"The Journey" 
by Brian Robertson aka quackours

Part One: The Wastelands End

A great desert lay behind the Traveler. No vegetation grew in the wasteland. The ground was brown and cracked and burnt. Everywhere pain reigned.

The Traveler had come to a rise in the Earth and the end of the wasteland. A mountain stood over the desert casting its shadow on the scorched Earth like a menacing school yard bully. The Traveler stood at the foot of the mountain looking up toward its peak. The evening sky was an artist’s pallet of reds and yellows and oranges. Night would be coming soon. The Traveler wondered how far ahead of the one in black he was.

A vision harsh and deadly flashed in the Traveler’s mind. It was his pursuer. An ashen gray face underneath a black cloak. Two yellow eyes with bloody pupils sat in dark hate filled sockets. A mouthful of rotting broken teeth. And on its breath, the smell of decomposition and shattered dreams.

The Traveler turned away from the mountain, and looked back into the wasteland sure that the one in black would be standing there casting no shadow. His long black cloak would ripple and dance in the still desert air despite the fact that there was no wind. Never any wind in the wasteland. And that smell of dead things would wash over him.

But he wasn’t there. There was nothing there but the rain starved ground.

All the strength left the Traveler’s body. A lightning bolt raced up the Traveler’s legs from his feet using his nerves as a traveling conduit. His legs buckled and he toppled to the ground. A cloud of orange dust sprang up from the ground to cloud his mind in confusion. The muscles in his lower back began a series of rapid fire painful spasms. His left eye felt damn near bursting like a balloon too swollen with water. His vision doubled. He cried out in a scream of gibberish that even he himself did not understand. And in his gray matter the one in black laughed.

The Traveler lay decked out on the ground for some time. At last he was able to regain his composure and sat up. He took off his pack and unbuckled the flap that covered all his goodies. He withdrew his water bladder and looked back to the mountain. He was spent, and knew that now. The mountain would have to wait until he had slept. And the one in black. If he came, the Traveler would just give in. He would be a dead flounder in a fisherman’s net.

He turned the water bladder up but drank sparingly. It was almost empty and there was no promise of rain in the wasteland. He drank just enough to wet his tongue which felt as haggard as the burnt ground. Up on the mountainside he could see a fine line of green. Plant life, and that meant water. A creek, or a pond or lake. The last two would mean a bath.

Water.

For a moment the Traveler almost uncapped the water bladder and drank it all down in one large gulp, that would allow the overflow to run down his overheated cheeks.

But he stopped just short of turning the bladder up. The green on the mountain could be just a trick of the eye, or it could be the one in black baiting him into a fatal mistake.

The Traveler put the bladder back in his pack. The sky had gone black and the stars had come out. Little yellow specs of hope in the dark night. The full moon shined like an exposed skull grinning down at the ruined Earth. The Traveler hated night in the desert. Soon the crawling things of the wasteland would be coming out of their holes. The Traveler detested the way that the spiders and scorpions and rodents felt on his naked flesh. Sometimes he would dream of them. Horrible black shadows, glowing red and yellow eyes, furry feet almost consuming him.

He was sure that the bad dreams came not from having the creepers on him in the night, but instead from the one in black. As if all unspeakable things originated from the dark one. Like the one in black were some river that flowed the deadliest of poisons and housed horrible evil creatures beneath its black tar surface. A river that would overflow its boundaries for no natural reason and kill all that its flood water touched.

The Traveler had walked many miles in the desert heat so sleep came easy. Down he fell into a deep well of memories as the dream came.

The Journey 
by Brian Robertson aka quackours

Part Two: The Traveler's Dream

The Traveler knew that he was in the dream as it was taking place. Because it was in his dreams that he went back home and saw all the beautiful sights of his childhood. He was lying on the mountainside. Long green fingers motivated by the gentle breeze moving down the slope stroked The Traveler’s exposed skin. He could smell baked apples from one of his mother’s pies fresh and cooling in the open kitchen window.

He had stopped his chores prematurely. White clouds slid across the blue skyline. The Traveler lay in the grass going about the task of deciphering what the passing clouds resembled. There was an elephant donning a top hat, and a spacecraft from another universe.

He smiled. In the years to come, smiling and the emotion of being happy would seem alien to him. As if he had never known joy, or ever learned to smile. It would seem to him as if those things where never meant for him, that he was only allowed to know pain and unrelenting torment of the body and mind. But this was a dream, and he knew this. Only in dreams can the damned embrace such sweet things.

The Traveler knows how the dream will end. He knows its course, even in the dream as it is being played out. And yet he is ready to take on the flood of guilt that will take him from letting this evil out on his waking. Because in the beginning of the dream he can still be ignorant of the evil things in the world.

In the dream dark gassy clouds roll across the bright skyline like a malignant deadly spreading cancer. The Traveler knows that they are not natural, nothing that dark and menacing could be of the natural world. They are some incantation, some curse. And as they approach the wind begins to build in a soothing lullaby whisper, that The Traveler can hear telling him to calm himself. There are no worries, and despite the wretched tarry sickness that is invading the light in front of his very eyes, things are ok.

The wind blows down an icy cold breath that turns the mountainside ashen as the sun blinks out completely lost in the sickness. The Traveler stands, fear has overtaken his heart. The smell of his mother’s pies are gone. He wonders briefly if they are still there, if he can ever find his way home.

“Mother!” He yells out but the word is crammed back into his throat by the wind. It is a mammoth fist pushing the effort back. His throat swells and his chest burns hot like the coals in the cabin’s winter fires. His eyes bulge and water and at last he swallows the word hard before suffocating.

He can not call out, he is alone in this black madness.

The Traveler’s clothes whip and dance out a beat slapping against his body. The sound to The Traveler is like the wings of a mighty dragon near Landar’s peak.

He looks up the mountainside. His home still stands on the peak despite the wind. The Traveler puts his head down and moves into its push, toward his family's cabin. The climb is hard against the driving wind. The wind has icy teeth that bite into The Traveler’s bones. Halfway to the cabin The Traveler’s ears catch the cry of a child lost in the storm.

“Help…please help. I’m stuck…please let me out,” the cries beg. In the wind the cries seem to come from all directions. The Traveler pauses and strains his ears to hear the crying child.

“Please…help…..” There was more, but the wind made it inaudible.

The Traveler thought on the problem hard, and the only place that he could think of someone being stuck was the old well. His father had covered it over many years before with an iron gate. The Traveler didn’t know how a person could fall in because of the iron bars, but he supposed it possible because he had been told never to play there by his father.

The Traveler broke into a run. There were no families that lived on the mountain other than his, but one of the children that lived along the river at the mountain’s base in Shallbuckle might have wandered off and found the old well. Children are apt to find things, especially things that are of danger.

The Traveler stopped over the iron bars and looked down into the well. “Hello, anyone in there?” he called.

There was no answer only an unsettling darkness beyond the cold black bars.

“Hello anyone…” The Traveler started again. He did not finish. What he saw on the other side of the bars made his tongue wither and dry in his mouth like a slug that has been doused in salt. Two eyes the color of searing hot coals glowed in the gloom. The only thing separating the owner of the eyes and The Traveler was the iron bars. Suddenly he understood the grave look on his father’s face when he had forbidden him to play here. This was no child…it was something put here for a reason.

“Let me out…please,” it was the child’s voice only to the pause, then it was a raspy venomous serpent speaking.

“I…I’m not supposed to be here. Pa says not to play here. He’ll tan my hide if he finds out,” The Traveler said. His voice was low and breaking, as if he were telling a parent of some bad deed that had been preformed by his hands.

“No, he won’t. I’ll tear his spine from his back if you let me out.”

The Traveler's eyes grew to large shocked white circles. There was no doubt in his young mind that the Thing on the other side of the iron grate could and would do just as it said. He wasn’t in a well, this was the devil and he was trying to escape the fiery fingers of Hell.

“Now…Joseph let me out!” It spoke the command in the tender soothing voice of the lost child that It had used to lure The Traveler into Its grasp.

“No…No!” The Traveler whispered under his breath; words that were lost in the screaming wind. He started to back away shaking his head, wondering how this thing could know his name.

“I said now!”

The Traveler fell to his knees. His brain felt like it had been split by his father’s axe.

“Let me out!” It hissed.

“I’m a kid, I can’t lift the grate…it’s too heavy,” The Traveler cried out in his high pitched teenage voice. He wanted the pain in his head to subside before it drove him mad.

“But you want to let me out, don’t you?”

“No I…” The Traveler started but the pain rushed through his brain again like falling star.

“Yes, I want to let you out,” The Traveler said and sobbed. There was no thought of his father now. There was only blinding pain so intense that it made you know that you were alive while you wished for death.

“Then, tell me that I am released, that I may come back again.”

The Traveler’s eyes were closed tight. Tears from the pain glistened on his checks making them look like glazed pottery.

“You are released, you can come back again.”

The pain in The Traveler’s mind lifted like morning fog.

The heavy iron grate shot of the well’s mouth like a firecracker. The Traveler rode on top of it like it was a sled on a snowy hill. They crashed down still in view of the well. The Traveler opened his eyes the hole in the Earth looked like an open festering wound. A long shadow flew out of the hole and high into the darkened sky. When it came back down it sent a ripple through the earth that The Traveler felt shake his bones. The green hillside under the Thing’s black boots withered and died leaving only brown broken scabs.

It turned and set its gaze on The Traveler. Two red coals under a black hood. The grate had fallen on top of The Traveler’s body and the weight of the iron pinned him down. The one in black crouched over The Traveler.

“Thank you, Joseph.” It hissed bathing the young man in a stink of corpses long in the ground. “I will spare you, but you are forever marked,” It said and reached out with a scaly gray hand. It touched The Traveler on the forehead, and the touch was like falling into an ice covered pond in late February. The Traveler could hear his flesh searing under the thing’s finger tip but could feel no burn. The Traveler looked up the creature’s gray arm, black centipedes with shiny black eyes gathered where the thing’s arm went into the sleeve of Its robe.

The one in black stood up. “And now for your father, and your mother.”

“What are you going to do to them?” The Traveler summoned the courage to ask.

“I already told you what would become of your father if you let me out. And as for your mother, I’ve been locked in that wretched prison for too long, and I haven’t had a woman in ages.”

Then he turned and was gone up the hillside like a nightmare.


The Journey

By Brian Robertson aka Quackhours

Part three: The mountain 

His back screamed as he came out of the darkness that was sleep. He could feel a knot in the upper right side of his back where his muscles had formed a tight, painful knot. His closed eyelids were flooded in yellow light. The sun was up, and the wasteland was warming up toward what would be a wicked hot day.

He sat up. The Traveler had to grimace to do so. The bulge in his back was a real prize winner. The world seemed to shake at the edges like the picture in a television about to blow. He knew that the one in black was closing in. He could feel his presence. It was like inhaling the after smell from a discharged weapon.

The Traveler got to his feet despite the spasm.

His stance was slightly to the left and his face was a Halloween mask of pain. To the passer-by, had there been in any in the wasteland, he would have looked the part of a drunkard.

His mouth was dry so he uncapped his water bladder and drank thirstily. If the promise of green on the mountain side was false then he would simply rely on his own urine. He had to do so many times when there had been no rain. He capped the bladder and slipped it under his cloak to rest beside his broadsword. He thought of the dream, and the one in black touching his forehead. He shuddered. Goose pimples exploded onto the landscape of his filthy flesh. The mark, he thought and almost as a reflex adjusted his headband.

He started up the slope of the mountain. The sun was vicious so he put his hood up to block his eyes. The going was dangerous, with loose rocks that moved under The Traveler’s feet. On many occasions, he nearly lost his footing and spilled over backward, but he was able to keep his balance. He had to move slowly, the spasms in his back produced offspring; one in his right thigh and one in his left abdomen. It was his slow moving that he figured saved him from a fall.

For six hours, The Traveler lurched up the treacherous slope. As he made his way he hummed to himself. A little song that he mother had sung to him and his brother when they were young and in their beds before blowing out the lantern. The Traveler thought of many things on the slope. He saw his brother’s head sitting on the top of the mailbox at the end of the dirt driveway of his family home. Long runners of blood hung from the severed neck. His eyes where gone, and his mouth was stretched into an insane screaming smile. As The Traveler had started to pass the mailbox, his brother’s head turned to look at him with its hollow dead sockets. “We got a special delivery today Joseph. A very special delivery,” Mark’s head said, then exploded in laughter that was horse and leathery.

The Traveler walked into the house. He could smell his mother’s pie. It was still warm. “Mom….Dad….” He called standing in the open doorway.

He found his mother in the kitchen. She was lying on the ground. Her apron and dress where pulled up over her head and both were brown with dried blood. Her legs where bent back over her shoulders. The Traveler knew that they had been broken or dislocated long before she had died. Her mid-section was a bloody mess, and she seemed to be split up through her stomach. The Traveler only saw her for a second. He couldn’t look at her for long, not like that. He took the cloth from the table and stretched it over her body .

“ Dad….” He yelled again, but his voice was small now. It was the voice of a child that has wakened to a dark room after a nightmare.

There was no answer. The Traveler moved through the house in a daze. It was crazy to think that his life had changed so drastically so fast. Everything that he had cherished was gone in the blink of an eye.

He walked into his parent’s room. At the foot of their bed was his father’s trunk. It was a hulk of a thing. So heavy with its content that he couldn’t budge it. Green and red jewels formed the piping. In the trunks top there was a large W , that marked his surname. The lock had been undone, but the trunk hadn’t been opened. A bloody hand print had been left beside the W .. The Traveler opened the trunk. His father’s cloak, sword, bow, and quill were inside. The Traveler reached in and took the handle of the sword. The clear sky jewel in the end of the hilt glimmered in the dark room. And something moved in the floor out of The Traveler’s field of vision. The something moved in the dirt beside the bed.

The Traveler, scared, pushed his bent legs against the trunk, and the lid slammed closed. The sound was like a thunder clap in the still room.

Something moved again from the bedside.

“Boy…you in my trunk again?” The Traveler’s father asked from the floor. It was him, but not. It was his father’s body and voice, but the thing that lived in his skin was the dark thing that he had set free. A hand reached out from the corner of the bed. And as it was pulling the owner’s body across the dirt floor into view, The Traveler realized that the thumb and middle finger was missing. The Traveler didn’t move from his kneeling position in front of the trunk. He couldn’t.

His father lay there glaring at him. The right side of his head smashed in, all that remained was hair and bloody wrinkled skin. His right eye dangled from the ruin. His nose had been cleaved off leaving only a dark hole with a bloody rim. His lower jaw was gone. His tongue lashed around from the stump like an injured snake. And down his back there was a long running open wound were his spine had been plucked out.

“Boy I get the feeling you been play’n where you ain’t su-post to be a’play’n. Have ya seen yer momma boy? She’s in a bad way I think. And now I catch you in my trunk. Yer in fer it now,” The voice was wet and gurgling.

His father’s body moved across the floor, coming for The Traveler. Cold, dead hands closed around The Traveler’s throat and started to squeeze. The Traveler had almost forgot about his father’s sword. He was just slipping away into darkness in his father’s death grip.

At the last moment He swung the blade true and removed his father’s head. The arms fell away from his throat.

The Traveler took everything from the trunk that he would be able to make use of then left the bedroom. He walked back past his mother’s covered body almost expecting her to uncover her face and roll over on her stomach. Her broken legs would make a sickening fleshy thump on the dirt floor and she would crawl toward him saying, now give us a kiss before you go out there Joseph,” But she didn’t move.

He took his brother’s head from the mailbox. He carried it by his brother’s long blonde hair. He held it as far out of his reach as he could. The mouth opened and closed trying to bite The Traveler without success.

The Traveler threw the head in the open door. It hit hard and rolled like a bowling ball into a dark corner of the room. The Traveler lit several torches and cast them in the house.

The sun was directly overhead when The Traveler reached the green ridge. He looked back down the slope and out across the wasteland. The dark one was nowhere in site. Thick, green, knee-high grass circled a clear blue pond. From the summit, lost high in the clouds, a waterfall fed the pond.

The Traveler’s heart rejoiced. He removed his clothing and left it in a pile in the grass and walked down into the cooling water. He swam and bathed and looked the part of a child. All thoughts of the dark one where gone for the moment. After an hour he made his way back to the shore and dressed himself before filling his water bladder. He did all these things unaware that he was being watched.

Although there was still more time to travel before dark, The Traveler decided to make camp around the water for the night. It was a pleasant change from the hard cracked wasteland. He looked down again from the way he had come, and it was still clear. Then The Traveler looked down the other side of the mountain. A small brook branched off from the pond down the mountain in that direction. Below was a small village.

He would visit there the next day. He could be there by mid day, The Traveler told himself.

As the last few hours of light dwindled away The Traveler lay in the grass smoking his pipe and ate his last few slices of dried meat. He didn’t think of the one in dark, this setting was too pleasant. And he slept that night in the grass with no bad dreams.

The Traveler woke the next morning and gathered himself and started down toward the village. He hoped there would be a place he could find ale and some type of meat. Then after a meal, he would want to find a woman…that is if there was a place of that type in the village.

The rocks on the down slope were just as treacherous. But The Traveler was moving faster. The spasms where gone, and his excitement grew the closer he got to the village.

A hand fell on his shoulder and gripped with an intense strength. The Traveler turned to see what had him, fearful that the dark one had closed in on him during the night. From every shadow and every small crevice and cranny where the light could not reach darkness oozed out like a toxic gas and formed the dark one’s face. Its mouth opened, “Soon.”

The Traveler tried to turn away, but the rocks gave way under his feet. He fell backward and tumbled down the rocky slope. Hard teeth tore at the cloak and flesh of The Traveler. Wounds opened and blood splashed the ground marking his descent. He tumbled head over heels in a somersault; his legs smacked a large rock just below his kneecaps and stopped his fall.

The pain in his body was horrible. It came from everywhere. In his head the one in dark roared laughter. Darkness rushed in on him. He could hear a voice, then another. He couldn’t make out words. He felt like he was floating.

Then he was gone.

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