She stood there in the doorway, a woman with cream colored hair which reached her shoulders; Andrew gathered a lantern, and her face was caught in the light of the thing and even with its glow, her pallor was unmistakable—the woman was thin, gaunt, and wore ragged clothing. Her body didn’t fill the frame and so she was small there in the negative blackness of the stairwell and she did not rush in, nor did she say a word upon seeing us. Trouble growled by our feet and the mutt exposed its teeth while lowering its head as though it was ready to pounce. Whatever fright was in the air, it was contagious, and I wanted to reach out and comfort the dog, but I caught the eyes of the woman as she placed a long hand by the hinge of the door. It flinched away so that she held her hands before her chest, clasped like in fists of prayer. Her expression softened and her eyes seemed to round in the glow of Andrew’s light—he held it high over his head to bathe the room in it.

Thank you, said the woman, finally, Can I please come in? I think something was chasing me.

“Come on,” said Andrew, waving the woman in.

She entered and we locked the handle while she stepped past us, and I could not help but notice her shadow grew long against the wall where my goods were stacked high—it was certainly a trick of tired eyes.

Gemma patted Trouble’s head while the dog shivered and even the woman stopped to hunker by the dog and when her hand touched the animal’s snout, the whimpers and growls were gone; Trouble blinked then leaned into the woman’s hand for a greater pet, pleased. The dog craned back so the woman’s fingers might itch her chin. A sigh escaped the animal.

In their petting, Gemma’s fingers glanced the woman’s and the girl recoiled.

“You’re cold,” said Gemma.

It’s cold outside. The woman maintained her attention with the dog. It’s been ages since I’ve seen a dog. Such a rarity. Loyal creatures. The woman’s eyes went unfocused and seemed to long for a place or a time. Then she snapped to attention once more and removed her hand; the dog, satisfied, moved across the room then fell onto its side where it curled onto my bedroll. I had one once. That was a long time ago. I miss him often.

“What’s your name? What were you doing out there? What was chasing you?” asked Gemma—the girl moved to flank me while Andrew sat the lantern on a nearby box.

The woman asked for drink and then asked pardon to sit among us in a circle by our bedrolls. She watched Trouble and when the question of her name came again, she answered, hand still holding the cup of water she’d been given with it resting partially against her crisscross sitting legs. Miriam. I watched her there and stood while the others gathered by her and she watched me back, but our flurry of stares were inconsequential as they drifted into mere glances which might hold a greater truth.

An uneasiness overcame me and coming fully awake as I did, I took by the window to smoke stale tobacco, to quell my nerves and I watch the blackness through the glass and the woman in tandem while conversation grew.

Gemma, keeping a skeptical space between herself and this new interloper, asked on, “Where did you come from?”

Westward. I saw a beast in the sky that way and it was heading over. There were these ruins and I fled to them. That was days ago. Surely, I thought, there should be place for cover here. The woman patted her hair down, but it remained untamed, and she sat the cup of water fully on the floor between her crossed legs. Cover there was, but more nasties hide in the dark here. So, I slept in the day and in the night, I felt a thing lurking after me.

Andrew angled the lantern so that it sat in their circle like a campfire, and I remained in shadow by the window, watching the wavers of smoke from the end of my cigarette.

The woman continued, I’m nearly starved. Something, she put up her hands as though defeated, Something followed me in the dark. I thought I’d found a place to hide, but it seems it wasn’t enough. She put on a gentle smile, cool, human. It’s a miracle I found you here. I thought I’d die without food.

I put the cigarette out against the glass and stepped over so that I hovered near Andrew’s shoulder where he sat on the floor. “Eat something then,” I said, “We’ve plenty. Drink too.” I nodded at the cup she’d ignored in her legs. “Go on. It’s safe.”

She blinked slowly then put the cup to her mouth after nodding in thanks. The woman could not drink, and water gushed from her chin then spilled down her chest.

“Oh no!” Andrew rushed for a rag for her to wipe herself dry and she thanked him, and she curiously sat the emptied cup to the side—her glances to the vessel forgave her confusion, her ignorance.

“Are you religious?” I asked her.

She dabbed the rag which Andrew had given her down her wet chest. In a world like this, who couldn’t be?

“Not everyone is. You well read on the books? The Ibrahim ones, I mean.”

No more than any other person. She sat the rag to the side and gave her attention to me fully.

“I have some scripture you might enjoy. It’s something I’ve thought of just now. It’s a proverb, actually—I haven’t thought about it for some time—you’ve reminded me of it.” I asked Gemma to retrieve more water. “Would you like to hear it? It’s only part of it. It’s not very long.”

I’m weakly read and worse on interpretations. If you insist, then I’ll listen. You’ve offered a roof to me—how could I deny your request?

“Good,” I said; Gemma refilled the cup and I motioned for Miriam to take it. She did. “It goes a bit like, ‘There are those that curse their fathers and don’t bless their mothers; they’re pure in their eyes and are not cleaned of filth; those eyes are ever so haughty, whose glances are disdainful; their teeth are swords and their jaws are set with knives and they devour the poor and the needy.’ Have you ever heard it?” I raised a questioning brow.

I haven’t. It’s strange for a proverb.

I nodded. “Drink. Try at least.”

Gemma placed her hands together in a ball and rested her chin against the mass, “What’s this? What’s going on?” she asked.

“Yeah,” added Andrew, “I’ve never heard that one.”

“Shh,” I said to them, then to Miriam I added, “Go on. Let’s see how you drink.”

It makes me feel weird—you looking at me like that. Are my eyes haughty?

“You can’t drink it.” I shook my head.

She held the quivering cup in front of her and frowned then steadied her hand. Why can’t I? Why? As though in protest at herself, she lifted the cup again to her mouth and again it spilled down her chin and wetted her chest—tears welled in her eyes (more from confusion than anything else I surmised).

“You’re dead,” I informed her directly; my words were harsh, but I did not intend on prolonging the guessing. Scratching my cheek, I examined her face more thoroughly, “Although I ain’t an expert on it, I’d imagine you’ve been that way for maybe five days or more.” I paused and took the cup from her slender fingers. “You said you were hunted, but you were caught long ago. How’s the feebleness? Lethargy?” Then I thought to add, “Hunger? Worst hunger you’ve ever felt—like there’s fire that won’t go out in your belly.”

Andrew took a step into our conversation and leaned in closer to me, “What are you talking about, Harlan? She’s dead? What does that even mean?”

I displayed my forearm where Baphomet had opened my skin and took the thumbnail of my other finger and slid it beneath the scab then ran it the length of my arm to let the blood wet down my arm. Miriam first looked in my the eyes, charming they were in the lantern light, and then she blinked and swallowed hard and watched my blood; her nostrils flared, and the pits of her eyes looked more sunken than ever as they stared on with the hunger of a leech woman.

Why? asked Miriam, Why am I feeling this way?

I covered my forearm and forgot whatever pain was there. “You’ve been turned. You are no longer human.” I shook my head and chewed on my tongue for a moment before continuing. “Put your hand to your heart there,” I pointed, “Tell me if you feel it beat. Is it there?”

Miriam did as she was told and as her hand crept to her breast to check if there was still a pulse in her body—once she’d checked over her clothes, she tucked a hand beneath her shirt. It must be faint is all. She insisted. But as she held her hand there where the drum of life should be, her shoulders went soft and she put the hand in her crossed legged lap, staring somewhere I couldn’t see.

“Where’ve you come from, leech woman?” I asked her.

Leech woman? What? The question was a mess, a scramble for an answer. Her last word hung in the empty air.

I shot a glance around the room and my two travelling companions had gathered on the wall which my back faced; Trouble kicked a sleeping leg on the spot she lay.

Gemma’s voice gave, “She’s one of those things? A demon?”

I shook my head then examined Miriam more fully—surely such news would give anyone pause. Her eyes still had that hungry quality, that envy for warm blood, but those eyes danced across the room. She glossed over us, across the shadows on the wall, then they fell back to her hands in her lap and that is when I felt a pang of guilt.

Without worry or assumption, I reached out a hand and touched her face to nudge her chin up so that she might look at me fully.

I’m dead? she asked.

“Don’t worry,” I offered, “Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out, alright? There’s a possible cure.” Still holding her chin there in my forefinger and thumb, I moved to crouch then maneuvered so that her face was upturned, and her throat was caught fully in the light. I smiled.

It's fixable?

I nodded. “Of course.” Then I spoke to Gemma or Andrew; it didn’t matter who. “Hold her arms down!”

What?

With my free hand I launched my knife into her neck and black ooze erupted from the spot. I twisted around her so that I could get leverage with my arm beneath the skull and in a moment, she was in a headlock. The things eyes went white, and a hiss came from her open maw, exposing the wild fangs there. I stabbed again around the thing’s neck and kept going. “Grab her arms!” She flailed them madly, pallid fingers searching for my face in swipes—then she began to squeeze those long fingers onto my bicep and forearm which held her in a lock. “Hold her goddamn arms down!” I screamed.

Gemma and Andrew each fought with an arm on either of her sides while pain surged through me, and my hand pumped with the knife in pure animal rage and then I felt a give and I yanked on her head till I felt her spinal cord come loose. And I sawed with the knife.

Trouble had come awake and started a fit of barking.

Miriam’s expression was blank, and her arms stopped in their fight, and I lifted hard one last time, snipping whatever kept the head on her shoulders. The head fell away and her blood—if it could be called that—spat out from the neck in stuttered spouts.

My chest heaving, I looked upon the work, and felt the ick of the black substance—I dropped the knife and steadied my shaking hands.

“Why didn’t you get her arms when I said to?” I asked the children.

They sat on either side of the corpse, Gemma with a flat expression, and Andrew in a flurry of blinks. The boy looked at his hand and the girl rose to grab a linen piece so that she might clean herself of the muck; Trouble followed her—the dog’s tail remained beneath itself while it let out low whines like it tried soothing itself.

The last bits of adrenaline spasmed through me and I was sent to my bottom on the floor, and I stared at the head which had rolled away in the darkness to become a vague shape in the corner of the room.

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“She’s dead,” said Andrew.

“Yeah,” said Gemma.

“So?” The boy posed it as a question like he intended to ask something greater, like he wanted all the answers, but all that could come to him was that solitary word.

The girl took the cloth she’d cleaned herself with and tossed it to Andrew. “You’re covered,” she said.

“She’s fucking dead,” repeated Andrew.

“Yeah. She hasn’t a head,” she said.

I merely watched them, catching my breath.

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“She was a demon,” said Gemma, “She would’ve done worse to us.” Then she offered a shrug as if to emphasize how she felt.

“Not a demon,” I corrected, “A mutant.”

They looked at me while Trouble scuttled over to the place where the dead woman’s head laid—the dog sniffed the unmoving object.

Gemma shrugged again, “Demon. Mutant. Doesn’t matter.” Her eyes fell to the corpse; it still sat upright like a person. “How’d you do that? How’d her head come off so easy?”

“It wasn’t easy,” I said.

Andrew moved from the gore and shooed Trouble from the decapitated head—upon catching a glimpse of whatever the dog had taken from the dead thing, the boy doubled over and spat a neat puddle of vomit directly in front of himself before choking on a few lingering gags.

Upon awakening from bad sleep, we hoisted the corpse outside into direct sunlight and watched as it blew away in flakes like hot ash. The stink of the creature remained, and we pushed forward on our journey just as it began to rain and in the slant of the downpour, we moved quietly and there was no sound save that falling water. The push from the ruins became a chore as overhangs became absent, as it was just the sky, and as we came to chain-link fences with markings half gone in corrosion which indicated: ianapolis International Air.

We passed by crumbled high streets that once sat atop concrete stilts and risen grounds of asphalt with patch rock for sides and spindly trash wood grew from places treacherously and we passed through that rain like it was a trial and when it ceased, we were dripping, and Trouble shivered at the touch of afternoon’s breeze. Eisenhower Highway took us on, and we went with it and there was little speaking; sometimes the children asked if it was good to be in the open, in the center of a road as we were, but I remarked that it was fine—it wasn’t, I only wanted to linger in the illusion of safety, remain ignorant—I was tired. The stink of the slain creature was gone from us, and little had been said about it.

The cramp of Golgotha and the high corridors manifested by the buildings of the ruins was a different thing entirely than that dual highway, that road I hadn’t walked in ages. Gemma and Andrew each took their surroundings with curiosity, though neither shared a method; the girl kept an expression of somberness, of suspicion while the boy looked on with wonder and dearly reached out with his hand to touch the ground or that sick looking trash wood or maybe he’d take his palm over his brow to gather what was offered on the sky or horizon. Whether it be the rain or the tiredness in us, each of their paths staggered further so that they might each be on either side of the path and I told them to keep in a clump for danger. My mind was gone from the night prior, from the days prior.

“There’s a station up ahead,” I said; Trouble came to my side and brushed my leg, panting, “We’ll rest soon.”

“There’s daylight still,” said Gemma, sweeping her fingers through her newly sheared hair. “Isn’t there somewhere further on?”

I shook my head, “I’m tired,” I said honestly, “Aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” said Andrew; he stretched and again took in the sky within his step.

“Why?” asked the girl, “We should put more space between us and home.” Though she used the word home, she said it as though it was anything but. “Space more between us and everything.” This came as a mutter.

“Shh.” I wanted to say shut up but couldn’t bother. Then I thought better and said it anyway.

Her trot was with new enthusiasm, “I could keep walking for miles longer than either of you.” She pushed ahead of our group and took to walking backwards so that she faced us to say, “Maybe more than both combined.” It was not offered in play, but as a boast.

“There’s something coming after us,” I said.

She froze and fell in alongside the merry band once more, “What’s following us?”

“It’s after the boy.”

“Me?” Andrew sputtered, “What’s after me?”

I readjusted the straps of my pack and shotgun and fell into the next step, “I thought that it’d lost your taste for all that time you spent in Golgotha’s walls, but it seems that thing from the night we met is after you. Maybe it just liked the way your blood tasted, maybe it’s just pissed off because of how I set it on fire.” I shook my head. “I don’t know, but I don’t intend on asking it anytime soon, you understand?”

Andrew squirmed. “You mean the thing that took my hand?”

“How can you be so sure it’s after him?” asked Gemma, “How can you be so sure that it’s after any one of us?”

“That thing—Miriam. She was a thrall to it. An Alukah. They’re nasty things.” A sigh left me; it was only a guess, but saying it aloud made it true. “Alukah. They hunt at night and devour men. Typically, virile men.”

There was a moment of silence as we plodded down the asphalt, splashing puddles of rain which had collected in depressions. Then the girl piped up, “Guess you’ve nothing to worry about then, huh, Harlan?”

I offered her to shut up again.

“Why me?” asked Andrew.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It must like you. Or something.”

Gemma, ever the chatterbox, posed, “Well if that thing’s after him then what was that lady? Miriam—what was she? An Alukah?”

“No. A thrall, a mutant, a lesser thing—most people I knew called them leech women. You could always tell the way they can’t drink water. Most of them don’t even know they are one till a hunger sets in, but they’re not very dangerous. They got soft flesh—maybe from rot. Worst they do is take a little blood in your sleep. An Alukah though? They pick your bones.” Then I thought to add, “Sometimes worse.”

“Worse?” asked Andrew.

I nodded ahead, “I see the station, it’s up ahead. Let’s all pick up the pace. There’s not a reason to be out in the dark.”

The place rose on the left where there was an arrangement of vehicles old and left haphazard on concrete curbs; dead wood angled from the grounds, twisted, and far along the back of the station were lines of old trailers, each rusted and latched to the great trucks that had once pulled them. Signs dotted the perimeter to inform travelers the place was a Plainefield rest area and a few worn words on metal staves said: FASTEN YOUR SAFETY BELT IT’S THE LAW.

We rounded the curve which took us to the station and though the sun shone well in the sky, I felt a giddiness in knowing I could soon lie down and worry less; traveling with a tired mind, though I’d done it many times before, was never a thing I enjoyed because of the way that things went unnoticed. I rubbed my eyes and Trouble brushed my leg again and the children spoke quietly.

“Hot out,” said Andrew.

A sigh escaped the girl, “I guess it should be nice to get out of the sun.”

They were right; with the passing of the rain, heat had come and baked the moisture off us; I felt chaffing in places and assumed the others in my company could do for a proper scrub too. Trouble panted more and we took to the station, passed a sun-bleached pile of bones long picked and empty and as we moved to the station’s innards, a mustiness encompassed us, and we were in the dark save the brief glances of light which angled through high thin windows in the main chamber of the place. I led us on to a windowless office near the rear of the structure and immediately refamiliarized myself with the room. It had been more than three years since I’d last looked on it—perhaps more—and it seemed it had been picked over by other humans in my absence; whenever I noticed that someone else had taken refuge in one of my safehouses, I never took too much gripe with it. Surely, I would have done the same. I only wished they’d kept it tidier on their leave.

Sheets were strung out or clumped in corners and part-empty tins sat on the ground where flies had gathered to nest in what was left and although there was a stink, a breathy wet in the air of the small room, I took up a low table that’d been left, knocked off the legs then hammered it across the only doorway with a few nails to seal us in; it wouldn’t do much good if something wanted at us, but it did make me feel better.

Steadily, with some hope, I angled myself in the hole of a cabinet and pried up the hollowed out place I’d created last I was there and to little surprise, I found a dusty bottle alongside a box of shells. Unstopping the bottle, I took a swig, and the children watched me while they unpacked their things, Andrew holding an unmarked can and Gemma with a camping stove in her hands; the girl sat the stove to the floor then hunkered there, and the boy handed off the can to her. The mutt watched them. “What’s that?” asked the boy, nodding to the bottle in my possession.

Not answering, I took another quick drink and returned the cap and tossed it to Andrew; he caught it in a fumble then struggled with the thing in his singular right hand till Gemma reached to him and took the cap. The boy sniffed the open neck and shrank from it then shrugged and took a sip; he passed the thing to Gemma, and she did much the same.

Tired, I took to the ground and put my back to the cabinet there, door closed, and began to roll a cigarette, but sleep came on me quick and when I awoke uncomfortable in the dark, the tobacco was strewn across my lap. The smell of warm indiscernible food permeated the room and I saw the children each around the camping stove, the empty bottle sitting between them, and I was there on the recesses of the glow of their lantern with Trouble lying with her head across my legs. The dog looked from the corners of its eyes at me, briefly raised its head to lick my hand, then returned its head to rest. For a moment, serenity overtook me while looking at their silhouettes, but it was gone just as quickly as it arrived, and I salvaged what I could of the tobacco and lit a smoke.

“Awake then?” asked the boy; his voice slurred, and his head swiveled lazily on his neck so that he might catch me in the lantern.

“Smells good,” I said. Oh, how things might be different in a different world. How might things be if I were a different person?

The girl twisted around fully while she sat to face me, and the boy put his attention back on the stove. “Something’s knocked on the door a few times. It asks to be let in,” she said, “We’ve been ignoring it.” She reported the words like she was a guard coming off watch. Then she added, her voice betraying some amount of unease as she whispered it, “It can’t get in here, right?”

I nodded, “That’s right. If it could’ve, it already would’ve.”

“Why not?” she asked, “I mean, why can’t it?”

“It needs our permission.”

“Are all the monsters like that?”

“No. Just the thing that hunts the boy—well, that and its thralls.” Something in her eyes surprised me—it was in the wideness or the shine of them. “Don’t worry, Gemma.”

She twisted away from me again and stirred whatever strange stew they’d devised then offered a whisper of admonishment to Andrew for not keeping the bottom from burning.

A gunshot, singular, powerful, rang out in the night and forced me to straighten; Trouble left me entirely and pinned its ears back, searching for the source of the noise. The children heard it too, for they cocked their heads to listen just as I had, but no more came through the night and we ate and ignored the knocks and the whispers the creature used to deceive us through our door.

After good rest, we set out again and they asked me what Babylon was like and I told them in greater detail and as time went on, they asked me of what brought me to where I was and I told them that too and when they asked me why it was that I hadn’t killed Boss Maron long ago, I told them it was because I didn’t have the heart—it was hard to fathom it. No matter the treachery I’d seen that man commit for the years since I’d brought him to Golgotha, I could not take his life. I hoped to, wanted to, but I was weak in the face of it all.

I told them about the Rednecks, about how things were different back then, about nights of sleeping among a family militia under open stars. They took a liking to the stories; though they may have been humoring me for there wasn’t much else to do as we took the highway.

Travelling with folks does that to a person; a familiarity forms. Or maybe it was because I’d gone soft and aged and didn’t want my story forgot—whatever the reason is I spilled it to them, I can’t say, but upon learning of my interaction with Mephisto—which I saved as nearly last—they seemed to understand more fully than ever why it was that the Bosses of Golgotha kept me so close.

A handful of days came and went as we moved with suspicions cast in all directions—the night creature would not come in the day, but it could track at night and the knocks which indicated its presence outside whatever place we holed up in did not waver.

We skirted off the shoulder of Eisenhower Highway then entered the wastelands proper, cutting south through expanses of flat grayed, plantless farmland and forests which had gone wrong, yellowed, and sickly around their risen roots and black on the brittle branch ends. I thought of the books I’d read, of the stories passed down from person to person, from age to age, and thought of children that must’ve played among the trees, of the workers which toiled laboriously beneath a soft blue sky.

There were no more stocked places on our path that I’d set up prior. Upon leaving the station, we packed heavy, even manufacturing a poor sling for Trouble so that the dog might help with the burden of our supplies; though I knew the roads well enough, memory couldn’t be trusted alone, so it would be that we would periodically stop midday at a home or a station and search the place for whatever might be left and then bunk down for the remainder of the daylight. As nice as it was to look at those naked stars, it was nicer to not be confronted with monstrosities midsleep. We took camp where we could find it.

It was slow-going and ever present in my mind were the thoughts of reaching Suzanne, pulling them into my arms, holding them dearly. Could I live among the wizards and forget my sins?

Upon examining the ammunition I’d retrieved, I tried a slug in an open field at daybreak—though it was risky, I had to be sure that everything was in order if likely trouble found us.

I aimed the barrel at open nothingness and squeezed the trigger; the smell of burnt gunpowder clung on the air. I watched the horizons and waited for some creatures to show, but when none showed, I inspected the gun. It felt like a waste, but I wanted to be sure everything was in working order—it was imperative my weapon would not fail me if it was necessary. The shells in the box numbered four after my test.

Reentering the building we’d locked down—it was a single-story home, half caved on its northern face from poor age—I was greeted by the children’s bewildered faces, each of them puffed, tired from waking. Trouble barked and barked and scurried to and fro, leaping across the structure’s slanted floor.

“Did you kill something?” hushed Gemma.

I shook my head, “Just practicing. Wanted to make sure it still works alright.”

“You could’ve warned us you were going out to shoot that thing.”

“You’re right,” I said, then moved across the room to quell the dog’s fears by rubbing its face.

Though it would be faster to traverse a main road, we would have little recourse when meeting violent strangers. My thinking was also in prudence for the sake of those we might meet on the road—the thing which followed us might have been on the hunt for Andrew, but it may snack upon any unaware soul in reach.

Our roundabout journey took us through desolate country, through a town with signs that were easy to miss, signs which read: Farmersburg—a guidepost where no one lived. The place, like most places, was a smear, a marker for perhaps an alien race which might one day catalogue the world. There, on the outskirts of Farmersburg, upon reaching the fields without fences—either long disposed or taken in storms or more—I looked out on the fields and imagined myself an ancient worker, putting a horse to till, and I caught the glint of the sun and the sky seemed blue enough that I could nearly believe I was; I thought of the sweat they might produce and beneath that swelter, I swiped sweat from my own face. Further on, where the fields were not, there were more dead forests and I thought more of the children which had once played there, and if I squinted and believed hard enough, I could almost wish the world green again and I could almost see the figures that might rush across that dead farmland at the call of their parents; I could wish all day.

“Where does it go in the daylight?” asked Andrew.

The clustered box buildings of Farmersburg’s meager downtown had only just come into few as we met it from the east on a half-gone avenue without a name, “What?” I asked.

“Where does that monster go when it’s daytime?” repeated Andrew.

“Some hole or another.” I shrugged.

“Hey,” the boy peered ahead, craning his neck forward; he knelt and tugged on Trouble’s leash to stop her from going on, “I see people ahead, I think. Do you see those people?”

Taking notice of the specks he indicated far ahead on the road, I too knelt, and Gemma quickly fell in alongside us so that we were a line, shoulder to shoulder, across the broken road.

“That’s people,” nodded Gemma, “Bad news, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Maybe,” I said, “Can’t be more than three.” Without thought, I slung my pack from my shoulders and withdrew a pair of binoculars then pulled them to my face and looked again. I shook my head. “Three. No. Four.”

“Friendly?” asked Andrew.

“Probably not,” said Gemma.