- whiskey warnings and ghosts
904 Words
The town looked even worse from the north end—half-collapsed roofs, wind-gnawed fences, a church steeple leaning like it had given up praying. The only building standing proud was the saloon she’d just left, and even that one looked like a stiff breath could drop it.
As she rode out, the sun dipped lower, painting the horizon in that sickly copper light that made the desert look blood-soaked even when it wasn’t.
A crow perched on the busted rail of a hitch post cawed once.
Then fell dead.
Just fell—no struggle, no warning, like its soul had been yanked out mid-flight.
She didn’t break stride.
The men on the porch of the feed store sure noticed, though. One spat his tobacco and crossed himself three times. Another backed into the doorway like he meant to hide behind the sacks of grain.
“Damnation follows her,” someone whispered.
“Not follows,” another muttered.
“Walks right beside.”
Boot prints in the dust kept pace with her horse—perfect, steady, no body castin’ the shadow.
She kept her gaze forward.
If she acknowledged it, it grew stronger.
If she ignored it, it grew restless.
Either way, it was hers to carry.
At the end of the main street, she pulled up in front of the only place still breathing: Jeb Turner’s Trading Post, a squat building with a single lamp glowing inside like a dying ember.
She tied her gelding to a post, though she didn’t need to. The horse wasn’t about to run—not with that thing behind her acting as silent tether.
Inside, the shop smelled of dust, whiskey, and old fear.
Jeb Turner was a rail-thin man with hands that shook only when he wasn’t holding a gun. Today, he held a bottle.
He squinted at her. “Hell’s bells. I ain’t seen you in years.”
“You ain’t seen me ever,” she corrected.
“…Right,” he said quickly. “My mistake.”
Jeb wasn’t a liar—just terrified enough to misremember reality in ways that kept him alive.
She approached the counter. “Need provisions. Water. Bullets. Matches.”
“You payin’ with coin or trouble?”
“Whichever spends easier.”
Jeb winced. “Lady… somethin’s standin’ behind you. I can feel it lookin’ at me.”
“That’s your imagination.”
“No,” he whispered, leaning forward. “My imagination don’t breathe frost on my neck.”
She didn’t turn—but in the dusty mirror behind Jeb, something flickered.
A tall, black silhouette.
Mouthless.
Eyeless.
Yet somehow watching.
“Saw a preacher’s convoy pass through,” Jeb said, breaking the tension with the kind of desperation only survival breeds. “’Bout three days east of here. They left the ground lookin’… wrong.”
“Wrong how?”
He swallowed. “Like somethin’ was crawlin’ under the soil. Like the earth didn’t want ’em walkin’ on it.”
Her fingers drummed the counter. “And the Shepherd?”
“He wasn’t with ’em. But they were clearin’ the trail for him. Folks say he’s headin’ toward Drywater Gorge. Somethin’ big brewin’ there.”
She nodded. “I heard.”
Jeb lowered his voice. “People whisper he’s raisin’ an army.”
“Of men?”
Jeb shook his head slowly.
“Of what ain’t men anymore.”
The lamp flickered violently—just once.
Both of them froze.
Then Jeb whispered the part he shouldn’t have known:
“They say it started the night he burned your family.”
Her breath stilled.
“Heard he left a girl alive,” Jeb continued, unaware he’d already crossed the line between gossip and grave. “Left her to die. But she didn’t. And somethin’ else… didn’t die with her.”
She stared at him long enough for his confidence to rot into dread.
“I need a map,” she said softly.
Jeb scrambled for one, nearly knocking over his own bottle.
As he slid it across the counter, the air dropped again—cold enough to frost the edges of the ink.
Jeb’s teeth chattered. “Ma’am… whatever that thing is… if the Shepherd made it—”
“He didn’t make it,” she cut in. “He called it.”
“Then why’s it with you?”
Her eyes darkened like a storm swallowing the sun.
“Because what he summoned came for him.”
She folded the map.
“And found me first.”
A bottle cracked behind her—no cause, no touch, just shattered under the pressure of a presence too heavy for this world.
Jeb staggered back. “It ain’t bound tight, is it?”
“It’s bound enough.”
“Enough for who?” he whispered.
She holstered her pistol. “For now.”
Outside, the wind howled like something grieving.
She stepped onto the porch, reins in hand, dust swirling around her boots.
The boot prints appeared beside her again—one after another—waiting.
“What?” she muttered under her breath. “You hungry for blood already?”
The prints deepened—just once—as if answering:
Yes.
She swung onto her horse.
“We’ll feed you soon enough,” she whispered.
And with the devil walking beside her, she rode toward the dying sun and the burning trail that led straight to Drywater Gorge.
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- Writer
