He saw the deputy’s hard stare as he drove by him in the opposite direction. The quick draw performer knew that the man behind the badge would be turning his unit around and pulling him over.

It had happened before and it cost Dave nearly $600 the last time. He checked his rear view mirror and saw the blinking of the red and blue lights as they drew closer.

Dave pulled off the main road and down the long dirt drive towards his home. In short order, the cop car sped onto the unpaved road and pulled up at an angle behind the now-stopped pickup truck.

“Keep your hands where I can see’um,” came the deputy’s demand over the vehicle’s loudspeaker.

Once the deputy was out of his car and with his hands still on the steering wheel, Dave asked, “What’s this all about?”

“You were driving distracted,” came the answer, “gonna have to write you up for it. Now get out of the truck and do it slowly, keeping your hands in sight.”

“I need to reach for the door handle to open it, okay?”

“Do it – but do it very carefully – no fast movements Mr. Quick Draw McGaw.”

Dave complied. He also realized that pulling off the main drag on on the road leading to his home, had placed him in danger since he still had his Colt 44 strapped to his hip.

“So you’re heeled, I see.” the deputy said.

“Jus’ heading home from a small performance I gave for the children in the hospital this morning.”

“Duster Dave Barnham, Mr. Do-Gooder, too, huh?”

Dave did not reply as the officer slowly approached. The deputy looked Dave up and down as he pulled out his night-stick and smashed the left tail light of the truck.

“Tail light’s outta order too,” he grinned, “Now back up.”

Dave stepped backwards, beyond the hood of his truck. He grimaced as the deputy broke the drivers side mirror off the vehicles.

Having had enough of the officer’s actions, Dave asked, “Do you feel better and can I go now?”

“No,” he answered as he pulled his ticket book out from behind his backside, having tucked it in his belt as he left the car. He began to write.

“So how fast are you with that gun, Dave – or should I call ya ‘Duster Dave?”

“Dave’s fine. Fast enough to entertain the kids, I guess.”

“Faster than me?”

“Nope. Not faster than you.”

“Really? I don’t believe you believe that for a minute.”

Dave said nothing.

“I think we oughta find out for ourselves,” the deputy stated.

A sick feeling overcame Dave as he watched the deputy square off, right hand slightly open and hovering jus’ above the butt of his pistol. Dave raised his hands, palms open towards the deputy, in a gesture of surrender.

“Afraid?”

“Yes – very afraid.”

“Ha! Duster Dave fastest man alive with a gun this side of Dodge City. You’re nothing but an effin’ coward. Wish I had that on my dash cam.”

“Wanna reenacted it so you can brag all about it and quit riding my ass every time you see me?”

The deputy smiled, “Yeah, I want that on video – show it to my grand-kids – show’um how big a chicken-shit their hero is.”

“I thought you were their hero?” Dave asked be before thinking.

The deputy drew his service weapon and held it on Dave as he made his way back to his cruiser, reached in and switched on his vehicle’s camera. He also pushed the button to the camera he wore on his bullet resistant vest.

After ordering Dave to pick up his shooter, and once the deputy was certain he had the man in the right spot for his camera, he holstered his own weapon and began taunting the showman again. This time though, Dave was prepared and knowing the deputy was not as on-guard as he had been, Dave drew his Colt.

The surprised deputy didn’t even have time enough to touch the butt of his gun. Instead, he found himself facing the polished business end of Duster Dave’s blue steel and ivory handled revolver.

“Now, remove that thing from your holster using jus’ your pointer finger and thumb, and toss it over here in front of me,” Dave calmly demanded.

The deputy, though slow to comply, did as instructed. Dave could see tears glistening around the lower rims of his eyes.

“Don’t kill me,” the deputy said, his voice shaking.

“Turn around and using your handcuffs, cuff your writs together – and make them tight.”

The deputy did as instructed. Dave double checked the cuff, clamping them even tighter.

Next, he returned to his truck and retrieved his cellphone and dialing 9-1-1, “I need the state troopers, pronto. No, not the county, the state.”

Fifteen minutes later, three units came speeding up the roadway, kicking up dust and gravel. The troopers exited their vehicles and immediately placed Dave in cuffs and ushered him to the back of one of the patrol cars.

“So he dared you to draw on him, huh?” the older of the four troops asked, adding, with a slight tone of hostility in his voice, “That’s very hard to believe.”

“All you gotta do is check his dash-cam,” Dave offered, “And the one on his person.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

It took only a few minutes for the troopers to review the dash-cam footage, before Dave heard, “Sorry, Mr. Barnham, this should have never happened.”

After he was uncuffed, Dave quietly watched as the deputy was placed in the back of the same patrol car that he had jus’ been in. He also watched as other deputies came to the scene to witness one of their own being driven off.

“You’re free to go,” the sheriff offered, before asking, “If he’d of threw down on you after you had him dead-to-rights, would you have shot him?”

Dave toed the dust, “Nope, he’d of killed me for sure, ‘cause my gun’s loaded with blanks. It was all show-biz and bluff on my part.”

“Damn!” the sheriff exclaimed, “Remind me to never play poker with you.”

“Truth is, I don’t know how to play poker, never learned” Dave smiled as he climbed into the cab of his truck, “Anyway, have a good and safe rest of the day, Sheriff.”

It was only as he reached for key in the ignition did Dave see how badly his hand was trembling.

Two days’ ride east of Beowawe, where the ground turns from sagebrush to bone-white caliche, Brady came upon a massacre. The sun hung high, pale and pitiless, drawing long shadows from the dead where they lay sprawled across the rocky earth.

The acrid reek of burnt gunpowder tangled with the copper stink of drying blood, thick enough to taste with every breath. He dismounted, boots crunching through shell casings and shattered canteens.

Most of the corpses wore rough wool coats and dust-crusted hats, miners, prospectors maybe, judging by the gear scattered about. Their rifles lay near at hand, some still half-cocked, others splintered in two.

Whatever had struck them had done so with impossible precision. There were no wounded, only dead.

Brady crouched beside one of the bodies, a man no older than thirty, eyes gone glassy and mouth frozen in a scream that must have lasted until the very end. Powder burns rimmed the hole through his chest, but his expression spoke of something far worse than bullets.

The corpses were cold. Whatever had done this had left hours ago, maybe more.

Still, the air trembled with a residue, something electric and wrong that made the hairs on Brady’s arms rise. He moved through the camp methodically, gathering what might keep him alive, ammunition, a few unspoiled tins, rifles less rusted than the rest.

When he straightened, the world felt too still, as even the flies had gone quiet. That’s when he saw it.

At the far end of the killing ground, the hardpan had been disturbed, an ugly scar of freshly turned earth, jagged and raw, half-filled with debris. It might’ve been a dugout, but it looked wrong, like something had clawed its way up from below rather than dug from above.

The sand, torn by frantic bootprints, and several bodies lay nearby, their faces twisted toward the hole as though they’d been watching when death came. Brady approached slowly, revolver in hand, though he doubted bullets would matter.

The air around the dugout was cooler somehow, a breath exhaled from the bowels of the world. Brady crouched and peered into the shadowed maw.

From within came the faint sound of singing. He froze.

It was a woman’s voice, soft, perfect, unearthly, floating up from the darkness as if borne on smoke. The melody was simple, a rising and falling lullaby sung in flawless English.

For a heartbeat, it was beautiful, achingly so. Then the words sank in.

They weren’t words. Not really.

They sounded like words, shaped from the bones of the language but hollow, stretched, and warped, like syllables that brushed against the edges of meaning without ever touching it. Yet Brady’s mind filled the gaps.

He understood, though he wished he didn’t. Brady stumbled back a step, boot scraping stone as the singing paused.

The silence that followed pressed against him like a tide. Beneath it, the ground seemed to hum, a low, patient, almost curious sound. Then, softly, the singing began again, closer now, as if the unseen singer had drawn near the surface.

Brady’s throat went dry. He knew that voice.

Not the tone, but the feeling of it, the same impossible sweetness that had haunted him once before. He’d heard it years back, deep in the Toiyabe range, when a mining crew vanished and he alone returned.

He had never spoken of it, never told how the tunnels had filled with light that pulsed like breath, how that same voice had sung from nowhere and everywhere until the world seemed to twist around it. He’d sworn then that he’d never go near such a sound again.

And yet, here it was, hundreds of miles away, beneath a shallow grave in the middle of nowhere. Brady backed away, slow and careful, revolver still drawn.

The singing never faltered, though it changed pitch, sliding higher, as if amused. The dugout seemed to widen in Brady’s vision, shadows stretching outward like fingers of oil across sand.

He turned and mounted his horse, urging it west without a glance behind.

The air grew hotter with each mile, the wind kicking up dust that burned his eyes. But even as Beowawe’s distant hills rose on the horizon, he could still hear it, the faintest trace of that voice, threaded through the wind like a whisper meant only for him.

By nightfall, he’d reached a dry creek bed and made camp, though sleep would not come. When he closed his eyes, he saw again the dugout, that churned earth, that impossible shadow humming beneath the desert.

And beneath all of it, he felt the truth pressing against the edges of his thoughts. And the men he’d found had answered, miners, prospectors, wanderers like him, all lured by the same melody until they dug deep enough to let it taste the light again.

Brady fed his fire higher, but the darkness beyond the circle of flame only thickened. Somewhere, carried on the dry Nevada wind, he swore he could still hear it, soft, patient, endless.

The song that had been waiting for him ever since that first day in the mines. He sat very still, listening, until the fire burned down to embers.

Then, just before dawn, the wind shifted. And from far to the east, faint and familiar, the voice rose once more, calling his name in perfect English.

Aubrey Thornton walked ahead of her girlfriends, who had stopped along the trail to take a selfie. She had forgotten her cellphone in the car, so she didn’t participate in the ritual.

Ahead, she saw the shimmering rays of the day’s sun and heat vibrating from the asphalt of the newly opened footpath encompassing Lake Tahoe. She thought nothing of it, not even when she felt a mild jolt of static electricity course through her entire body.

The shock, though slight, left her disoriented and dizzy. She had a sudden metallic taste in her mouth and the bright sunlight somehow seemed even brighter, at least for a few seconds.

She leaned against a nearby granite boulder, thinking she may be over-exerting herself in the higher altitude. Aubrey could hear her friends laughing and cutting up as they made the curve in the trail and came into site.

“You okay,” Lisa asked, “You look a little pale.”

“I’m fine, jus’ pushed myself a little too hard,” Aubrey said.

“Maybe we ought to go get something to eat,” Andrea suggested.

“Good idea,” Lisa said.

As they walked back to their car, Aubrey battled to shake off the feeling that something wasn’t quite right, that she felt somehow different or perhaps her friends were different. By the time lunch was finished, the odd sensation had disappeared from her adjusting mind.

---

“She was right here,” Lisa cried to the sheriff deputy, “And then she was gone.”

An investigator was speaking with Andrea, who was also upset, separately. He, too, was trying to piece together the two women’s odd story.

“She walked up around that boulder there,” Andrea pointed, “Lisa and me had stopped to take a couple of pictures, and by the time we walked to where we are now, Aubrey vanished.

Five days later, the massive search was called off as a sudden and late season snowstorm moved in over the lake, dropping three to 4 inches of snow. Aubrey Thornton remains a missing person to this day.

---

As she lay in bed that night, following her long day at Tahoe, Aubrey began to reflect. Recalling and drifting in-and-out of sleep, she realized that her friend, Andrea’s blouse had changed; the cats had become dogs.

This realization made her sit up as she felt a cold sweat cover her body.

As she did, her surroundings evaporated and she found herself prone, on a metal table, unable to move. She could sense more than see the several small gray-greenish beings crowded around her.

Aubrey Thornton screamed; but no sound came.

Sensing her presence, he turned and offered to buy her a drink, saying ‘Belly up,’ while holding his hand out towards the space at the bar next to him. Without warning, the woman dropped on her back, lifted her shirt, exposing her belly.

Embarrassed, the man exclaimed.“Get up off the floor!”

By then everyone was laughing and poking fun at the woman as she returned to her feet, though she didn’t seem to mind.

“What in the hell was that all about?” the man asked, as he begrudgingly handed her a Guinness.

“Had a boyfriend – a master, actually – who used to treat me like his dog.”

After a lengthy draw from his beer, he asked, “So, are you house broken?”

If I can write a story using less than 280 characters, you can too. It’s great way to practice cutting extra words from your work.

Go to Twitter and type in #vss365 and give it a shot. Here’s an example of my most recent attempt:

#vss365 #WritingCommunity #HorrorCommunity

Tom knelt, looking over the ledge at the shallow pool of water some 20 feet below. Without warning, his backpack shifted and he toppled forward and over.

“Holy shit! You okay?” his friend cried.

“Nothin’ injured but my fuckin’ #pride!”

It’s both challenging and rewarding and don’t forget to join me on Twitter.

It was her first call as a newly hired dispatcher, “Nine-one-one, fire, police or ambulance?”

There was pause.

“I’d like to order a pizza,” a trembling woman’s voice responded.

“Ma’am, I think you called the wrong number.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“You called 9-1-1.”

“Yes.”

Suddenly, there was a hard thudding sound, and a faint cry, before a male voice barked, “Hey, asshole, what’s taking so long?”

She froze momentarily.

“Hello?” he said roughly, “You know what, I’m hanging…”

“Pick up or delivery, and what would you like on it?” she finally asked.

“Delivery. Your large three-topping special.”

“Great,” she smiled, “Address?”

A slow start today, as I woke a little bit stiff and sore.

My son, daughter-in-law and I went to Lake Tahoe to sight see, take pictures and hike.

Using as few words as possible, I wanted to show you a couple of highlights.  The above photograph was taken from State Route 28.

A few minutes later, and in spite of my son’s warning, “If you fall, get hurt or stuck, I might not be able to help you,” I made it down the 250-foot embankment, above, to take the next photo.

It was a wonderful day and I’m already looking forward to our next adventure.

William Donald Lund, Jr. passed away on January 30, 2020 at the age of 63. Better known as Bill, he was born on December 1, 1956 in Sacramento, CA.

While he grew up in Northern California all his life, it wasn’t until 1973 that he moved to Crescent City from Blue Lake, with his family. He attended Del Norte High School for two years, graduating in 1975.

Bill and I met in high school where he was a senior and I was a freshman. He saved me one morning by stopping a couple of his classmates from giving me a ‘Del Norte Swirl’ in the boy’s bathroom in ‘B’ hall.

I still owe him for that bit of grace.

At Del Norte he excelled in both football and basketball. In basketball he earned two all-conference honors his junior and senior years, and also earning the MVP award as a senior.

Bill went on to attend Butte College in Chico, California in 1976, and then Arcata’s College of the Redwoods in 1977. At Butte, he was a member of the Community College State Championship team.

At CR he earned all-conference in basketball and for a time held the single season scoring record. He was a member of the all decade team, that had the most wins in the school’s history. Bill still holds a spot in the college’s record book for scoring and rebounds.

From there he went on to be a very successful and talented independent contractor.

Finally, I could have used a photo of him taken from his Facebook page or the obituary in the Del Norte Triplicate, where I drew much of the above information, but in the end, I think a nice black-and-white action shot of Number 52 racing down an opponent in basketball from back in 1975, is the perfect way to remember my friend.

“So you don’t believe in our ‘folk tales,’ huh?” the Indian fishing guide, using air-quotes, asked the younger man.

He’d been telling the out-of-stater some of the Paiute’s scariest myths and legends, hoping to add a seed of doubt to the man’s cynical attitude about native ways.

“I don’t believe in UFO, Bigfoot, or the Boogeyman, either,” the man replied.

“You should. Unlike Water-babies, Tu’lo’ug Vou’c’g takes many forms, luring the unbeliever in and then…”

Their aluminum boat shifted violently as a great, oscillating mass of changing shape and color, rose from Lake Pyramid’s depths, displaying a multitude of eyes, fins and long massive tentacles. Both men began to pray as it cut the surface, mouth agape, ready to feed.

The night before last, Brady had found the first signs of slaughter. The snow had fallen clean and new, a soft quilt draped across the valley, but it hadn’t stayed white for long.

Near the fenceline of Miguel Lardizábal’s pasture, he’d found the sheep, what was left of them, strewn about like rag dolls, throats torn open, their bodies dragged and dropped, leaving dark arterial fans of crimson in the snow that steamed faintly in the frigid air. Brady was a man who’d seen death before, cattle mauled by cougar or coyote, sheep lost to the cold, but this was something else; wounds too deep, the savagery too personal.

The snow around them bore strange impressions: four-toed prints, big as a man’s hand, arranged not in the staggered rhythm of a quadruped, but the even pattern of something that walked upright. He crouched low, studying one track where the blood had frozen at the edges.

The claw marks were deep, set with purpose. Caught on a low branch nearby was a single wiry hair, coarse and brown, thicker than a horse’s mane.

When he rubbed it between thumb and forefinger, a faint oily musk clung to his skin. That same musk wafted up from the droppings he found farther on, dense, rank, threaded with shards of bone and tufts of wool.

He followed the trail through the aspen stand where the snow muffled every step. The night was still, save for the groaning of trees shifting under frost and the distant drip of meltwater from the trough he’d helped Lardizábal build the summer before.

The moon hung high and full, a perfect white coin behind thin clouds, and in that cold glow Brady saw it. The creature stood erect, no more than fifty yards ahead, framed between the trunks.

Its shape was almost human, but elongated, and distorted, limbs too long, shoulders narrow and twisted as if broken and re-healed in the wrong places. The snout jutted forward, black and wet, and it sniffed the air in long, deliberate draws, each one loud enough to echo across the snow.

Brady froze, breath held, heart pounding so loud he feared it might draw the thing’s attention. It didn’t move at first.

Then its head turned sharply toward him. Eyes like dull coals caught the moonlight. The creature let out a growl that rose into a howl, something ancient, furious, and heartbreakingly human beneath the animal rage.

Brady didn’t think. He drew his Colt and fired once. The bullet struck true, snapping the thing’s head back. It fell to its knees, then onto its side, thrashing once before going still.

When he approached, the steam of its blood curled into the night air, but as he stared, his breath caught in his throat, as the form before him was changing.

The hair sank back into the flesh, the snout drew inward, the claws retracting into fingers. Within moments, what lay in the snow wasn’t a beast at all but a man.

Miguel Lardizábal.

Brady stood over him for a long time, his breath fogging the still air. He holstered his gun and whispered a curse, then he turned and walked home, leaving the body to whatever carrion the desert called its own.

By morning, the ravens had found it. The coyotes would follow.

Two nights later, Brady dreamed of the tracks again. Only this time, they led not through snow but through stars, four-toed prints impressed upon an endless black expanse. He followed them, though there was no ground beneath him, no air to breathe, only a cold pressure in his chest that pulled him forward.

He found himself standing once more among the aspens. The moon was close now, brighter and pulsing, its surface crawling with motion like a nest of insects.

Beneath its light, the snow began to bubble. Shapes moved under it, limbs, faces, the faint sound of whispering.

He awoke slick with sweat, the sound of those whispers still clinging to his ears.

At dawn, he went back to where he’d left Miguel’s body. Brady found the snow, churned, blackened with blood and feathers.

But the body was gone. No bones, no scraps, no sign of struggle, just those same upright tracks leading off toward the hills.

Brady followed.

The trail wound through the sage and into the basalt ridges beyond Beowawe, where the earth opened, becoming old mine shafts and caves. There, beneath a lip of rock, he found a hollow filled with bones, sheep, deer, and humans alike.

The air was thick with the musk of rot and something sweeter, almost floral, that made his eyes water. Carved into the rock above the hollow were marks, circles intersected by lines, spirals nested within spirals.

They seemed to shift as he looked at them, as if the stone itself pulsed faintly in time with his heartbeat. Then Brady heard movement behind him, a slow, dragging step.

Turning, he saw the tracks again. Fresh ones.

He raised his gun. The sun hung low and red, casting long shadows that bent and twisted with the rocks, where one of those shadows moved, tall, upright, familiar.

“Miguel?” he whispered.

The thing tilted its head, and for an instant, Brady saw his neighbor’s face, eyes sorrowful, mouth working as if to speak. Then the face melted away into fur and teeth.

The howl that followed was neither challenge nor rage, but something else entirely. An invitation, maybe.

And before Brady knew it, he was stepping forward, toward the sound, toward the hollow breathing darkness that awaited within.

Afterward, those who saw him swore that his eyes had changed color, and that, sometimes, when the wind cut across Beowawe Brady was heard howling back.