Young Writers Society

When the light faded, Draper found himself lying on the floor of the abandoned building. Night had fallen, blending the shadows of the place together. Something cold was pulling itself off of him, struggling towards the door in an effort to escape. Draper shook it off of him, his skin clammy from the contact. He wanted to throw up, revolted that the thing, whatever it was, had touched him.

He slowly got to his feet. His gun was back in his holster, though he did not remember putting it there. He drew it again, fire blazing in his heart, determined to kill the darkness that had violated him.

The black mass oozed out of the door before Draper could fire a shot at it. He cursed and followed after it. Before he got to the door, though, he heard a terrible sound, one that stopped him dead in his tracks for a moment. Darkness in agony, a foul thing being dealt pain. And after that, a chilled silence filled the air.

Draper stumbled out into the street of the deserted town. The stars hung overhead. They had come out while he had been in the clutches of the foul thing. His horse was still hitched up where he had left it. Everything seemed to be still.

Something down the street caught Draper’s eye. A fire had been kindled, and before it’s orange glow sat a hunched over figure. Draper cocked his gun. Though it looked somewhat human, it didn’t look human enough.

“What are you?” Draper called.

“Not what you want to kill,” the figure said. “I just ate it for dinner.”

“How do I know that’s true?” Draper asked.

The figure stood. In the fire’s light Draper saw it very well. A coyot on two legs, with a dust colored cloak around its shoulders. Draper’s arm fell, limp in amazement.

“You don’t know,” the coyote said. “But there are many things you don’t know. Come and sit, and you will know some of what has happened here.”

Draper came forward with slow steps, never holstering his gun, never taking his eyes off of the coyote. It merely sat down again and motioned beside itself, obliging Draper to take a seat as well. He did so, his gun laying across his lap.

“You have done a good thing,” the coyote said.

“Killing the, whatever it was?” Draper asked.

The coyote nodded. “Though you only weakened it. I finished it.”

“What was it?”

“I do not know.” The coyote motioned to the night sky. “Perhaps from the spaces between the stars. All I know is that it was malicious and devouring.”

“What did it do here?”

“It ate this town, body and soul. It was finishing off the last inhabitant when you came in.”

Draper remembered the thin, scared girl in the darkness. “Did it get her?”

The coyote shook its head. “Not completely. Though she would not have survived in the condition she was in.”

A paw pointed back towards the building and draper looked. Another coyote, almost small enough to be a pup, slunk out into the moonlight. It sat on the board walk, watching the two by the fire.

“She will live on,” the coyote said. “She thanks you.”

Draper turned to the coyote. “Just what are you?” he asked, letting his hand creep closer to his revolver.

“A spirit,” the coyote said. “Was that not obvious?”

Draper just shook and took his hand away from the revolver. This was all so much in so little time, more than he was used to. The coyote let a sardonic chuckle slip from his breath, amused at the cowboy’s inability to withstand the supernatural.

“Spirits and ghosts and demons, all one right after the other,” Draper said. “What has happened to the world?”

“Nothing that hasn’t already happened before. The world has always done these strange things in the empty places. Usually you young ones aren’t here to see it though.”

Draper put his head in his hands. There was a pounding sensation there, like a hammer falling upon the nail of his sanity. The coyote took notice.

“I can take care of that for you,” it said. “It shall take a night of rest and what magic I have to me. In the end you will thank me for it. And, if you let me, I shall tell your fortune beforehand.”

“My fortune?”

The coyote nodded. “The future is fluid, but some things must always happen in the life of an individual. These things I can see and tell you of.”

The headache felt like it would split Draper’s skull open. He grimaced and nodded, his eyes clamped shut in pain.

The coyote chuckled again. “Good man, cowboy. Good man.”

The pain eased off of Draper’s mind. He took a deep breath and breathed it out with satisfaction. The coyote grinned at him and began to pull out various siguls of the working of magic. A dried horny toad, a charred branch of a Joshua tree, a scorpion’s stinger, components of the desert that lay around.

“What are those for?” Draper asked.

“To make you ask questions,” the coyote said. It laughed at it’s joke. Draper simply grunted.

The coyote began to hum. Its eyes curled up into its head, the whites displayed to the world. It’s paws lifted up to the starry sky above. This bored Draper. He had seen better spectacles of this sort of thing before, with alcohol and naked girls to boot. The coyote returned to its normal position.

“You’re a hard one to fool, aren’t you?”

Draper just shrugged his shoulders. The coyote smiled and stared at Draper. He could feel its predatory eyes gazing at him, piercing past his skin, perhaps to his very soul. He wanted to throw up again, yet managed to control himself. At last, the coyote leaned back.

“What a man you are,” it said. “From over the mountains and the sea you have come here. A long way and a long time traveling, so you reckon?”

Draper nodded. “It’s been a long while. I’ll get back though.”

The smile fell from the coyote’s face. “No,” it said. “You will not go back. The way is shut against it. You have farther yet to go, both in distance and in time. As many years as you have wandered, that many will you wander yet, until death takes you.”

Draper let out a sharp grunt, angered at how he had been spoken to. “Are you trying to make me mad?” he asked.

“I speak the truth, though veiled in riddle,” the coyote said. “Such is the way of prophecy.”

“Not much of a prophecy.”

“What did you expect, the sky to open up?” the coyote asked. “Prophecy is not as much as you would think. In the end, it always ends with death.”

“I can change it though,” Draper said. “I can go back.” The thought of Lady Emily, newly resurfaced after what he had endured in the building, filled his mind. Perhaps yet there was a chance of that life he had long left behind.

“No,” the coyote said again. “You are part of this world now. That world is dead and gone. She is dead and gone. Live with it.”

Hot anger flared up in Draper and his hand went to his revolver. The iron sights fell upon the coyote’s head. Draper’s finger pulled the trigger, but when the crashing thunder of the shot filled the air, the sun was over the horizon, though not quite at noon. Draper sprung to his feet, shock coursing through his veins. He cried out, cursing as he dashed back and forth in a desperate search for the coyote. Raving like a madman, he scoured the place for an hour or so.

At long last, reason returned to him. A weight settled on his shoulders, driving him to his knees for one moment. Her face came to his mind, and a tear came to his cheek. Had anything really happened here? Had the words of that inhuman spirit been true at all? No, they couldn’t have been. And yet his heart was not comforted. It still ached in its empty spaces.

He got to his feet. However it had happened, this town was deserted. There was no reason to stay here. He had to move on. Phenandra Drifts was not too far. He could make it there by noon tomorrow, if he left now and rode quick. In his mind there was every intention of doing just that.

His horse was still tied up. He sent up a silent prayer that it had not bolted during all of this. Then the trip would have been long. Draper unhitched the horse and saddled up. He rode down the street and out of town. He never looked back. There was nothing to see.