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Dead Man's Posse by Chad Gayle This story appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of SPOOKY Magazine. Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.
The sheriff didn’t carry a gun. Had his tin badge pinned on his chest like every other lawman, but instead of a holster belted to his hip, he had a leather satchel slung from a shoulder strap. Didn’t ride a horse neither, and when I asked him why, the sheriff smiled this kind of sad smile he had, a smile that seemed to signify that the world is a broke down thing that ain’t never going to get fixed. It made me mighty uncomfortable, that smile of his, although I didn’t rightly know why. There were five of us working for him on the posse. Myself, two boyish looking thugs who never said a word, an old geezer who was missing most of his teeth, and a cowgirl who was duded up in fancy chaps and a brightly colored vest. Because the sheriff didn’t have his own horse, the county didn’t see fit to give us horses neither, which struck me as a deal breaker since I ain’t exactly fleet on my feet. When I brought this oversight to the sheriff’s attention, however, he made a motion with his hand like he was patting a shoulder no one could see and told me not to worry none. “This ain’t that kind of posse,” he said. “You stay close to me, Garth, and you’ll do just fine.” Gave me a cold chill up the middle of my spine every time he called me by my name. I thought at first that was because he never would look me in the eye, but I realized later that it was because of how he said my name, like it was some kind of secret. Damned strange—but not any stranger than the job itself. For instance: the fellow we were after, he’d killed a man, but he was right there in town—he’d never left. We knew this for a fact because he liked to go skulking about the back streets after sunset to scare the living daylights out of little old ladies who would come by the sheriff’s office the next day to bend his ear. Equally odd were the tales the town’s upstanding citizens told about how they’d seen the killer floating outside a window or something similarly silly; one of them even went so far as to claim that the creep had popped up in the tub while she was taking a bath. Of course I figured they were joshing because these stories always petered out the same way, with the killer vanishing when our good neighbors tried to get a better look at him, but the sheriff, well, he didn’t seem to mind. He would nod at these folks sort of sagely after they finished, kind of like the way a preacher nods at the end of a good sermon, and then he would thank them sincerely for their help and go on about his business, almost as if they weren’t even there. His business mostly seemed to consist of visiting the rooming house where the killer had lived, the saloon where he’d liked to drink, and the barber shop where he’d once worked. The sheriff palmed little bits of trash from these places when he thought we weren’t looking—a bit of stuffing from a torn pillow; scraps of stained wallpaper; a broken comb. These things wound up in his leather satchel, which got a little plumper with the passing of each day. One afternoon while we were standing idle in the empty room the killer had once occupied, the sheriff took a black book out of his satchel and started reading a bunch of gobbledygook that I couldn’t make heads nor tails of. It made me real nervous, what he was reading out of that book, as if I had pins and needles in my head instead of my hands or feet, but it didn’t seem to bother the rest of the posse, and since the lot of them hadn’t said more than three words to me since we’d started working together, I decided I’d had just about enough of the whole crazy business and stepped outside. The first thing I noticed out there was that the air was still as mud. Feeling a plum bit odd, I walked out to the middle of the street to get a better look at the town proper and got the scare of my life when a runaway wagon liked to run me over. Frightened as a jackrabbit, I jumped back on the sidewalk and, in the process, nearly knocked a missus in a bustle onto her keister. I mumbled “’Scuse me, ma’am” just as quick as I could but she kept right on walking. Didn’t so much as glance in my direction, which did rub me the wrong way. It wasn’t my fault that some crazy wagon driver had tried to kill me, after all, and so I sort of slunk back to the rooming house and leaned against the outside wall. That’s when I noticed that none of the folks walking up and down the sidewalk would acknowledge I was even there. This made me sore all over again; sure, I was just another good for nothing who’d never amounted to much, a wandering vagabond whose luck always seemed to turn out bad, but none of them had the right to hold their noses up so high. Well I just stood there awhile, wishing I could be somewhere else, and then the people all around me seemed to get a bit blurry around the edges, as if I was looking at them through frosted glass. Figuring that I’d had too much sun, I closed my eyes to clear my head and right away I seemed to sink down into the ground, down into the earth packed beneath my feet. Worms gnawed at my fingers and my toes, and my bones felt dried out and brittle, like pieces of chalk. I don’t rightly know what kept me from screaming when I opened my eyes. The townsfolk were still passing to and fro in front of me, pretending I didn’t exist. I found the sheriff waiting for me in the open door. “What’s wrong, Garth? Got itchy feet?” I shivered when that chill that wrapped around the way he said my name sprung up my back, but I was feeling pretty ornery, so I told him I didn’t cotton to taking the county’s money when I wasn’t doing a damned lick of work. “How you conduct yourself is your business, Sheriff, but this sure does seem like a waste of time to me,” I replied. Patting the satchel on his hip, he smiled and said, “Be patient with me, son; you’ve already been a great help, whether you know it or not.” Somewhat reassured, I stuck with him as much as I could for the next few days but I found myself wandering off again and again, almost as if I did have itchy feet, like he’d said. Sometimes when I was out traipsing about, I would hear this strange sound, a long, low kind of keening that should’ve raised the hairs on the back of my neck but didn’t. The last time I heard it, I was trying to figure out where the sound might be coming from when the sheriff suddenly showed up. He didn’t chastise me none but I could tell he was piqued by how antsy I seemed to be, so I tried to apologize. He just smiled that sad old smile of his and shook his head. “S’all right, son. I know I’ve asked a lot of you, but don’t you worry—we’re going to wrap this business up tonight,” he said. “Tonight? Why tonight?” I asked. “Because of the full moon. Peaks at midnight; that’s what we’ve been waiting for.” I hadn’t a clue what he was referring to but I nodded like I did and walked with the rest of the posse back to his office, where the sheriff propped his feet up on his desk and pulled the brim of his hat down over his eyes to have a nap. I stood by the front window as long as I could, trying to figure what I owed to the gamblers and card sharps who’d bested me at this, that, and t’other saloon while the sun slid down behind the huddled huts of the sheriff’s quiet little town, but when it was full on dark, I couldn’t stand there any longer; I had to be outside. Before the door was even closed behind me, I heard that keening sound again, that wild little wailing that seemed to be saying my name. Since I knew the sheriff wouldn’t be needing me until the stroke of twelve, I let my feet take me where they wanted me to go. They took me cross the street to start with, and then we kind of zigzagged from one block to the next, weaving in and out of the streams of pedestrians who were milling about. Pretty soon I’d reached the outskirts of town, where the low buildings that were all strung together gave way to rolling green fields and lively, limber trees, and I found that the wail was even louder, so loud that I knew I was closer to its point of origin than I’d ever been before. At about the same time, I felt something tug at me, something a little like a noose looped around my neck, so I kept on following my feet, and they led me up and over the first hill outside of town, and then I saw it, and I knew where the sound was coming from. The cemetery. There was a church next to it but the sound was coming from under the ground in the cemetery, from under the dirt piled up in so many rows, and when I closed my eyes, I could see the worms in the empty eye sockets of the dead and buried, and I started sinking again, sinking fast. Then something snapped inside of me like a rubber band, and I heard the sheriff say my name. Garth! His voice was stuck between my ears, not in them, and it chilled me to the quick, like an ice chip wedged in my skull. Please, Garth. I need you here with me, son. I was back in his office in a flash. The rest of the posse was crowded together in one of the jail cells; I was mighty dazed and confused, but the sheriff seemed to understand. “S’all right, son. You take your place with the others; it’ll be over soon.” I slipped into the open cell. He’d drawn a pentagram with a circle around it on the floor with a piece of chalk, and I stood on one of the points of the pentagram, along with the other members of the posse. The junk that the sheriff had collected in his satchel was piled in the center of the floor—scraps of cloth, the broken comb, and something I hadn’t seen before: a locket on a chain, the kind you put a picture in for safekeeping. The woman in the fancy vest nodded when I looked her way. “He hung himself after he done it,” she said. “After he murdered the judge’s son and his fiancé.” She stretched her arms out, and without even thinking about it, I stretched mine out too. My fingers should’ve been touching her fingers on my left side and the dirty nails of the old geezer on my right, but I couldn’t feel anything. It was as if I was touching air. The sheriff came into the cell to put little candles at our feet, candles that he lit, each in turn, before he sprinkled a pinch of black powder on the little pile of leavings. Then he stepped out and started reading a passage from his black book, and when he finished reading, the powder he’d sprinkled on the mementos burst into blue flames that leapt up as high as the ceiling, flames that left behind a column of smoke that took on the form of a man. It was the man we’d been looking for. He screamed a scream that made my ears feel like they were about to burst, and when he reached for me with those bloody claws of his, I flinched. I’d be lying if I claimed that I would’ve stayed put without my feet being glued to the floor, but I couldn’t move, not an inch. I was protected by the pentagram or the words the sheriff had spoken or both, and so long as I kept my arms out, the dead man couldn’t get to me—he couldn’t even get past me. This made him even madder, of course. While he eyed us with all of the hate that’s ever been let loose in the world, he tried to strike at me and then he whirled round and round until he became a cyclone of smoke and sparks that sucked the bits of paper and cloth in the middle of the pentagram up into the air. Suddenly the candles were snuffed out, and I thought for sure that the monster would blow the roof right off the building and take us with it, but then the sheriff snapped his black book shut and shouted the killer’s name. It was the only time I’d ever heard the lawman raise his voice. When he did it, the smoke in the circle thinned and split into threads spinning about like dust devils on a hot, dry day, and I saw the claws that had tried to grab me by the throat start to crumble. The killer folded up on himself like a wax statue left out in the sun for too long; he got smaller and smaller, and when he got to be about the size of my fist, a bright blue light flashed in the darkness, and he was gone. I looked to my left and my right. The rest of the posse was gone too; I was alone in the cell. I lifted my leg and was relieved to see it floating ably in the air. “Come on out, Garth,” the sheriff said. “You did good, and we’re all done.” I didn’t understand what had happened but I came out and looked the sheriff up and down. “That’s it?” I asked. “We got our man?” “We did, and you’ve got your pay. You don’t have to go back to where I found you.” I almost asked him what the hell he was talking about, but then I remembered the worms and the dirt deep down in the cemetery and that odd sound I’d heard out there, and I felt a stirring in my chest, kind of like a stitch being pulled. For no reason at all, I wanted to throw my arms around him and squeeze him real tight, but I knew he would prefer not to be embraced by someone as ghostly as myself, so I kept still and wondered out loud whether he’d willing to take me on for another job. He shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t, son. I’m only allowed to use you once.” Before I could ask him why this was so, he held out his hand. There was a shimmering ticket stuck to his palm—a train ticket. He smiled that sad smile of his and said my name, but this time, when he said it, it didn’t give me the same kind of chill. This time it was the chill of hearing a door unlock when you’ve been standing outside in the cold, that little thrum that runs through you when you know you’re about to sit down at the foot of a blazing fire to get warm. “Take this to the station. The next train’ll take you where you rightly belong.” His sadness flowed through me like a cool spring rain as he sent me on my way. Only thing that bothered me later, when I got on the train, was that he never did say goodbye. 💀💀💀 Chad Gayle’s short speculative fiction has appeared in DreamForge Magazine, Inner Worlds, and Cosmic Horror Monthly.
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Fleeing to the Dawn by Daniel Stride Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.
Beneath cold and baleful stars, the chase was on. Breath steaming, Harald urged himself onwards. Thank the gods, the heavy snows had not yet come. Neither he nor his brother wore snowshoes. Still, the grim fells were an ill-place to be caught, especially when.... “Faster!” Olaf always had been more athletic, even as a child. As a man, the fox-fur coat did little to slow him. Harald cursed the weight of his own garment. He followed his brother up a hill. The snow crunched underfoot. Olaf stopped at the top. He stood silent, gloved hands on hips. “How far are they?” Harald panted. “Some distance,” said Olaf. A cry rang through the night, haunting and mournful. A cry not from this world. Harald shivered. He turned, and looked back the way they had come. They were higher now, and could see some way. The Moon bathed the fells in an eerie glow. A night so still, so frozen in time... the world might have turned to crystal. Harald narrowed his eyes. Far off, he discerned movement amid the lower slopes. “They toy with us,” he said. “Driving us before them like sheep.” “Likely,” murmured Olaf. “But to what purpose?” “Do they need one?” Olaf paused. “Maybe I shall ask them myself.” Harald blinked. “Not now, Olaf. Throw off the madness ere it kills us both.” “Maybe I am not mad.” The fur hood shrouded Olaf's face, but Harald knew his brother smiled. The dream-spell was on him again. “Or maybe I am.” Harald grasped Olaf's coat-sleeve. “No,” he growled. “There is no time. We must run on. The night will not last forever, and hope remains.” And so they continued. Running grew easier as the fells flattened. Harald took the lead now. He ignored the stitch in his side, and the leaden heaviness of his legs. Pain be damned, he thought. He pushed on through the night. He'd live to tell a roaring fireside tale. Olaf too, if only his brother could escape his otherworldly musings. The dream-spell, their mother had called it, all those years ago. Those moments when Olaf left the mortal realm behind, and ascended to... somewhere. Harald himself had never suffered such illusions. Harald glanced at the sky. He wondered how many hours remained before dawn. He imagined a winter's morning. A feeble sun peering around the horizon. Yes, that would suffice. If only they could last till then... he allowed himself the flicker of a smile. Another cry rang out from behind them. Closer this time. The embers of hope cooled, and Harald's smile froze upon his lips. # Harald and Olaf stopped at the lip of a precipice. Beneath them lay a steep valley. Its slopes loomed grim and treacherous. Harald had never heard tell of this place, though in truth he and Olaf had long since crossed the borders of the chroniclers' maps. “There is a staircase,” said Olaf. Harald frowned. “I see nothing.” Olaf pointed a gloved finger. Harald followed his direction, and nearly let loose a shout. His brother did not err. For a series of wide, flat steps led down the side of the valley. Each step lay dusted with snow. “Who would bother to carve stairs in this godforsaken place?” Harald exclaimed. “I do not know,” said Olaf quietly. Harald tried the first step. It felt sturdy beneath his boots. “It matters little. Let us go.” The pursuit had been silent for some time, but it was coming. That Harald knew. He peered down at the valley floor. Little snow had settled there. That would make tracking more difficult. Harald's hopes briefly rose. But these were no mortal trackers. What followed them tonight was beyond all ken. Harald descended, swiftly as he dared. He stopped halfway down the slope to check on Olaf behind him... What happened next would haunt Harald's memory for the rest of his life. Shadowy beneath the Moon, a dark mist suddenly gathered in the centre of the valley. Where the mist came from, Harald could not guess. It was like a cloud had descended to earth. A strange sight on a night so otherwise cold and clear. “Olaf!” he barked. “Beware!” A dozen steps back, his brother had also paused. Olaf stood, watching the mist. The dream-spell gripped him. Harald hurried back. He would shake the fool out of it. But he had no sooner grasped Olaf's shoulder than something else drew his attention. The valley mist had begun to swirl, faster and faster. A fierce wind was thrown up. There was nothing else for it. There was no time to run back up the stairs, nor reach the valley floor. They must take their chances here. For better or worse. Harald gripped his brother tightly, and pressed him against the sheer wall. He cursed. The wind billowed Harald's coat, tugging him towards the drop. He gritted his teeth, and held on tighter. He would not fall. Nor would he allow Olaf to fall. But just as Harald felt his grip loosening, just as the fury of the gale was ready to tear him off the narrow place, the wind stopped. Harald blinked. At first he did not move, for fear of the wind's return. Then he turned slowly. His heart pounded. The mist had vanished. It had left something in its place. A stone city stood within the valley. High and walled beneath the Moon. Reaching out into the night, spiked battlements stretched like fangs over the main gate. Harald rubbed his eyes. No, he was not dreaming. A city, in this desolate place, where before there had been only bare rock for miles. As he watched, the city walls began to glow. A pale blue hue, the like of which he had never before seen. This was no place for mortal men. “Olaf,” Harald hissed. “We must flee. Now!” His brother drew away from him. Olaf pulled his hood back, and looked down upon the city. The pale blue glow illuminated his face. “No, Harald. I must see this place for myself.” Before Harald could react, Olaf pushed past him, and bounded down the snow-dusted steps like a mountain goat. He was headed for the valley floor. And the city. Harald cupped his gloved hands to his mouth. “Come back!” he cried. There was little time. The pursuers would arrive any moment, and then... well, that did not bear thinking about. But Harald knew he must rescue his mad brother first. The dream-spell was a terrible thing. Harald cursed as he hurried down the steps. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead. But on the descent, he realised something else. The city called to him too. That pale blue hue...the walls suddenly seemed less of stone, and more of frosted glass. Such beauty, lost in a desolate landscape, amid the rocks and windswept snows. Harald's heart raced. A strange and terrible fever gripped him: a fever for the city. He sensed that once one went in, there would be no escape. But why would anyone ever wish to leave? One could spend an eternity here. Then he missed a step. For the rest of his life, Harald swore he had planted his boot firmly. He had always been sure-footed, no matter the conditions. But this time the stone was not there. Harald tripped and slid. He bounced from step to step. His bulky coat and gloves skimmed the slick surfaces. His hands and feet could not find any grip. At last he reached the valley floor. He skidded to a halt amid a small snow-drift. Harald lay stunned and insensible, too sore to move. The snow beneath him felt like a cold bed. The chill seeped through his clothes into his bruised limbs. He looked up at the stars. So far away. Small crystalline specks in the darkness. Things beyond the ken of mere mortals. Harald had never felt more alone. His mind screamed at him to beware. He must rescue Olaf. He must flee. But Harald lay unmoved. His will spent. Then just as he felt himself drifting into slumber, he heard it once more: the terrible, otherworldly cry. It came from the top of the steps. That shook him awake. Harald sat up. His heart raced. He had to hide. He could not run. He could not fight... He heard a whisper. As though someone sat beside him in the snow drift. Someone who could not be seen, but could be felt. And heard. The whisper told him to crawl. Crawl Harald did. His head pounded, his neck ached, but he crawled. On hands and knees through the soft valley snow, towards a line of boulders. The boulders lay beneath the sheer wall, out of the baleful moonlight. With the last of his strength, Harald heaved himself behind a boulder. Here the ground was rough and rocky, but he cared little. No sooner was Harald out of sight of the steps than he collapsed like a dead deer. The last thing Harald heard--or imagined he heard--was singing. Soft singing, in no tongue known to man. # Harald awoke with the sun in his eyes. A feeble sun, on a cold winter's morning... and him wrapped in a fox-fur coat on the fells. By the gods, his head ached. His limbs felt bruised and battered, as though a giant's club had pounded him while he slept. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. He frowned. The city and valley had vanished. All around him lay flat-topped hills, powdered with the light snow of early winter. “I escaped,” he muttered. He climbed to his feet. He threw back his hood, and basked in the chill light of day. Harald knew he had lived to tell his people of this terrible journey. In after ages, he would tell this story often. But search though he might, he never saw Olaf again. Nor indeed has any man from that day to this. 💀💀💀 Bio: Daniel Stride has a lifelong love of literature in general, and speculative fiction in particular. He writes both short stories and poetry; his stories have appeared in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Tales to Terrify Podcast, and Eternal Haunted Summer. His first novel, Wise Phuul, was published in 2016 by a small UK press, Inspired Quill. A sequel, Old Phuul, is due out in the near future. He likes chocolate and cats, and can be found blogging about the works of Tolkien (among other things) at https://phuulishfellow.wordpress.com/. Daniel lives in Dunedin, New Zealand. The Patience Factor by Rick McQuiston Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.
Everett Stones was a patient man. He wore the virtue like a coat, immersing himself in it, using it as a tool to deal with life’s unexpected and inevitable twists and turns. Whenever something would come his way he would simply deal with it in his own sweet time, allowing his patience to steer him through it. Now he would be the first one to admit that his life was basically unscathed by any real tragedy. He’d never lost a loved one, and his health for the most part remained stable. But he always felt his patience was what would pull him through. His philosophy was to let time itself heal all wounds, whether they were physical or mental. His successful book detailed many different forms of patience that he had developed over his life, each carefully tailored to specific situations that one might encounter. Most psychiatrists and other professionals in the field dismissed him as a quack whose theories were only based on such practices as meditation or religion. But the book sold well, nonetheless. So well, in fact, that he could afford to retire early and live in relative comfort for the rest of his life. Whether he actually believed in The Patience Factor, which was the title of his book, he sometimes doubted. But such doubts would always be suppressed by referring to Chapter Nine: Accessing Diminishing Beliefs in One’s Beliefs. His ego sometimes swelled beyond the boundaries of what most people would consider normal or even acceptable, but he did not care. It deserved to roam as it wished, unhindered by other people’s perceptions. He, Everett Stones, had applied The Patience Factor to his life and ascended above all complications. He had conquered all of the difficulties that were slated to come his way, and he had done it with his own methods. No amount of money or success could compare to finding a true path by one’s own means. The Patience Factor had worked for him and that was his true reward. For the most part, he believed it had worked for other people as well. He received numerous accolades regarding his work, and he felt confident that he had helped many people. Perhaps not to the degree that he had himself, but many people nonetheless. So now here he was, Everett Stones, acclaimed author of The Patience Factor, sitting in his wheelchair and covered with layers of wool blankets to keep pneumonia at bay as the trees outside his library window swayed back and forth in the cold January air. They seemed to be beckoning him to his eternal rest. He knew fully that he didn’t have much time on Earth left. His 102nd birthday was only four days away, and his body was beginning to succumb to old age. But it didn’t bother him. He was already a living example of his book. A shining advertisement for the effectiveness of his work. Very few people lived to be 101, and he had managed it due to his theories in the art of patience. This fact had caused a surge in the popularity of his book. 57 years after it was first published it was still selling millions of copies, and he found himself to have become something of an icon. The knowledge of this soothed his mind and relieved the aches and pains of age. He pulled the blankets up to his chin and gazed out at the gray scenery. His aged, but still sharp, mind jumped back to a young man he remembered from almost 50 years earlier. His name was Richard, and he was a very emotional person prone to acting rashly. Everett recalled when he first met Richard; it was at a book signing. Richard had told him how he had lost the love of his life. How his beloved bride-to-be had cancelled the wedding a week before it was scheduled to take place. How he had utilized the methods in The Patience Factor, and how his fiancée had committed suicide when she had not heard from him in weeks. Tears welled in Everett’s eyes. Richard, stricken with unbearable grief, also had said that he learned one thing from The Patience Factor: infinite patience, for better or for worse. Unfortunately in his case, it was for the worse. The next day, Richard was dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Everett felt bad, even responsible, but he quickly got over it; Chapter Four of The Patience Factor helped him immensely. He felt a sharp pain in his chest that radiated into his left arm, increasing in severity. His head grew light, and breathing became difficult. It felt like his chest was locked in a vice with Death’s bony hand turning the rod. The realization that he was dying settled on him like a cold, wet blanket. He struggled to maintain his composure, to assure that he would be found in a dignified manner befitting an icon such as himself. Then, just as the remaining breaths left to him were dwindling to nothing, a vision manifested in the window. A weak smile formed on his face. “An angel,” he croaked. “An angel has come for me.” “Yes, I have come for you, Everett,” the vision said softly. “Although I am no angel. Nor do I come from where angels do; suicides are damned.” It was Richard! The young man who had lost his fiancé all those years ago. The figure quickly grew in size, blotting out the January sky with its dark form. “I have waited nearly 50 years for you,” Richard said in an eager tone. “I do not think I could have done it were it not for your book.” 💀💀💀 Rick McQuiston is a 57-year-old horror fanatic with over 400 publications, including three novels. A new novel is due for publication in 2026. McQuiston spends his time working on new full-length and short stories. |
AboutLinda Gould hosts the Kaidankai, a weekly blog and podcast of fiction read out loud that explores the entire world of ghosts and the supernatural. The stories are touching, scary, gruesome, funny, and heartwarming. New episodes every Wednesday. |
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