upright, and her chains fell away. The crowd gasped and recoiled in surprise.

"I said," Mary said, so loudly everyone could hear her quite well, "that I've something to tell you all." She glowered at them, and took a step forward.

Everyone stared, frozen in place like statues. Some women fainted.

"You've all been following a man who has no concept of truth," she said. "Your new religion is a falsehood, crafted to enslave you. Before the Collapse, all were free to think for themselves, and destroyed what they had built through their own stupidity. Now you all follow the few, under the authority of a false god, a god made by men, and you are no better off. A society that would cast a child into darkness and leave her to die is what is truly savage, I see that now. A people who would seek to exterminate their neighbors is not a civilized people. I think you owe the world a debt that will be a long time in repayment, and I intend to collect it myself."

Reverend Pickett was unmoved. He had to maintain control, or the entire town, his town, would erupt into chaos. He knew how to silence a Witch. You bloody well shot her in the head.

"In the name of the One True God, I rebuke you, Demon!" He advanced on her, his pistol in his hand.

Mary looked at him and he stopped dead in his tracks. She raised her hand, and he was lifted into the air, flailing wildly. The pistol went off, breaking a window across the square, and bucked out of his grasp. It fell with a clatter.

Everyone stood, transfixed, as they watched her kill the Reverend. He was torn to shreds before their eyes, and splattered everywhere as Mary unleashed a hellish bellow of rage that echoed for miles. Her skin erupted into a spray of blood, and her body exploded into a swirling mist of gore, and when the cloud of red droplets settled, what remained in its place hovered grotesquely a few inches above the ground, and slowly looked up at them. It croaked out a laugh that seemed to rise from a bottomless abyss of suffering and raised its arms.

Suddenly, the spell that held everyone immobilized was lifted, and the people of Pickett's Hope began to scatter, running for their lives. Some fell and were trampled underfoot, screaming, and others were felled by unseen means, insides erupting and flying in all directions. If they could have seen what Mary saw, they would have seen her literally devouring the spirits of the fallen, as well as the spirits of the dead Raccoon Clan who had gathered around her, blindly feeding her rage on their soul energy. But nobody saw it. They were all too busy running away, anyway.

The thing that had once been Mary slowly rose into the air, surrounded by a sickly glow and transfigured into a vision from a lunatic's worst nightmares. Her eyes were pits of blackness, her skin sallow, and all about her dust and debris swirled, as if caught in a whirlwind. She was smiling, her blackened teeth glistening with an ichor which dripped from the corners of her mouth.

"This is my town now, and you all belong to me," she shouted after them, "And from now on, you're all going to be good little sheep, and fear a real god." With that she arose into the night sky, and was seen no more.

At least not by anyone who lived to tell of it.

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Three hundred years later, the town of Pickettsville, formerly known as Pickett's Hope, still hadn't entirely recovered from the events of that fateful night.

Sure, they had sort of followed along with everyone else, albeit slowly, and grew and developed, albeit slowly, but everyone agreed there was just something wrong with them. Nobody could figure out what exactly it was, but there was something different about them, they seemed... what was the word? Haunted, that was it.

Pickettsville seemed haunted.

They tended to dress conservatively, but then they'd had Puritanical beginnings, so that wasn't the oddest thing about them. Everything was about thirty years out of date, everyone was gloomy, and nobody seemed to care about it. Rundown houses were left to fall to pieces, not much was ever repaired unless it was utterly vital, and then it took forever to get it fixed, they never had dances or celebrations, and everyone agreed they were dreadful to deal with in any capacity.

Pickettsville seemed to be the most depressing place on the face of the planet.

Little did anyone know that everything was soon going to change, and change for the better. It changed for reasons we shall get to eventually. Suffice it to say for now that even the worst of times eventually passes, no matter how bad it gets.

Now, before we get to all of that, here's what had been going on since three hundred years earlier on the night of Mary's failed execution and successful explosion and rebirth as something Other: Rutherson Pickett, son of the previous Rev. Harding Pickett, decided that perhaps the remnants of the town shouldn't be led by a religious figure. The citizens, or at least the ones who were left, seemed to agree. They made him their mayor instead.

Mayor Pickett helped rebuild the town, spending large stores of his own resources as any mayor worth his salt would have done. Everyone pulled together, repaired things as best they could, and set about surviving the winter.

Nobody had seen Mary since that night, but some swore they felt her presence. The remaining inhabitants of the forest were left alone, at least by the people of Pickettsville, and the place where the massacre of the Raccoon Clan had happened was shunned by all. Everyone tried to forget it, but deep down they all knew what they had done. They had wrought evil in the world, and reaped its harvest in death.

The families of those who had been directly involved seemed to carry the heaviest burdens, and sometimes some of them went missing. Nobody knew where they went, and nobody asked, because they really didn't want to know. Best to just keep your head down, nose to the grindstone, and shut it all out.

Over time, nearly everyone forgot that anything had happened at all, but it didn't make anything any better. It was as if the town was diseased, rotten to the core, like roadkill left in the sun, festering and maggoty inside. Pickettsville was damaged goods, and everyone knew it. They just didn't know why.

One day, long after everyone had forgotten why nobody was supposed to go exploring out by Raccoon Lake, some workers who were building a road to be used by local farmers found something strange. It was a house in the woods.

Not that a house in the woods is all that strange in and of itself, but the house itself was strange. For one thing, nobody remembered anyone talking about building a house out here, and for another, it was huge. It... loomed. And it looked incredibly old.

Soon enough, everyone in town had heard of the strange, huge, old, looming house in the woods. Everyone came out to see it, but nobody felt like approaching it too closely. Nobody knew who owned it either, and nobody had ever claimed ownership of the land, at least not as a matter of public record, so the road (eventually known as Raccoon Lake Road) was built without any unnecessary legal delays. This was the only incursion made into the area of the house for many years.

Then tragedy struck. A group of teenagers had dared each other to spend a night in the House. It was rumored to be haunted, and we all know what sorts of things excited teenagers get up to when they hear about a haunted house.

Only one of them survived the night. She returned with a tale of terror, raving like a lunatic, and a party of about a dozen concerned citizens was immediately formed to find her friends and bring them to safety. None of them returned.

Another group (of heavily armed men, this time) went to the House (they all said it with a capital H by now) to investigate, and the one survivor who made it back warned the Town Elders to keep everyone away from the House, if they valued their safety. They listened to what he told them about what had happened to him, swore each other to secrecy, and called off all rescue attempts.

When the man had nearly recovered, he disappeared. Nobody went to look for him. He had already told them not to, and besides, they knew exactly where he'd gone. He'd gone to the House.

His last name, coincidentally, had been Pickett.

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Many more people went missing over the years, and by now people just generally accepted that the House had gotten them somehow. Everyone knew about it, but they didn't want to. It was a blemish on the town, a curse, a punishment for something nobody living had done. Most everybody simply acted as if the place wasn't there. It was easier to live like that.

It made no sense, and that's what was so bad about it. The people who had done whatever horrible thing had been done which brought this curse upon the town were long dead. Nobody now living even knew what it was that their forefathers had done to incur it.

At least, nobody knew but Sheriff Burton Pickett. His father had told it to him, as his father had heard it from his father. He knew exactly what had happened, and he intended to do something about the curse.

Ten years ago, he'd agreed to let an arsonist go in exchange for burning the place to the ground. It would be explained as an ordinary escape, and he'd simply shoot the guy after he'd burned the House, and then claim credit for stopping a dangerous criminal from striking yet again. No need to leave an arsonist at large, now was there? It'd be a fine thing all around.

Needless to say, the House never burned down, and the fugitive firebug was never seen again.

Next, he worked with some friends on the town council to have the place condemned. It was an ancient eyesore, a dangerous ruin, and should be demolished.

A demolition crew was called in from a neighboring town large enough to have one, but they had only been on site for an hour before work was called to a halt. Three men had been injured when a bulldozer had suddenly erupted in flames, the fuel tank bursting for no good reason and catching fire.

The crew had resumed work the next day, many of them protesting that the human remains should have been cleared from the property before work had begun, as none of them liked the idea of having to clear them by hand. There were disintegrating skeletons in the weeds all over the property, even on the front steps, and God knew how many inside the house. What the hell had happened here?

Finally, two of the workmen went inside to find out, and several minutes later one emerged, screaming, and covered in blood. Upon examination, he was discovered to have been attacked by some sort of large animal, possibly a big cat. All work was stopped immediately, and the chief contractor told Sheriff Pickett that he needed to get his act together.

"Those human remains shouldn't have been there in the first place, somebody shoulda done something with that, and you're gonna have to call in Animal Control to deal with whatever's in there," he'd said. "That ain't our job, and you got more problems than I can help you with, I think." The ensuing legal hassles had nearly bankrupted the town treasury.

Sheriff Pickett tried everything, and there seemed to be nothing else he could do. If he didn't get rid of that awful House, HER House, then she was going to eventually kill him. He was the last of his line, as he and his wife, Erta, had never had any children.

His father had told him about the Witch. Black-Eyed Mary, he had called her, the curse of the town. In the old days, the town fathers had dealt with her in mortal form, tried her and executed her. Her ghost had plagued the town ever since, bringing death to the descendants of all who had participated in her death.

The families had kept track of the curse, and today, Sheriff Burton Pickett was the last remaining victim of the curse who hadn't yet been claimed.

Like anyone, he really didn't want to die; he had to get rid of the curse, and then he could at least breathe easy and live out the rest of his life. Why did it have to be him, he often wondered. Why me? It was unfair, he'd decided, and since then he'd been trying to end the curse prematurely.

He was at his wit's end when he saw the newspaper article. It was in the Rupperton Post-Review, of course, because Pickettsville didn't have its own newspaper. The headline read: Howard Foster Carter, Great Necromancer of the North, Knocks Them Dead at the Rupperton Supper Club.

Necromancer... wait a minute, that had something to do with ghosts, didn't it? He read more, and found out that Howard Foster Carter was considered the Top Spiritist of the Modern Era, and was Paranormal Investigator to The Queen, as well. He cleansed houses and other places of evil spirits, passed on messages from the great thinkers of all ages, who were all dead now, of course, and had spirit guides and wondrous mental and psychic powers.

That one part really stuck out to Sheriff Pickett: cleansing houses and other places of evil spirits. This was the guy he needed. This was the guy to do it if anyone could. He looked at the photograph; the guy looked rich. He wondered how much of the town's money he'd squirreled away over the years, and if it would be enough to cover the man's fees.

He was desperate, so he decided to play it by ear. He arranged a sort of town council meeting-slash-public event, at which he announced that he'd had an idea that would make everyone's lives better, and would make everyone rich.

As some of the citizens were surely aware, the town had a house which was reputedly haunted. Now, a lot of people will pay a lot of money to see a haunted house, and the whole town could profit greatly thereby. They could become a huge tourist attraction, and cash would flow like water.

A side benefit would be that there wouldn't really be a ghost there anymore once the spirit man had been there, because the spirit man he had in mind was known for getting rid of ghosts. People still visited haunted houses after he'd been to them, but everyone admitted they never seemed quite as haunted as they had before he'd come around. The man himself said it was a Spiritual Gift from God, the Gift of Laying the Dead to Eternal Rest. The House would be confirmed haunted, and the ghost would be gone, and everyone would benefit.

But, to do all or even any of this, they'd need to raise some funds. That was the only hitch, and it was all a matter of the public's cooperation in the matter. The fees could be large. Could he count on everyone, or at least some people, to pledge themselves to covering the fees?

his idea was immediately sponsored by over a dozen of the town's wealthier citizens, probably because Sheriff Pickett was the only one alive who knew that he was the only one left to die before the curse was over. Many were convinced that the whole town was in danger, and the sheriff had no trouble securing the necessary pledges. He had no intention of ever telling them the one little crucial thing he'd left out; they'd have done the same thing if it had been them.

The next day, he had his secretary arrange to bring this Mr. Carter, the Great Necromancer, to Pickettsville to deal with his ghost. He hoped this guy was for real, because he was the only hope Sheriff Pickett had left.

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In his house in North Glumdin, Howard Carter did his morning exercises (which mostly consisted of raising a glass of gin to his mouth several times in a row) and tried to remember the events of the previous night. He'd had a lot to drink, and assumed the big show had gone smoothly, because he wasn't in jail or anything.

He often drank too much before and during shows and seances, because he found the work so dreadfully boring and immoral. Sure, he was immoral enough to do it, but it was still immoral work. And he was good enough at it now that it had become boring. Consequently, he usually just tried to forget about it and enjoy the social aspects of it all instead. Everyone knows chicks dig a mystic, especially if he's good-looking and they think he has a lot of money.

He hadn't always been this cynical; as a child he had believed just like everyone else, believed in ghosts and life after death, and spirits and Paradise for the Good and magic and all that rot. Subsequent experience had simply left him disillusioned, as his particular experiences would have left anyone.

Howard had been raised by the Spiritist's Union. Like many similar organizations, it was their job to find and recruit gifted young individuals who had skills they could train to serve their particular vocations for the Good of the Public. In short, he'd been taken away from his mother and placed in an educational institution which cranked out spirit mediums.

It all started when he was six. The little boy Timmy across the street had taken ill with a fever and died. Howard and he had known each other fairly well, and when Howard had learned a neat trick and decided to prank everyone with it a year later, his knowledge of little Timmy's private life came in handy.

Now, this was a tasteless prank, but he was a little boy, and as a general rule little boys have no sense of taste, as we all know. The trick was simple: he had found a way of making a rapping noise inside his shoe. If he was sitting at a table, nobody could tell where the sounds were coming from. It was a rather creepy effect in a darkened room, when the mood was right.

He would ask questions out loud, as if speaking to the air, and the tapping noises would answer, two taps for yes, three for no. He did this in front of the other children, and told them it was Timmy's spirit.

He was immediately challenged by an older boy.

"I knew Timmy," the boy said. "If you're Timmy," he said to the air, "you'll know something only you and I would know. When Lisa Smart kissed me that time behind the schoolhouse, did she kiss me one time?"

Three taps: No.

"Did she kiss me two times?"

Two taps: Yes.

"It's Timmy! It's really him!"

In truth, Timmy had told Howard all about the kissing episode the day after it had happened, but Howard wasn't about to blow it all by telling anyone that. The trick worked, and soon everyone wanted him to talk to Timmy for them. Everyone but Howard's mother and Timmy's mother and father, that is. They were actually quite upset by all of this.

Soon the Authorities were involved, investigated, and took Howard away. They explained to all involved that young Howard had a Gift which needed proper training, and that everyone was better off this way.

He was thereafter raised and educated by licensed Spiritist Professors, taught all the lore of the Spirit World, all the technical terminology, how to deal with the bereaved, how to help the grieving gain closure, and how to train himself to develop his Mediumistic Gifts.

Some of them demonstrated their supposedly paranormal abilities to him, and when he caught the trick he'd practice it and demonstrate it right back in a matter of days. He was at the top of his class in no time. He just assumed that everyone was in agreement not to talk about it all being trickery, and whoever had the best tricks was the best Spirit Worker.

It was funny, even the ones who were no good at producing any sort of miracles were still highly regarded by the public, and their function in society was considered important. Howard never understood how a bunch of mummery could be important to society until he attended his first opera.

It was called The City of the Dead, and was an opera about death and dying, all from a classical sort of a Pre-Collapse perspective, playing on ancient myths of the underworld and the old Pagan funerary traditions of Pre-Collapse Civilization.

Howard was so moved by such artistic handling of a subject that was so crass and lifeless to him, that he immediately styled himself as a classical Necromancer for the Modern Era, using all the theatrics at his disposal to make sure that not only did the dead arise and speak, but that they could be heard across a crowded auditorium.

Private seances were expensive, and he toured doing his big stage show mostly just to advertise them, accepting appointments from wealthy clients everywhere he went. He made gobs of money, and had a nice house, his own line of haberdashery, and a collection of Spiritist trappings going all the way back to the Early Restoration. People wrote articles about him, one had already done a highly fictionalized biography of his life for publicity purposes, and his fans even had his picture on their walls.

It all bored and depressed him beyond belief. It was a castle in the air built out of the suffering of the bereaved. Sure, it was a necessary evil, but he hated it when people wanted him to speak for their dead, just to avoid having to let go. He much preferred a good house cleansing to a seance. At least with a house cleansing everyone got closure, and he didn't ever have to see the client again. Repeat clients were a drag.

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Well, that's what there is of the rewrite so far, It'll probably need 3 or 4 more before I decide it's finished, but first I just want to finish it. It's intended to be a full-length novel, and before you get any ideas about wherre it's going, just know the story takes many turns as it goes along, some tragic, some comedic, and some which are rather touching. This is my core story, you might say, a bundle of stuff that's defined all of my work, all along, and somewhere around Book 3 it hit a wall. I'm hoping to move past that, and see where the story goes.

If I do more of this anytime soon, I'll post it in follow-ups, just in case anyone liked it, for some strange reason.

I might as well post some more of this... At least it finally gets the bulk of the character intros out of the way for now, and gets a little of the adventure going...

I'll try to post more as it takes a better shape, but I've been busy with work...



-------------------------------------

Now, just about anyone else finding themselves in a position of celebrity (and being out of debt for once in their lives) would perhaps have, well, celebrated. Not our Howard, though. You see, he was in a profession which, at least in modern times, was of a highly dubious nature.

Howard had begun pretending to speak to the dead as a child because, deep down, he really, really wanted it to be possible, and nothing he had ever tried seemed to work. Then he worked out his toe-tapping spirit prank, and it had everyone aflutter. This had made it clear from the get-go that even grownups, in the vast majority of cases, had only ever heard of ghosts, and had never actually seen one.

He'd asked his professors relentlessly about it, and had only ever gotten vague answers which eventually led the conversation back to what a noble service they were performing for the public, or to demonstrations of "spirit phenomena" which Howard was easily able to fake later on, thus undermining his willingness to believe even further.

He was the top Spiritist of the Modern Era, and had never had a genuine paranormal experience. His work became a grind of lies upon lies, and he questioned his worth as a human being as a result. Everyone thought he was something wonderful, but he knew better.

The more outrageous and outlandish his claims, and the more ridiculous the "manifestations" in the dark room became, the more the people ate it up, and the more money and praise they heaped upon him, and the worse he felt as a result. It was a vicious circle of self-inflicted misery.

Howard Carter was a thinly-veiled smear of self-loathing in an expensive suit with fancy jewelry. A sow's ear sold as a silk purse, wearing the emperor's new clothes, and sooner or later, he was going to break. Eventually, he would simply implode and collapse in upon himself, and the public would say he had retreated into the Spirit Realm, and his die-hard fans would bring him fruit baskets in the asylum.

His best friend and silent partner in the spooking business, on the other hand, was an avid believer in everything of an occult or mystical nature.

Willie Fromm, five years younger than Howard, had been in the same classes with him at the Spiritists' Union. He was thin and small, dextrous and sharp-witted, seemed to hear everything within a mile and could get anything on anyone. This suited him perfectly for the sort of work he did for Howard, both in and out of the seance chambers. He was the real worker of the two, disguising himself as various spirits of the departed and appearing to the sitters, whispering secrets only they and their lost loved ones could have known, making the banging noises in the walls, and all of the other technical aspects of the craft.

In spite of his gigantic talent for trickery, Willie was a believer, as I've said. How, you might ask, could one reconcile a belief in spirits with faking seances every night? It was simple. Willie believed that people never saw real spirits anymore because the spirits had tired of humanity's crass company. They had simply stopped talking. It was up to people like Howard and himself to once again ennoble the spirits in the minds of humanity, and elevate their awareness of such things, and when they were once again worthy of the spirits' company, they would once again have it.

In the meantime, one couldn't let the whole profession die out, and everyone had to make a living. He likened it to plumbing, one of the noblest of professions in his opinion. It was precisely when the toilets had stopped working, when the flow was interrupted, that the plumber was needed most. The spiritual needs of humanity were no different, really. They just needed a good flushing out.

When Willie checked the mailbox and found the letter from Sheriff Pickett's secretary, requesting a visit from the Great Howard Carter, he was beside himself with excitement. Everyone knew Pickettsville was haunted, it had to be, and if there was ever a chance of snapping Howard out of his increasingly depressed funk, this was it.

Who knows, he thought, I could see a real ghost, too! This could be a fantastic opportunity for everyone involved!

"Howard! We've got a chance to work Pickettsville!" he called out. "This is wonderful!"

"Oh, great," Howard said. He didn't look like he thought it was all that great.

"All that fresh air, the rolling scenery! It'd do you some good!" Willie was going to make this happen, he had to. "Some of the women aren't so bad looking either, and they bathe every day!"

"How fabulous," Howard said. He didn't seem to think it was fabulous at all.

"There's trees, and birds that aren't pigeons, and everything isn't covered in soot, and they have ponds and you can see the stars at night, and they even have real live cows!" Willie had to push through, sooner or later, he knew, something would have to give.

"That's nice," Howard mumbled, sinking further down behind his newspaper. "Let me guess, they want me to do a seance. I knew that, because I'm a psychic, you know."

"Well, yeah, but..." Willie began, and Howard cut him off.

"Tell them I've gotten sick and just can't do it, so sorry, but I'm sick for the next three years," Howard said. "I'm sick of all this crap, let the royalties on the book sales pay for everything for a little while and let me be."

"Don't you see the opportunity here, Howard?" Willie pleaded. "Have you ever even heard the rumors about that place? If you did this, dealt with this haunted town, you'd be remembered throughout history!"

"Yeah, and for what?" Howard pushed back his chair and stood up, knocking it over backwards. He left the room, leaving the chair where it lay.

"He needs this more than he knows," Willie muttered under his breath. "I'm going to see to it that he does this, whether he likes it or not. It is either going to make him or break him, and I pray to whatever gods may still exist that it makes him."

---------------------------------

Doctor Rupert Doyle, M.D., was one of the founding members of the Para-Psychical Research Society, which was mostly composed of scientists, scholars, and other intellectuals who shared a common belief in the Unexplained. They often got together to conduct tests and research projects, investigate paranormal claims, and talk over their various unusual interests, usually while drinking a lot and smoking cigars.

Dr. Doyle had been won over to the cause by the same Howard Carter whose health was now his primary concern. He was Howard's personal physician, mainly in the hopes of finding some scientific, biological cause for his extraordinary gifts. He had been a casual observer during many tests with Howard during the latter's early career, and had been so thoroughly taken in by the performances that he had risked his professional reputation in declaring Howard's gifts to be genuine.

Howard, either out of a sense of guilt or simply because the Doctor was such a genuinely likeable fellow, had taken him on as his own doctor, and the two had become good friends. Howard trusted Dr. Doyle, and this is what Willie finally resorted to in order to bring about the necessary changes in his friend's attitude towards a trip to Pickettsville.

In short, he told the doctor that Howard needed a vacation, pointed out his irritability and depression as obvious clues to this fact, and said that if Howard did not get closer to nature for a period of time in the near future, he would lose his spiritual powers entirely. He had been working too hard, allowing too many departed souls to use him as a channel, and his aura was all screwed up. Didn't he see it? It was obvious!

The Doctor immediately paid Howard a visit.

"Good Gods!" he bellowed, bursting into the parlor, Willie at his heels. "Look at you, man, you're a wreck!"

He knocked the half-filled glass of gin out of Howard's hand, leaving the bottle in the other hand pouring a stream of the foul-smelling stuff all over the floor. Howard looked up from under his sunken brow, his eyes rimmed with red.

"Right, that stuff costs good money, what?" He put the bottle on the table. "What's all this ruckus about, then?"

"Have you looked in the mirror lately?" Dr. Doyle said. "You can see for yourself! You're a mess, a shambles!"

"I try to avoid mirrors, mostly," Howard mumbled, "they make you look at things you don't want to see."

"You need to get out of the city for a while, it's taking a toll on you, both physically and mentally, and I daresay spiritually," Doyle said. "I am prescribing a regimen of fresh air and sunshine, for a period of no less than one week."

"Willie put you up to this, did he?" Howard asked, looking at Willie. "Seems like the sort of thing he'd do."

"Never mind who made me aware of your present dilapidated condition, you're taking a vacation, and that's final," Doyle said. "I suggest Pickettsville, I hear the apples are in season, and I want you to eat as many as possible. Maybe bring some back with you."

"How convenient," Howard said. "I suppose there's no getting out of it, then."

Doctor Doyle simply stared back, saying nothing. It was enough.

"Fine, you've all got your way," Howard capitulated. "But I'll be damned if I'm going to enjoy it."

"Splendid!"

---------------------------------------

Howard kept the curtains drawn on the carriage windows, partly because it created an air of mystery, and partly because he simply couldn't bear to look. Too much sunshine, grass, and such. He wondered if he might catch hay fever and die, he'd heard of that sort of thing happening out here in the country.

At some point he must have drifted off into a half-sleep, his mind wandering over all of the old familiar territories, all the way back to little Timmy across the street. Little Timmy who had died. Little Timmy who had inspired Howard's entire career.

They'd been fast friends, far better than he'd ever let on later. They'd even formed a pact that if one died before the other, the one who died would find a way to communicate from the other side, and they could share the great secrets of what lay Beyond.

Howard had tried for a year to make contact after Timmy's untimely death, and finally had settled for make-believe, as any child would do. It saddened him that after all these years he had trouble remembering Timmy's face. His sadness slowly turned into a tense feeling of impending dread, like something was looming in the distance, just beyond the horizon, something ancient and evil, something dark and hungry and sadistic. Something dangerously insane.

He could feel it, icy-cold, black as the pit, and he knew, somehow, that it felt him. It knew he was coming, and it was waiting for him.

Howard was awakened by movement inside the carriage. Something was fluttering wildly and shrieking, and Howard screamed like an hysterical woman. The carriage stopped, and Willie, who was on this occasion posing as Howard's chauffeur, opened the door.

"What's going on in here, then?" he said, and then blanched as the raven fluttered out the door of the carriage and away. "Cripes, that's an omen, it is!"

"Is that what you call that species of bird?" Howard asked sarcastically, "I thought it was a crow or something. Scared the piss out of me though, it did."

"It's a raven, Howie, and it's a bad sign," Wille said, seriously. "We've got to watch our backs, we have."

"Yeah, we might get hit by a stray bird or something," Howard smirked, "they got these little pointy bits on their faces, could put a hole in your head, they could."

This cracked Willie's face, and they both enjoyed a laugh, for the first time in too long.

"Well, at least the air's doing you some good," Willie said, hopefully, "been a while since you had a sense of humor."

"Been a while since you were such an old granny about everything," Howard said, "with your omens and signs and portents."

"Yeah, but a bird like that, inside a carriage, I'm still going to be careful. It's always meant that you're likely to be robbed."

"Ha! Not likely at all. I expect to be bored stiff the rest of the way."

They had been moving again for less than twenty minutes when the highwaymen attacked. It was a rare occurence these days, but there were still bands of robbers plying the trade here and there, and this was a nice-looking carriage, after all. They probably saw it coming a mile away and thought it an easy mark, like taking a biscuit from a cripple, or a diaper from an elderly person.

The warning shot they fired brought the carriage to an immediate halt. The driver stepped down, put his hands in the air, and one of the robbers held him at gunpoint while the other two went for the carriage door, ready to pillage the occupants. Both came tumbling back out immediately, falling over backwards, and Willie took this as his cue to step into action.

He knocked the gun's muzzle away from his abdomen and pulled it back and to the side, simultaneously striking his unlikely guard in the throat. The man grasped at his neck and made choking sounds, so Willie figured he was no further threat at the moment. He struck the man a blow to the side of the head with the butt of the pistol just to be sure, and knocked him unconscious.

Howard was already out of the carriage, and had disarmed one of his attackers as the other tried to get to his feet. Willie slipped up behind this one and pulled him backwards off balance, then turned and stomped on his knee, breaking it. The man howled in pain and curled up into a ball of horrid noises and snot. This left one failed robber still in a condition to answer questions.

"So, thought you'd help yourself to our things, did you?" Willie said, taking out his jack-knife. "What's to keep us from helping ourselves to your bits, then?"

"Honest, we didn't know no better, guv," the man blubbered, "we's just honest robbers, we ain't no harm to nobody."

"Coming all up at us with guns and stuff," Howard intoned solemnly, "I don't know, I think you might have meant us some harm. Probably had us pegged as some sort of stereotypical city-slickers, not a couple of boys from the South Glumdin slums. Or girls, I bet they love holding girls at gunpoint, makes 'em feel all manly-big. What do you think, William?"

Willie had opened his knife and was testing its sharpness. "I think you're right, and I think they owe us something, Howie," he said, "It's street rules, you know, we won fair and square. I say we either cuts us some pieces off, or we just rob them."

"I like both of those ideas," Howard said, "but these are my nice clothes, you know, people to meet today and all. Oh well, the latter it is, then."

When the carriage pulled away, three naked robbers were tied to a tree and the carriage bore their clothing like so many colorful (if dirty and ragged) streamers, blowing out behind it. Sounds of ribald singing and laughter trailed off into the distance.

----------------------------------------

By the time they reached Pickettsville, Howard had to admit he was feeling better. He'd had an adventure, laughed and sang for the first time in how long, and had immensely enjoyed folding up paper darts and sailing them at sleepy-eyed cows, watching them jump and run as the missiles hit home. Sometimes they dropped manure or farted loudly as they ran away, which Howard found rather amusing.

Needless to say he was in much higher spirits than he had been when they left North Glumdin. The rustic scenery was fresh and he felt hale and hearty.

As the carriage drew to a stop and he exited it, he paused for a moment to look upon the populace of Pickettsville, most of whom had turned out to see him arrive. The look of anticipation was familiar, but there was something else... he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

"Greetings, people of Pickettsville!" he called out cheerily, and waited for the applause. None came.

"Erm, it's great to be here, and I look forward to investigating your haunting!" he said, and waited.

Everyone shifted about nervously, staring, not making any discernible sound. They seemed like they were still waiting for something. Howard looked around for a child to shake hands with, that always warmed a crowd to him. He approached a small boy, his hand held out in greeting. The boy ran away.

"Well, I have to check into my hotel now, but it's nice meeting you all," he said, halfheartedly now. "I'll see you all tomorrow!"

They stared after him as he and Willie walked to what appeared to be the town's only hotel. One person followed, who turned out to be the hotel clerk.

"My man will sleep with the carriage," Howard said as he signed the necessary forms, "and I shall require your finest room. What sort of viands might I expect upon the morrow, my good man?"

"We got a diner across the street," the clerk said.

"Erm, all right," Howard said. "Show me to my suite then, I suppose."

"It's this way, upstairs."

The room was anything but a suite, and anything but fine. If anything, it reminded Howard of his childhood home. None of the furniture matched, the wardrobe door hung open on a broken hinge, and the facilities appeared to be a chamber pot in a small cabinet with some flowers on top, as if to say, "I swear I don't have a chamber pot inside me, I'm a stand for flowers. Honest, I don't stink at all!"

When willie slipped in through the window a few minutes later, he seemed highly amused by all of this.

"Looks like my granny's place in good old S.G., it does!"

"I was thinking along similar lines myself," Howard said. "They'd better be damned glad it's a complimentary room, or I'd be throwing a fit right now!"

"Howie, I think it's the best they got," Willie said. "Not everyone has it like we do back in the city. Hell, you know most people in the city have it pretty bad, too. Don't let's go forgetting where we came from, now."

"Willie," Howard said, "I've been trying to forget it since I left it."

"Maybe that's your whole problem, then."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the way I see it is this," Willie continued, "somewhere along the line you got inspired, just the same way I did. It's how we ended up in our line of work, we were into it and showed aptitude for it."

"Yes, so?"

"In all the time I've known you, you've never told me what inspired you," Willie said. "All you've done is mope about how this and that and the other aren't real. Why even do it, then?"

"It's all I've ever known, really," Howard admitted. "I was inspired once, yeah, but I grew up."

"No, Howard," Willie said, "You grew old. There's a difference."

"Well, whatever, I'm on the job, aren't I?" Howard said. "Using my gifts for the betterment of humanity."

"If you only knew," Willie said, "If you only saw what the rest of us saw."

"Who knows, maybe one day I will."

"I sure hope so, Howie."

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I swear it's not done, I'm going to finish this story and edit it and maybe even publish it someday...

I've been told by the few I've allowed to read any of it before that it would make an excellent novel for young adults, but I think it's mainly because I don't use enough swear words and there's no kinky sex or anything... Meh.

I just read all of this again, and I've been way too hard on myself.

I looked at it all from the standpoint of someone who didn't write it, and it's really not all that bad.

I want to finish this story. I really do. There's a lot more of it that I've already written out at least ten times, but I think this fresh start thing is good, even after a couple of months of ignoring it entirely.

If you read it, please let me know if you think I should continue it!

Okay, then.