And at My Back I Always Hear

by Scott Nicolay, Gemma Files

Genres: Short Stories; Horror

Synopsis

From World Fantasy Award-winning author Scott Nicolay comes And at My Back I Always Hear, a new collection of eight tales of the macabre and the uncanny.

"[Nicolay's] perspective is always outsider-identified, entirely concerned with characters who refuse to settle, both literally and figuratively; his protagonists often hover on a knife's edge, caught in some sadly inescapable moment of realization. They've failed and been failed, left discarded amongst the wreckage of systemic inequity. And now that they have nothing left to cling to, their inner eye pops open, suddenly able to see the darkness lurking inherent in every crevice, the emptiness revolving inside every atom."
---from the introduction by Gemma Files

 

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Release date: April 26, 2022

Publisher: Word Horde

Print pages: 457

Sample

…and the red light was my mind.

 

Introduction

Gemma Files

 We talk a lot about what writing horror is “good for,” and when I say “we” I mean not just insiders but outsiders to this very debatable genre of ours. Good for letting off steam; good for playing out our fears in controllable ways; good for highlighting the underside lurking beneath a light, bright, perpetually “happy,” virtue-signalling world. Very recently—and given I’m writing this in 2022, I think you all know what I’m talking about—there’s been a certain amount of recognition given to the thesis that in times of turmoil, threat and disturbance, horror provides confirmation that the illusion of universal safety was only ever that. So maybe we shouldn’t spend so much time berating ourselves for our inability to simply buck up, keep calm and carry on in the face of immediate existential dread.

Another thing horror’s always been good for, however, is for routinely skewing perspective away from the default towards the non-. As a genre founded by women, from stories of “raw-head and bloody bones” told by grandmothers over Christmas and Lady Cynthia Asquith’s ghost story collections to the world-rocking narrative depth charge of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, its true roots have forever lain less in normativity than in derangement, in prising up the rock of received wisdom to watch what squirms out from beneath. Throughout cultural history, it’s been consistently typified as abnormal, sick, Weird and queer, obsessed with things supposedly better left unexplored, unstated...and you know what? So it should be. So it should always be.

This is the liminal space where Scott Nicolay—archaeologist and teacher, meticulous translator of “Belgian Poe” Jean Ray (Whiskey Tales, Cruise of Shadows: Haunted Stories of Land and Sea, The Great Nocturnal, and Circles of Dread, Wakefield Press), both rabid fan and hard-working perpetrator of the dark fantastic Weird Renaissance in all its many shades—has chosen to live, the supposedly polluted, salt-sown soil he’s chosen to till. And these, the stories you’re about to read, are his latest fruits.

In many ways, Nicolay’s work might best be glimpsed through the same lens provided by the demon-inhabited Viewmaster screen of his 2015 World Fantasy Best Short Story Award-winning tale “Do You Like To Look At Monsters?”: As a series of tiny slices of cosmic horror, strained through localized, almost documentary, fragments of contemporary hell. A dusty parade of the lost and the lonely, the ruined, the ruinous.

His perspective is always outsider-identified, entirely concerned with characters who refuse to settle, both literally and figuratively; his protagonists often hover on a knife’s edge, caught in some sadly inescapable moment of realization. They’ve failed and been failed, left discarded amongst the wreckage of systemic inequity. And now that they have nothing left to cling to, their inner eye pops open, suddenly able to see the darkness lurking inherent in every crevice, the emptiness revolving inside every atom.

In Nicolay’s work, I believe, we see the sort of horror we need going forward, particularly as we face a fresh yet ever-darkening millennium: Fore-warned and fore-armed, conscious, conscience-guided. Stories in which we can sense the author deconstructing his own comfort zone, widening himself to fit not the world we hope for but the one we now live in, no matter how much it might sting to do so. A world whose limits have become suddenly un-guessable.

Enjoy, or don’t. It works equally well either way, really.

That’s what horror’s for.

—Robert Johnson

 

Tenebrionidae

Coauthored with Jesse James Douthit-Nicolay

 

Dumont wriggled his shoulders shoved from his feet and twisted at the hips to inch himself further into the back of the foxhole. Not so cold yet and it was hell for comfortable but he wanted room to bend his legs so he could keep as much of himself away from the gritty metal floor as possible. You weren’t careful in a cold train car, metal would suck the heat out of you like nuthin. Without a sleeping bag best he only touched bare metal at his shoulders boots and butt.

Missy lifted her head from his chest to wedge a wet nose against his chin and neck, lick up at his cheek. Dumont wrapped his left arm around her and winced. He hadn’t peeked yet to see how deep the cut ran. He was gonna have to look soon. Last he could see, the dirty bandanna he tied round it was soaked a darker red all across the top. Not enough light to check it now anyway.

Least he managed to score a good ridable from NOLA on a grainer porch. Damn lucky but that didn’t change how fucked his situation was overall. He thought about his pack. Fucking Shadow Riders had it, together with his sleeping bag and most of the rest of his shit. Who knew what they were doing to it? Trashing it all, dividing it up…most likely putting some bullshit black magic curse on it. And his last pint of whiskey was in there too. With time to grab one thing only he went for his guitar, the scratched-up acoustic Susie True-Bright gave him at Eufaula Lake two Novembers back. He was probably going to regret that choice. With neither whiskey nor water left, he knew he was going to regret it soon. He craned forward to check he at least hadn’t lost the guitar, right now riding by the bottom of the grainer’s ladder since it wouldn’t fit with him in the hole. The bottom edge of the case cut a thin arc from what light the moon still dribbled down. The case seemed steady, moving only in time with the slow swaying rhythms of the train.

He let the back of his head rest against the crook of his arm and tuned in to the trainsong, hoping it would lull him to sleep.

Only five things could steady him, still the deep waters of his chaos. Whiskey. Missy. Playin’. Fuckin’. And the sound train wheels made over steel rails. Rat ta tat tat rat ta tat tat. Best lullaby ever. Better than any his foster parents ever sang him, that was fersure…

Fersure.

He couldn’t catch the rhythm tonight though, ride it into sleep. Not yet. Too much rage and anger ran still through his veins, the gin in a cocktail spiked with confusion and fear.

That was some fucked up shit there at the squat, Shadow Riders comin’ in like they did… Yeah sure, Bald Jonny Ben warned him ’bout them way back when, first time he came through NOLA, but that time Dumont only nodded, passing the stories off as fairy tales in his mind. Occultist train riders? Seriously? Only they were real and they were very serious. So was their black magic. ’Course Tigger tried to tell him the same but he tuned her out too. Now he could tell his own story about them if he wanted. If he ever got the chance…

What he’d seen at the squat twisted in his brain like a wind-whipped plastic bag snagged on a barbed wire fence. He’d been chilling there waiting for Tigger. They were s’posed to meet up, hitch out of NOLA, take their love on the road. Maybe not love exactly, but close enough. She was good for him and she said hemade her feel safe.

First though she was gonna try to get this money some ex owed her while he went to busk in the Quarter. Only he drank a little whiskey to get his nerve up then a little more and a little more after that and ended not leaving the squat.

Tigger said meet her ’round 7:00 but she never showed. Best he could estimate she was already an hour late. Still, everything was copacetic till right before the Shadow Riders appeared.

He had a seat up against one wall, a flipped over five-gallon plastic bucket, bright orange once, writing under all the scuffs and scratches said it came from Home Depot long time ago. Missy lay on his right, tongue out and panting softly, his battered pack, packed and ready, propped against the wall on his left. He was thinking about breaking out the guitar, maybe tuning it or working on a song. Then things twisted up, got all strange.

The smell hit him first, a bitter edge coming on beneath the general mist of wet plaster, rust and mildew and his own unwashed body. Missy must’ve caught it before him ’cause she sat up and growled, her growl becoming a whine before it choked off in silent tension. Right as his nose registered it too a thin ripple rode over every horizontal line, kinked level architecture downward a moment before pulsing on and out the corners. Shit might make sense if he were shrooming but he only had whiskey in him, and he knew that drink’s distortions full well as a sea captain knows the waves and the sky or whatever. He sat up and was still watching for a repeat when the graffiti went wrong.

That came instant, a spasm. The lines of spraypainted scrawl across all four walls, the artful head high plaques of balloon letters, the smallest penciled scribbles…it all became ugly, rough, illegible. All at once every letter was an affront in both texture and intent though he could no longer read a one. There’d been names before, profanity and hobo hieroglyphs, some with tiny train tracks and an X for the crossing to show they were riders. Scraps of lyrics and fragmented rants—If you stay here your a fuckin oogle—shit like that, the ubiquitous anarchy symbol… All gone. Incomprehensible ciphers swirled out at him now.

The whole room pulsed next and…altered, made no architectural sense. Missy barked and twitched her tail against the bucket and Dumont placed a hand on her back. He felt dizzy and fought the urge to puke. The doorway spun around him several times—round and round and round she goes, and where she stops—Ratch and Worm and Marlo stood. The two sidekicks drifted into place behind Marlo right away, assuming generic bully positions so fast Dumont was tempted to laugh. But Marlo had his K-Bar out beside his thigh and the other two each wore their general bulk as a weapon so no way was it time for wisecracks or laughter. The room no longer spun, only rocked a bit side to side in a seasick way as if whatever whirlwind torqued it had settled in overhead for now.

—Lookit the schwag bitch, Marlo sneered at him, spoke the words as a slow smoldering threat. His voice oscillated in tempo as if the distance between them were stretching and receding. Dumont felt another twinge of nausea and struggled to suppress it. Ratch and Worm sneered in their special fleshy ways but said nothing. Missy pressed closer against his thigh, hindquarters stiff with tension as she barked in bursts. He stroked her head to calm her.

—Are you sad because your girl ain’t here? Well you can go ahead an’ cry now ’cause she ain’t comin’. Little Miss Tigger. Turns out she don’t bounce too well.

Dumont didn’t much care to hear what he was hearing but he knew Marlo was s’posed to be big on head games. Didn’t mean any of it counted for a damn thing. If it did then he failed her just like he failed Hector, the kid younger than him at the foster home, what they’d done to him.

He could stand—he was taller than all but Worm—only that would likely take things physical quick, and they were three on one. Maybe they only came to threaten him, scare him into leaving town. They could threaten away. He’d been ready to leave anyway, only with Tigger. But what had they done to Tigger?

She told him about the Shadow Riders almost at the start, how she hooked up with Marlo till someone tipped her off he only wanted her for some kind of sacrifice. How she found it out Dumont didn’t know but the whole story confused him anyway. Tigger was holding some big pieces back, he could tell that easy. Made it all hard to follow but main thing was he could see she was scared. Way shit scared. Now she was missing maybe worse and the Shadow Riders were all up in his face.

He never dealt with Marlo or his crew himself before, only saw them from a distance and Tigger would whisper that’s them or sometimes their names. There were others, Crunch and Skurd, Arkansas Jason and Jimmy Whip, more whose names he could not recall. But Marlo was supposed to be their king or ruler or some shit like that, Ratch and Worm his left hand and right.

—Du-mont. That girl took something from me, Du-mont. Something she shouldn’a took. Did she give it to you, Du-mont? I think she did. Hey, we understand how these things can happen. It’s na-chur-al. Why don’t you just let us take a look in your pack Du-mont? We’ll take what’s ours and leave you with your mutt. No harm no foul, whadda you say?

Ratch stepped hands out toward Dumont’s pack. Although he seemed to move in slow motion Dumont didn’t try to block him, but he teetered sideways away from the Rider, his bucket seat tilting almost toppling.

Marlo started to say something like That’s it— and nod before he saw how Dumont slid himself several inches along the wall, bent to grab the bucket handle, then pushed up the wall all the way and with his sea legs at least half back beneath him swung the bottom of the bucket at Worm. Ratch was closest but Worm was the tallest so Dumont went for him first. The bucket with its half dozen rough crusted inches of concrete at the bottom took Worm full on the side of the head and he. Went. Down.

Missy lunged for Ratch and her teeth sank into his left calf above his boot so he cursed and stumbled back a step. Marlo jerked to his right, brought the K-Bar full up just as Dumont yanked back hard on the bucket only to feel the wire handle tear free from plastic. The battered orange cylinder tumbled away into the shadows and slammed loud against a wall somewhere off in the dark. Everyone looked surprised. Everyone except Worm, who lay staring at the dirt floor. Staring at it real close, like point blank close. Staring at his blood pouring on the dirt.

Dumont yelled to Missy and grabbed the guitar case, booked it for the exit. He felt a tug on his arm as if someone grabbed him and he yanked hard to get free. He heard Ratch pound after him several steps till Marlo shouted —Leave him, asshole! Get the pack! The pack!

Missy hit the doorless doorway ahead of him and staggered as she went. As he trucked through he felt himself swing up sideways on an incline a second, the whole room pitched over the major part of ninety degrees. His applicable senses all told him brace for the fall but he did not fall. Missy yelped ahead so he knew she felt the same still they both pressed on and came level again in three more steps. His stomach prepared to purge but he fought it down one last time, staggered forward anyway. Not now. Not here.

Marlo called from behind —Run, sad punk! We’ll see you again. Run run run and we’ll all have some fun. Later on down the line.

Dumont ran. At least half a dozen blocks, Missy skittering always several feet ahead before Dumont felt the warm wetness on the fingers of his left hand and held it up to see first the blood dripping off them, then the red-streaked facing crescents of pink white muscle revealed in the deep slash across his forearm. He was leaving a trail but he didn’t stop to bandage himself till he reached the yard.

 

***

 

He was pissed he left his pack. Pissed to leave the squat. Pissed most of all he had to leave without Tigger. Sick over Tigger and whether she was okay. Tigger mighta helped him keep it together but even that hope was gone now.

He actually liked that squat. Better than the Pink House, which most everyone said was haunted by ghosts of all the junkies who ODed there. His squat was a derelicted grain and feed store in the 8th Ward, right up close to the decommissioned levy that carried freights along the border strip between the 8th and 9th. The hobos hippies train kids and gutterpunks who came and went there called the location Ward 8 and 3/4. The drunker Dumont got the better he liked the joke. He wasn’t stupid. He read those books when he was a kid. Some of them anyway, the ones he could find at the school library because his foster parents never bought them. Those books were Satan’s work. If wizard books were Satan’s work then what were the things they did to their foster children? Dumont had his own ideas about Satan’s work in this world.

The squat itself they called Viking House for the inked and bearded white boys who came and went there in this mostly Black and Latin town. Dumont himself bore the nickname The Norse for his dirty blond and tangled beard.

He found family at the Viking House. Better and truer than his birth family. Better fersure than his fosters and their own two sons. Folks came and went but they were mostly real people, goodpeople. His people. Fucking Shadow Riders made him leave too soon. Made him leave without Tigger. Tigger, mellow and quiet in spite of her name. How she held so tight to him not only when they fucked, and how she cried softly with him in her but laughed when she came. The eye of his own private hurricane. Tigger with him this shit would not be so bad. But Tigger was gone for now. Only how gone? Was Marlo for real or talking shit?

The farther he rode this freight, the less likely she’d ever find him, or he her. Her pale blue eyes. Her streaky blonde bowl cut, overgrown and combed crossways above her face. Her super old school Navajo rug poncho they used for a fuck blanket. The accustomed tang of her unwashed bod, and the way it blended with his own aromas.

In time he’d reach another yard. Once there he could aim for a freight headed back to NOLA. Back to Tigger. Yeah, and back to the Shadow Riders. Maybe. If they were even still there. If Tigger was…

Or he could strike out alone for…what did those old time writers call it? Terro incognito? The Territories? He didn’t much like to ride further east or north than NOLA. His winter home for three years running. He had only a vague sense of this freight’s next destination. Mississippi somewhere maybe. Or Alabama. He felt the train was headed either north or east. Maybe northeast. When it came to a yard he’d get off, try to find where he was, maybe ask the crew if they seemed cool. Good as lost for now with only vague ideas where to go next. If Marlo and his crew were coming behind him, it might be best to switch up, hitch to the next city, get away from the freight lines a while.

 

***

 

Dumont and Missy both slept in fits. He shielded her short fur from the cold metal but it bit him where it could. His ass caught it worst, gone all numb. Legs barely responding, hard to bend. Too low to stand in the foxhole so he flexed his painful frozen legs inside, kicked numbly at the scoured wall.

The brakes screeched and he realized the train was slowing. Soon it shunted onto another track. He could tell they weren’t coming into a freight yard yet. He’d see other trains if they were in a yard. The only shapes he saw in the night were trees. The junker he was riding was just siding out to let a faster train pass.

He couldn’t see the sky much but where he could it was taking on pink. As he watched the voices came.

So faint at first he pegged the sounds as his imagination. Then he thought bulls, but bulls didn’t ride the trains. Mostly lazy they patrolled their yards from trucks or golf carts, checked inside cars at stations only.

Not till the volume of the voices rose did he recognize Marlo. Coming from somewhere above. Ahead or behind he could not tell, but close. No words came clear but Dumont knew. He knew. And somehow they knew. They knew he was on this train. They hopped out too and now they were hunting him. Coming over the tops of the cars like some idiots in a western movie. One of the craziest things you could do in real life whether the train was rolling or not.

The guitar. They’d spot it from above. Fersure. The case was too big to squeeze into the hole with him. Aw fuck. But maybe not the guitar.

He set Missy on her feet and flopped on his front. His legs remained unresponsive. Wriggling half out the hole he tugged the case close and popped the snaps. And got another surprise. Atop the soundboard was a kind of book. A grubby thing bound with crooked staples, big crude letter C backward on the cover in Sharpie. He knew it at once: a Crew Change. The hobo bible to hop outs. What Marlo must be hunting. When had Tigger stashed it in his case? And why? Fuck. Was that what this was all about? But a Crew Changewas not all that hard to get. Not easy—he never had one himself before—but not something you followed someone over the tops of cars for. Not something you killed over…

The freight they sided out for came on now, an almost endless intermodal stacked double deep with shipping containers. Dumont tugged the book in with him, hefted the guitar by the neck and with its body pushed the case over the edge. Any sound it made was lost in the clamor of the passing train. Fucking Shadow Riders. First his pack and now his case, all his favorite stickers on it best of all the Hank III.

After forever the IM was past and his train lurched forward a few feet forcing Dumont to grip the rim of the foxhole. As they moved he heard the case crunch under the wheels of the next car back and right away Marlo called out. Dumont hoped the sound would draw them away. He hoped Marlo and his crew fell off, broke their fucking necks. Not likely he’d be so lucky though. Another halting advance and they pulled back onto the main track, picked up speed. He withdrew into the grainer’s next interior compartment, wiggled the guitar in after him. Missy hopped through and sidestepped a bit before she huddled with him as far from sight as they could get.

He was trapped now if they found him, no weapon in this confined space. Fists and feet, what he was best with anyhow. Missy would bite, though if he hadn’t lost her leash he would hold her back. No room to swing his smiley. Forget the guitar he couldn’t swing it in here either. He waited, listening for the sounds of their feet or Marlo’s voice above, or worse on the platform outside. Meanwhile he curled the Crew Change into a slit tube, slid it up his right sleeve then redid the buttons at his wrist. This might prove useful, if not for its content then as armor up his sleeve. It might save that arm from getting cut like the other. Like the padding folks wore to train guard dogs.

In his hidey hole he stayed on alert despite the sleep he needed. But the voices did not return. No voices, no footsteps above. Had they given up? Found their own car to wait out the ride? Too much to hope they’d jumped or fallen off. Most likely they’d be waiting to grab him when the train stopped and he got off.

Missy also kept alert, body tensed, ears up, but she didn’t bark or growl. He massaged the tips of her ears to calm her and whispered —Smart girl, yes you’re a smart girl—then smiled and nodded as he waved a finger before her face. She licked his hand once then paused and began to bathe it.

She curled against him next almost the same as when he met her, hiding in a shed in El Paso with another gutterpunk named Clutch, waiting for a hop out on a freight to Houston. Clutch stepped out to take a leak and came back ten minutes later tugging Missy by the scruff, his hand streaked with blood. —Look what I found. Bitch bit me too! He dropped her and she trotted right up to Dumont, curled in his lap. The three of them hopped out right after that but Clutch parted ways at the next yard. Missy stayed with Dumont. He got her cleaned up, groomed and dewormed. Whenever they got to a field or park they played for an hour or more, her puppy energy inexhaustible.

Missy slept now, head tucked within Dumont’s secondhand army jacket. Slowly a dim pink glow began to ooze through the opening of the foxhole. The train blew its whistle more often which meant it was coming to a town or city with roads and crossings. Somewhere ahead it’d stop. They couldn’t stay on long then—they needed to get off quick but not get caught. Run like hell was not an option—no matter how he shifted his legs stayed half numb from the cold. He’d be stumbling when he hit the ground. But he couldn’t stay. If the Shadow Riders didn’t find him the bulls probably would.

He jostled Missy gently to wake her and she raised her head, rolled to one side and stood as he began wriggling back to the outer compartment. He had to be ready when the train stopped. His legs remained a mix of numb and pain. Not good. He stretched and flexed them best he could. It didn’t do much.

Outside the portal was near full light now though the sky he saw was filmed with haze and white. Beyond the tall grass he saw ranks of pine interspersed with random spreading magnolias. A highway paced them on one flank a bit, though traffic was scant. Dumont guessed westbound. The train began to slow, tempo of the trainsong diminishing. Before long they slowed to a crawl as stilled trains slipped around them right and left. A yard. Soon their train would stop and he and Missy would need to make their move. Hop out on another freight or hoof it to the highway and hitch a ride from there. No matter what, they needed to move. Bulls and Shadow Riders would be checking the cars.

He scrambled out stiff legged and caught Missy in his arms, almost tripping before he set her on the ground. No one else in sight, but the voices came again, close, only from behind the train. He rolled under an old coaler on the next track, Missy dodging ahead then looking back. Circulation was returning in his lower half, and quick as he could he cut across two more parked freights. Let the Riders check the train he rode in on first. One more train traversed and they reached the edge of the yard. A dismal section of town extended before them.

Whatever the station, Hattiesburg or Meridian or who knew where, the stop came near the obligatory industrial park. Factories, warehouses, a few wholesale operations. Yet Dumont saw no activity. Was it Sunday? He’d lost track of days. Or had the shit economy stifled enterprise here? No matter. He’d have to hoof it through this part of town till he came out on a residential or commercial zone. Then he could make his way to an intersection and hitch to the next big town or city, find a hop out on a line the Riders hadn’t infested. Mobile seemed like a good destination. Someplace he and Missy could maybe sleep on the beach.

He figured ten blocks at most till he came out in a more congenial neighborhood but he had to hurry ’cause he had to take a dump now. He needed a convenience store or a library, someplace with an open restroom but where they wouldn’t call the cops.

He made his best guess as to where the long buildings gave way and struck crosswise toward what he thought might be north. Missy’s nails clicked on the pavement behind him. He needed to clip her, that was overdue. But not right now. Not today.

Something struck him funny about the factories and warehouses in this district. They were the usual colors, gray and brown, white and blue. But their paint seemed more washed out faded than those he’d seen elsewhere. And the signs…the letters on some swam in his vision, impossible to read. Did he have a concussion? But he hadn’t taken a hit on the head. Could blood loss cause this all alone?

The few he could read made little sense. Tortoise Stapling. Kabinet el Sand. Plumb Coriolism. Carpenter Carpenter… The address numbers on the buildings were lost on him altogether. Each time he tried to focus on a sign either it or his vision shifted to one side so he found himself staring at blank wall.

He saw no workers. Few cars in the lots, and none on the roads. No traffic at all. No trees, no grass. Just pavement, asphalt roads and concrete walks, flat threads of tar patching networks of cracks. Sky overcast gray. No wind. No birds. No sound. Some of these buildings shoulda hummed. Buzzed. But nuthin. Obvious Missy disliked the whole area. She stuck close to Dumont, sniffing the ground, her ears down and tense.

The humped cracked sidewalk led him past one building with glass front doors hanging open. All he could make out of its name was AZOTY. There seemed to be more letters but the rest defied his vision, their rusted outlines blurred and swimming. Missy stopped, lifted her leg in that halfhearted girl dog way she sometimes did and let loose on something. Possibly a fire hydrant, possibly a tree stump. Whichever, it was painted white. Or gray. He knew he had to let it out soon too.

Dumont peered inside the open doors and saw no receptionist’s desk, only a wide empty room. Further down the opposite wall he saw the windowless cabin of a probable restroom. One, two steps inside yet still no workers. To his left the manufacturing floor stretched to an uncertain horizon, bare but for a few shrouded hulks in the middle distance, tarp-covered machinery of unknown function. No one was visible. No activity. Why not? He scuttled all the way in, made his way to what he thought was the men’s room. Both the lettering and the icon were uncertain to his eyes, but the simplified woman in a dress on the opposite door showed clear so he knew he had the men’s by process of elimination…

He wanted to get in and out quick so he whistled Missy along in case any workers arrived. The things she’d seen for lack of space…

Inside all was normal, even clean. Until he opened the only stall and looked in the commode. Though no foul splatter marked its rim or lid a burnt orange haze hung still within, at its center a denser clot, sunk and obscured. The murk was the hue of blood diffused in water, the clot some unseen discarded hunk of flesh or gland. Dumont had his zipper half down when something splashed and the water in the toilet rippled as if whatever was hidden beneath the cloud of blood within got restless of a sudden. Oh fuck this! Dumont staggered out of the restroom in reverse yanking up his zipper as he went, and Missy followed close, growling but not barking yet. He’d shit in an alley if he had to, if he could find a safe one. Wouldn’t be the first time. He’d taken shits in all kinds of crazy places and was not picky but shitting on whatever was in that toilet was not in the plan. He would have to hold it, clench his bowels till the next opportunity.

The long floor remained empty. Still no workers. He shuffled toward the front doors, Missy hugging his thigh. She knew something was off with the place same as he did. Strange thing though, she wasn’t sniffing. There were always smells.

Outside things were even stranger now. Not only the signs but the buildings themselves seemed ill defined, their shapes distorted, lines gone off plumb, sides and facades fuzzed and blurred as if through TV interference. The lump Missy pissed on before, hydrant or stump, nothing but a fizzing gray puddle now. As he and Missy passed it the mass oozed flat viscous tendrils toward them, impossibilities they had to dodge. Dumont cursed softly as they hurried along their path back to the yard.

Missy meanwhile whimpered and hugged his leg, sleek flank pressing against his calf. The structures around them lost definition and stretched like taffy, flattened in the air. Had he really lost enough blood to cause these distortions? Or had Marlo dipped his K-Bar in some hallucinogenic poison only kicking in now. Not like shrooms or acid or even K. Real ugly stuff. But Missy wasn’t cut and she was seeing something wrong too, same as back at the squat. She bit Ratch though—could his blood have dosed her?

He backtracked best he could. Back to the yard to try for another hop out. This town was major fucked up. He hoped the yard wasn’t fading into static too. He hoped they could make it back before it did. He hoped he wasn’t dying or going insane.

Even the sidewalk felt wrong beneath his feet, giving softly as if cut from tough rubber. The clicks of Missy’s nails were muffled. Around him the buildings shifted into forms he could no longer pick out yet he pressed on in the direction he thought took him back.

What was left of his luck held and the yard reappeared, if not quite where he remembered. The trains were still trains though veiled in a vague gray shimmer. Then another break came his way. One of the freights had begun to roll, slow.

The last half dozen cars were all coalers, no good for riders unless already filled. They’d cover your clothes and flesh with black dust, make you cough and burn your eyes, but worst of all was if they got filled while you were inside. Then you got crushed and buried. Behind the coalers though was another engine facing back. Empty engines were excellent rides. This one was a blue and yellow CSX, what they called the Dark Future paint scheme. What coked up corporate dickhead came up with a name like that?

Bald Jonny Ben taught him early on the basic rule for hopping freights on the fly. If you could count the nuts on a turning hub, you were good. He could.

He cut across the yard, paced the engine’s inching crawl. First he raised the guitar and slid it onto the unit’s outer catwalk. He hefted Missy up the first stair next, cut left arm protesting, and she scrabbled up the rest on her own. With his right he pulled himself up the rail to the little walkway and yanked on the door, yellow with a bold blue C dead center. It was like cracking the hatch on a ship. He watched Missy perk up as the warmth of the heated cab wafted out. She slipped around him to get inside where she turned and looked back, wagging her tail and waiting for him to join her. He swept up the guitar by its neck and ducked in after her.

Inside the engine were leather seats. A little fridge. And a restroom, oh thank you Jesus!

He took care of the most important business first then shut the door so Missy wouldn’t try to drink from the squat chemical toilet. They still needed water though. Both of them.

He tried the miniature metal fountain but nuthin. Out of order no doubt. He checked the fridge, Missy peering in hopefully beside him, but they found no food, only five pint water bottles. He took two out and closed the door. Missy stared up at him in expectation. With his left forearm he pressed one bottle against his side while he used both hands to unscrew the lid from the other. Missy wagged tail and tongue together. —You want some water, don’t you girl? Problem was the dinged up little aluminum bowl he carried for her was lost like so much else with his pack.

Fuck it. He tipped the water bottle slowly above her nose. She craned her neck and lapped at the water as it dribbled down. Over half dripped onto the floor. He tilted the bottle up again and after an expectant moment Missy bent to lick the water from the floor. He hated for her to have to do it this way, but better than the toilet. Three rounds of this left the bottle drained and the floor almost dry. He drew the second bottle from beneath his arm and drank.

Dumont knew to take it slow. He’d eaten nothing for over a day and now he felt the chill water settle in his empty stomach. It hurt at first, a dull cramping ache in the depths of his abdomen. He spasmed, bent over, pressed his right forearm into his guts, but didn’t puke. The pain faded in increments and once it was mostly gone he sank back into the righthand engineer’s seat, cradled the half empty bottle at his crotch. Sleep took him quick though it did not hold him well.

He rose and fell from the depths of his rest on and off for hours, Missy curled and sleeping at his feet. Dreams visited him, vivid and important, but he remembered none on the waking side. Outside the windows the day grew dim again in time as a divided forest receded in his sight.

He went to the fridge and got another water bottle for Missy, poured it out as before and drank the fourth himself. Stuffed the fifth and final in a pocket of his jacket. He knew he could no longer put off inspecting his cut—but what was he gonna do for it anyway? He had nothing to sew it up with and only their last pint of water to clean it. Maybe he could drain it if he had to at least.

Slowly he unwrapped the blood-crusted bandanna he wore around it. He expected the cloth to stick, to cling, to pull painfully at his flesh, but it came off easy. The wound beneath was like nothing he’d seen, not the expected narrow cañon of maroon surrounding a canal of pus, but a charcoal swath of desiccated black.

Puffs of dust rose from the cut and he whiffed the same bitter undercurrent he caught at the squat, initial herald of the Riders’ approach. Probably he needed this slice seen to and soon…which meant he was gonna have to tough it out. The idea of doctors was a joke in his world. Nuthin else for it now so he wrapped the bandanna back around. It didn’t hurt all that bad anymore. Kind of numb around the cut, the numbness maybe spreading, but he was gonna be all right. He’d find some iodine, figure something out.

Dumont settled again into the engineer’s chair. If all he did today on this ride was snooze, his time would be well spent. He wished for some whiskey…but if he wished in one hand and shit in the other he knew which would fill up first. His foster father used to say that, and who ever gave Dumont more shit than him? Damn those Shadow Riders, takin’ his fuckin’ whiskey…farther this train carried him away from them the more he liked it. He slipped back into sleep until…

Missy tugged his right hand with her teeth, her grip nowhere near so soft as their normal play. He cursed then saw how she sought to drag him toward the short stair back down to the hatch. And saw now what she must’ve heard. Someone turning the door handle. Could it be one of the Riders? No way they could’ve tracked him here, not this time. Probably bulls. But the train was moving, far from any yard. Bulls stayed each in their own yard, ...