I reserve this section to write out my own history, Joshua, in hopes that it gives you a spattering of insight. I challenge you to look for certain parallels in your own life.
For the moment, however, on to the present day.
-Your Humble Biographer
###
Joshua Rasgard was hoping someone would try and murder him today. He didn't want to die, but he'd sure appreciate the attempt. A doctor had gone missing down the same gravel road that Joshua now walked, the very same time of evening, disappearing in the twilight mists never to be seen again. Joshua's nose twitched, a water droplet condensing on the tip. At this point he didn't know how to make himself a more appealing victim.
It was either this or find another way to solve the disappearance, but nothing else sounded quite so dramatic. If he did get accosted, that'd be a story.
Joshua's eyes grew wide and mouth slacked in practice. I'll look so surprised, he thought, a cocksure grin replacing the previous facial contortion. Joshua idly combed through his pockets, feeling the jingle of coins from the day's pay clanging together. Doctors have money, doctor-money. Guess I could take a couple years and get my certification in the city, but I'm pretty sure it takes doctor-money just to get started. Do ghosts even like money?
The Doctor’s disappearance was tied to stories of an entity that came out in the nighttime fog: The Man in Black. Joshua suspected there wasn't actually a ghost kidnapping men, but he wouldn't rule out anything that made his life more interesting.
He didn't run. Joshua would break out in a run at random when he got the itch, but not now. He wanted to give the ghost as much time as possible to appear.
In the slow twilight, he pulled his scarf up and scratched his nose against the coarse, home-knit thread; snow dotted his hair like holiday ornamentation. Having walked this road every day for the past two weeks, he had grown used to the aching in his calves and forearms. Farming by hand did that to you. Joshua-- not from the north-- expected winter planting to pass by easily with the thermal vents softening the ground and toasting the air to a warmly pleasant temperature. Instead, his boots stuck in the mud; legs steamed like a bun while moist strands of hair froze in little icicles. The ground may have been soft but growing the stringy excuse for rice known as ferrow required obtuse circles dug around the steam vents.
Leaving through a pass in the surrounding dirt mounds that cordoned off the farmland in its property grid, he turned right towards the town of Einhurst. Joshua's ankles rolled on the gravel, an appetizer for the nearly two mile walk to the inn.
He might see his brother; Kael had been single-mindedly searching for the Doctor since they arrived in the city. Only he didn't get paid like Joshua. His methods involved prowling about and looking into windows, or something of the sort. Even staying in the same room at the inn, Joshua couldn't be sure their paths would cross tonight.
"Found him yet?"
Joshua snapped to attention. To his left, framed at the entrance to another farming grid was a silhouette that stood obscured in the mists. "Haven't found the Man in Black yet," Joshua replied.
"I meant the Doctor; your brother has cornered me twice now. Can't get within a mile before he creeps up and asks his questions."
Joshua shrugged, not that the other man could see; but that was their relationship. Out here on the side roads, you couldn't see three feet ahead in the best of weather. Neither had seen each other's face, and it felt wrong at this point to break tradition.
"Kael has discovered three doctors, a group of truant children, and two affairs, but he has yet to find the Doctor." This rendered the farmer silent momentarily. "I kid. My brother's only discovered one affair. You know, I'm looking for the Doctor in my own way, too, yeah?"
"How does that work?"
"Doctors? Medicine, surgery, saving lives? I was actually thinking about learning more on the subject not five minutes ago."
"No you twit, trying to find a ghost. You know it's just kids playing pranks right? There's no ghost haunting this town. That Bartholomew guy was traveling, stopped here a couple days, and then he left. Supernatural has nothing to do with this."
Joshua suppressed a laugh in his throat, squeezing it out like a cough. "I'm not saying I believe in ghosts, but don't be overly quick to decide reality." Joshua had to stop and angle his body back, about to disappear around the bend as he kept on walking. "And don't tell my brother that bit about the Doctor being gone. Mom's not getting better without that doctor and Kael can be—" Joshua paused, in contemplation. "More passionate than I am."
The man may have responded, but Joshua was already gone. He passed by another gap in the dirt mounds demarcating the entrance to another farm in this artificial valley, on and on until he made his way to the crossroads. Had to be careful there-- hard to see someone coming in this weather.
Until then, grey fog that would turn a sherbet haze before fading into a hot darkness. In that ever-changing rainbow of evaporating water all manner of make-believe spooks and obscenities formed. The first couple of days walking down this path had put a knot of fear in his stomach. But he grew used to the random shadows his imagination conjured; he appreciated the hard labor and that calmed him down even more.
The mists were dense and shifty; a drab orange with swirls of purple and a hint of green that twirled like the sunset reflecting on a mirror. So many stories came out of Einhurst as of late. It was the Farmer, the very employer of Joshua who first reported seeing. . . it.
Everyone had their legends and folktales. You could travel west to the Faros and hear about giant birds with legs half the size of a full grown man's. They lived in caves on the oceanfront and would swoop up small children. In reality, the coast of Faros was all cliffs, of course you wanted children to stay away. In one of the southern archipelagos south from Taerose, the people made jade statutes of an amphibian with metal skin that slept in the clouds. On closer inspection, the storms and the winds were the only thing that kept them safe from the continents and its armies for hundreds if not thousands of years.
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Painting mental pictures in the shifting shadows kept his attention far better than connecting stars in the sky. If the story of a thing made of smoke and soot that drifted through the waning mists was antique, Joshua could understand it—just another legend. But the present story was new. The Farmer started the rumors weeks ago and now everyone in town claimed to have seen the shadow: this "Man in Black." But wait, the story couldn't stay the same. The dark blobs shifted and then the bumpkins of Einhurst saw the shadow man riding a ghostly horse. On nights where the wind stilled, you could hear the clop of hooves echoing through the valleys.
Joshua stopped. Pricked his ears and could almost hear the rhythm of a horse on the road. In the first throws of night he could imagine about any shape in the mist, but he couldn't conjure a whinny. No matter how jumpy he pretended to be, he wasn't about to start hallucinating. Grunting and bending over to rub his tightened calf, Joshua then continued. As his foot slid on the gravel, a faint sound bounced down the raised valley. A crunchy, thumpy sound. Joshua stopped and saw nothing in the growing dark mists just like he heard nothing echoing through the landscape. He pretended to take another step forward and looked back, but the silence stubbornly persisted.
For all the clamor, you would think that a child had actually gone missing, that a man was discovered dead on the roadside. Cattle mutilations. Anything. But of course not. Not a single person had been put out by the whole ordeal.
Except Joshua and Kael. Doctor Bartholomew going missing was a big put out.
***
Joshua was ten when his mother's health turned south—very south. Seventeen now, you can do the math. To say it changed his life was an understatement. His father was never in the picture in a way that made him a realistic choice for raising his children so Joshua, Kael, and their three younger sisters moved out of the country with a guardian not even related by blood.
On the very first day in the new house, conversations started about finding a specialist, someone who could heal their mother. Joshua sat passively and nodded, agreeing to leave home when they were old enough, to find anyone on the face of the planet who knew how to--
***
The hair on Joshua's neck prickled. The slow, undeniable thump of horse hooves whispered through the canyon in what had to be halfway between the Farmer's place and the city proper. The wind whipped, the hooves dampened. Joshua hugged his coat tighter and wondered if a ghost horse could be distinguished from a real horse by sound alone.
He suspected a musician would have the ear for it.
But the sound decresendoed, melting away. I just hearing what I wanted? He pulled his scarf closer which muffled the sudden spasm of breathing and kept on his way. I am. It's late. The dirt mounds make weird echoes. "I don't actually believe in ghosts you know," Joshua spoke with a stiff upper lip, head raised in an almost military march, yet his neck occasionally craned to see behind. "I've seen too many crazy things to believe in something that tame. My brother can do magic you know. Ever heard of a Syche?" Joshua bit his tongue lightly with his front two teeth: shouldn't be saying secrets.
His eyes twittered to the crests of dirt on each side of the road. He could try and climb upwards on all fours like stairs. His brain diverted, trying to place the name for these dirt mounds that marked the grids. Definitely a name for them; ghosts had a lot of names too.
And then the horse clomps came again, louder, more distinct. Joshua spun and tried to peer through the haze, but his vision blurred to gray and the air he inhaled came hotter than what he exhaled, robbing him of breath. Over the low hiss of the wind, his ears pricked at a neigh. The blots of fog and darkness converged as his mind conjured up all sorts of ghastly shapes and monsters. He saw a thousand horrors and nothing, all at once.
It's too late to run! The rational portion of his brain screamed. "Screw this", said something more fundamental, more practical. Certainly more real, because Joshua actually said it, didn't let it scrawl across his brain as an errant thought. As his toes dug in and he braced his body for a sprint, the distinct and unmistakable stamp of a horse trotted away.
Too late and too dark. Joshua reached his hand out to check the depth and it faded away getting lost at the wrist. He pulled his hand back, checked that it was still there, and then racked his brain and planned: he didn't need to be like his brother for that. Joshua was fast on his literal feet. Joshua was faster to scheme. Whether an actual ghost, a Syche like his brother, or some new thing outside his conception entirely, if the entity came back, the time had come for Joshua to take drastic action.
His fingers twitched and he bounced on the balls of his feet. To his enormous expectation it happened again: the tell-tale grind of a horse's hooves scraping the gravel. It screeched in his ears, each scrape louder then the last. Joshua ceased breathing entirely now, pulled to the side and pressed his back against the dirt mounds. I can be hard to see too. Not just echoes but the tactile sound of action to eardrum. Somewhere, mere feet in front, a horse dragged down the road, the subtle clink of metal against saddle straps-- the breath of a smaller beast than a horse on top its back.
Joshua shuffled forward, knees bent and ready to spring upwards. He inched within feet of the horse now.
But the horse bolted down the lane.
Cursing, Joshua beat rhythmic shoe slaps into the road as the tail of his scarf fluttered behind, but the horse was already gone. He slowed down, to a fast walk, putting oxygen in his brain. Alright. Don't think I will follow? Think it's crazy chasing ghosts? The fear that had been whisked away in the liquid rush of adrenaline and absolute commitment-- no fear of death, no worry that he'd catch the beast unaware further down the road and get his teeth kicked out, only the knowledge that doing the unexpected gave Joshua an edge he could never otherwise have.
Joshua sprinted harder than before, the mist swooshing by. And what came next happened just as fast. Feet away and the faintest outline of his quarry emerged through the gloom. Inches away, he could make out the curve of a shoulder in the murk.
The horse sensed Joshua before its rider, only this time it reared back; a yelp accompanied. Joshua just about yelled as well, ducking under hooves as they spun through the air, the wild surprise put the fear back in Joshua's gut. He dove out of the way as the horse jolted forward. Pushing himself up and not bothering to claw off the blood and mud smeared across his hands; Joshua crept forward as the horse backed into the middle of the crossroads.
"Whoa, whoa, easy!" A voice cracked through the fog and Joshua could barely hear it above the beat of his heart that reverberated out his eardrums. He only had a half second to process the words, their tone, their inflection and the crack in the voice, and half a second isn't enough for all of that.
Joshua started screaming something. It was too late and besides the point. The mist parted and the night glowed like the moons. A bright white light illuminated the rider and his steed as Joshua looked face to face with a boy about the same age as he. A boy dressed not like a wraith but in a simple black hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants. A boy realizing he had made a horrible mistake.
And then the cacophony of noise and screams with raucous screeching, a legion of thuds and crunching and wails as the horse not just collapsed but flew into the nearest ditch and rolled down the hill; Joshua, numbed stupid with overwhelming sensation, dove sideways. The light split into two, two perfectly round orbs floating in the mists.
In the horse's place a pickup truck stalled, hood caved in with the windshield splattered with wet dots of red. Joshua picked himself up in a hot sweat unrelated to the weather and staggered towards the ditch, wildly looking around all the while. There in the ditch, the boy on the horse lay with one leg pinned. The horse's chest heaved as the boy moaned in pain.
Joshua skidded down to meet him, hands shaking. His feet caught mud and he slid into the horse. He pulled himself up and began trying to lift the gargantuan body off the boy's legs.
On the road, quick steps of heavy boots rounded from the driver's cab.
Joshua had run the boy into traffic and killed him, that's all there was too it. Someway, somehow, things would get worse from here, and it would be his fault. He couldn't move the horse or get the boy out, so he crawled over the body and got behind the boy's head. Joshua held him there, made sure the boy's neck wouldn't turn or move.
Above, the driver was saying something. Joshua looked up with a snarl. “What are you waiting for? Call an ambulance!”