Oct 17th, 2083: Making of a Bone Man

Sam knocked on my door not long after I finished the previous entry.  "Food's on." Breakfast was subdued, any conversation expressed in grunts or terse words.  Sam's hat did a poor job of hiding red-rimmed eyes.  Tears?  A sleepless night?  An allergy to the hay-stuffed mattresses?  I didn't ask.

Oar's face haunted me.  Anthony was nothing more than a pile of limbs, meat stacked in piles like haunches of livestock waiting to be cut into prime sections.  A boy when I went to sleep, dead meat when I woke up.  Oar, though...  I remember the wet sound of his head being crushed like an overripe fruit.  His body lying atop that hill.  I hear his voice like an echo reverberating around my head.  His screams.

"Good morning."  The familiar voice resonated in my bones and settled into the back of my skull.  I rose from my chair, turning to stare up into the simple mask of another Bone Man.  It nodded to us, perhaps the most human gesture any of the stern guardians had made since my arrival.  "I am Viceroy.  I will be your guide today."  In a higher register his bland statements might have seemed cordial, but if there was any type of inflection it was beyond my ability to perceive.

We left the small in and started to follow Viceroy into the center of town.  I glanced up at the cold white sun-face-and could not quite control the shiver that crawled down my spine.  Those long fingers like bleached bone curling around his skull.

"One thinks you would like to see how a Bone Man is made."  Viceroy informed us.  "There is an individual who has been selected for advancement."  The few people out at this early air moved out of Viceroy's path.

Our destination turned out to be a marketplace with stalls of hanging meat and boxes of wan vegetables.  All around us, vendors unpacked their wares.  Once they caught sight of us, they would freeze like startled deer.  When they caught my eye they would quickly resume their work, though now their movements were stilted and sharp.

Viceroy halted in front of a stall.  The vendor of this stall stood with her back to us, stretching up to hang a string of garlic.  She had light blonde hair pulled into a bun and wore a paisley dress colored with light greys and blues.  She turned and like all the other vendors, froze upon spotting us.  She wore a full-face mask, the eyes rimmed in navy blue that drifted off on one side to form intricate curliques all the way down her cheek to merge with the bow of her lips.  Wisps of light blonde hair curled around the side of her mask.  Our guide extended a hand to her, a mask resting on his long and narrow palm.

"No," the woman whimpered, backing away from us.  "Please, no, I have children.  Thomas isn't even weaned yet."  Viceroy had to bend low to fit under the roof of the stall.  He reached for her mask with his other hand, tearing it free.  She wailed, a high-pitched sound that tore at my eardrums.  In taking the mask off, the Bone Man had removed more than the mask, he had taken the skin from her face.  Muscles and tendons scrunched into a wail that was quickly cut off as Viceroy pushed the other mask onto her face.

A small thought budded in the recesses of my mind, growing into a sickening horror as I began to realize...  I saw Sam's eyes widen, presumably for the same reason.  Almost in unison, we reached up to the masks still on our faces.  The masks we had forgotten about; the ones that conformed so perfectly to our faces that we had lived in them for the past 24 hours.

We reached up in almost near perfect unison and began prying the mask off our faces.  It hurt.  It felt like I was tearing off a newly formed scab.  By the time I finally ripped myself free, I was panting from the effort.  Or from hysteria.  Sam's face was raw, abraded and bleeding in several places.  I felt a warm wet trickle begin to trace its way down my cheek.  I could see pieces of flesh from my face stuck in the domino.  A drop of blood hit the mask, trickling down into the valley of the nose before falling softly to the ground.

I looked around, wiping at my face with the back of my hand.  The world had stilled around us, the vendors and consumers silent witnesses to our frenetic actions.  I turned back to Viceroy and the woman.  Twin silent faces filled my vision, pale imitations of a white sun that was the face of a monster.  I scrambled backward, grabbing at Sam's arm and dragging her with me out of the suddenly overcrowded marketplace.  We stopped on the street corner where Sam watched as I tried to regain my composure.  Wind rushed harshly through my lungs, burning the passages of my throat.

"Kid..."  Sam pulled me into a rough hug, arms like a vice.  "In for three, out for three.  Just count.  Don't think about anything, just count."  I buried my forehead in the rough fabric of Sam's shirt and my whole world became three numbers and warmth of another human body.

"One wonders why you are currently experiencing a state of duress."

I pulled away from Sam.  Viceroy had caught up with us and stood far enough away that I did not have to strain my neck to see his plain mask.  The mask that was now his face.  In an instant, the panic and fear turned to anger.  "Duress?  Your King wonders why I am under duress?  Does he really not understand the fundamental concept of humanity, that we might actually be distressed if someone we knew were suddenly and violently killed?  Your King ripped apart a boy because he wandered into the wrong house!  He crushed a man who only wanted to share his beliefs!  He shatters a family because he wants another Bone Man, when there are enough of you to fill the clearing in the middle of that forsaken forest."  Propelled by the impetus of my emotional outburst, I threw my mask onto the ground and stepped on it, grinding my heel on it over and over until it lay in pieces on the street.

Viceroy was silent for a while, staring at the shattered mask before my feet.  Finally, it raised that blank face to me and when it spoke all traces of humanity, all imitations of human behavior were gone.  "The mechanical abomination was given sufficient warning and chose his fate.  The Michaelman infected several citizens before he was caught.  Many had to be put down to keep the poison from spreading.  Realize this, visitor.  You are all ants but those citizens were the One's ants, not the Angel's."

My thoughts went back to the woman in the ochre mask, the one who was escorted away by the Bone Men.  I replayed yesterday afternoon's events in my head, trying to count how many people had listened to him speak.  Had Oar Ellis been aware of the effect his words would have?  Was everyone who listened to him automatically given a sentence of death?  His message had seemed fairly innocuous so why had it driven that woman to such acts of self-violence?

Like a sudden blow knocking the wind from my lungs, I was frozen, waiting for my brain to catch up with the rest of the world.  Sam's vitrol made more sense, had she forseen something like this happening?  Was it only my naivety that kept me from predicting this would occur?  "I..."

"You are leaving tomorrow."  Viceroy did not ask, he stated.  "You may travel through the forest, if you can bear to travel a path you consider 'forsaken.'"

I nodded.  Viceroy turned and strode away, his long legs taking him out of sight in a matter of seconds.  I finally noticed the crowd that had gathered around us.  My face burned with embarassement; despite my short time with a mask, I felt unnervingly vulnerable without it.  I ducked my head and headed back to the hotel, Sam at my heels.

The trunks I had abandoned days before were waiting for me in my room, leaving barely enough space to open the door.  I stared at them as the rush of adrenaline finally left me.  "I'm just...  I need to rest for a bit."

Sam's expression bore something akin to pity.  She pushed her mask into my hands then gave my shoulder a brief squeeze.  "Don't break this one.  You'll probably want a souvenir or something."

By the time I made my way over and around all the luggage cluttering up my room, all of my energy was gone.  I pulled a pillow over my head in futile attempt to smother my thoughts, but only succeeded in breathing in must and the smell of moldy feathers.

I won't bore you with the hours of self-torment I forced upon myself while lying in that small, cold room.  Suffice it to say that eventually I realized this journey will not get easier.  No doubt I will see others die in cruel, terrible ways.  All I can do is record the mistakes made and hopefully keep others from making the same ones.

Oct 16th (evening): The Trial of Oar Ellis

In the middle of the forest, there is a clearing.  It is filled with a crowd that wears the same stern visage.  The crowd surrounds a hill, as tall as a mountain yet still not as tall as the trees.

On top of the hill, the Tall King takes a seat on a throne woven from black trees.  Before him stands a tiny speck of a man.  Oar Ellis.  The man with the serene smile.  I cannot see his face from here, but I doubt he is smiling now.

From our vantage point at the edge of the crowd, we cannot make out what words, if any, are spoken.  Nobody moves, except for the throne, which writhes as if the tree branches are growing underneath him.  It.  The Tall King leans forward and reaches out a long pale hand with too many fingers and too many joints.  It lays the palm over Oar Ellis' face and wraps slender fingers over his scalp to lay flush against his jaw...

Some instinct makes me look away before the deed is done, but I still hear the wet 'pop' across the clearing as the Tall King crushes Oar Ellis' head like an over-ripe grape.  My hand hurts.  I look down and see that Sam's hand is still in mine.  The Trader's knuckles are grey under dusky skin.  Mine are white; I am sure my grip is no less forceful.

A sudden intake of breath from my companion.  I do not want to look, but I must.

It is a pin-striped suit.  The stripes are thin and ivory, they rise above the material of the suit somewhat, and as my eyes travel higher and I see joints and cracks, I realize the stripes are made of bone.  The suit is not made of material, the Tall King is the suit.  The jacket blends into the shirt, which melds into the tie wrapped around a slim neck and the cold white sun is staring down at me.  His face is the face of the sun and he sees everything.

I clench my eyes shut and wait for the hand to wrap around my skull.  Will it be cold?  Clammy?  Will it burn to the touch?  For a brief moment, I want to ask Oar Ellis if it had the rough texture of bark.

"Your passage was fairly bartered."  The deep thrum of the Bone Men echo around us.  "You may continue along your way."

Some instinct pulls me down into a deep bow, perhaps the self-preservation that Sam so thoroughly ridicules.  When I finally gather the courage to raise my head and open my eyes, the clearing is empty.  Wind tosses a scattering of black leaves across the open space, where they settle on to Oar Ellis' headless corpse for a moment before being swept away again.

Sam has to lead me back the narrow path.  I am struck dumb.  Speechless and sightless, unnerved by the callous violence of recent events.  I have lost two companions in equally brutal and horrifying ways.  For the first time, I truly miss the comforts of home.

I have to wonder if this is all worth it.

Oct 16th (afternoon), 2083: Slender Falls part 2-The Trial

"What do you want to do now, then?"  Sam asked as we left the cavernous City Hall.

From atop the wide stairs, I stood head and shoulders above the crowd.  Well, most of the crowd.  Here and there, about one in every fifty people, stood those who were stretched out like the guards inside.  Their masks are practically featureless.  The one concession to humanity is a single horizontal line representing a mouth.  Yet even that lone mark conveys so much.  They are clearly guardians...wards of the citizenry.  The single line turns a blank slate into a stern visage.

I could also see what looked like a large garden a few streets away.  The trees were predominantly black, however there were a handful of white willows.  As I scanned the garden, I began to notice the crowd gathering.  The majority of the people were maskless, and from my vantage point I could see a familiar wide-brimmed hat in the center.  It seemed Oar Ellis had found his way to the city as well.

"I think I'm just going to find a spot and people-watch."  I waved my hand at the distant crowd.  "How about you see if we can get someone to pick up all that stuff we left behind?"

The Trader followed my gaze.  "That sounds like a fucking terrible idea."

"I know.  I'll be careful."  This statement provoked a sneer that clearly demonstrated Sam's opinion of my ability to stay out of trouble.  I placed a hand over my heart and put on my most innocent smile, though we both realized that the likelihood of me not finding trouble was slim to nil.

"All right, kid.  But these masks only afford us so much protection.  So don't go poking your nose into other people's business!"  With that, Sam turned and walked away.  For a while, I could track the bodyguard's progress through the streets by her battered cowboy hat, however eventually that too faded from my sight.  Once Sam was gone, I trotted down the steps and to the entrance of the black and white garden.

I found a bench near enough to Oar Ellis to hear his orations, yet far enough that the mass of the crowd still blocked me from his sight.  It was nearly identical to the speech he had given a couple of nights ago, however the reaction he received from the people of Slender Falls was very confusing.

Most of the maskless would wander away, brows furrowed in concentration.  I overheard one or two making plans to take the next westbound caravan out.  The few masked people would leave without a word.  After a couple of hours, one of the masked people who had been there at least as long as I had stumbled away, trying to pull her mask off her face.  The mask itself was a full-face, with blue eyes, cupid's bow lips, and rosy cheeks.  Someone of some minor importance; perhaps this was the kind of mask the life license clerk would wear when he had to leave his mirrored protection.

As I watched, she tore at the mask, trying to pry her fingers under it.  No one else seemed to pay her any attention.  They were all entranced by Oar Ellis.  When she could not rip the mask loose, she stumbled to the nearest tree and began smashing her face into the rough bark.

"Hey!"  I jumped to my feet and ran to her...  Or rather, tried to.  A heavy hand, pale, with fingers like spider legs, fell onto my shoulder and held me back.  I looked up...and up....and up...into the stern mask of one of the city's guardians.  One more had wrapped both spidery hands around the woman, who had cracked her mask from the force of her blows.  I could hear her panting, see her struggling against the tight hold.  The cracks distorted the expression of the mask, and blood had leaked through, turning a formerly plain mask into resigned terror weeping red tears.

"This is not your concern," the masked guardian told me in a deep voice that shook my spine.

I looked at the crowd around Oar Ellis.  Well over twenty of the tall men were scattered throughout the crowd.  The Michaelman seemed not to notice, though I could see that he avoided meeting their blank gaze. I turned back to the woman, but she and the other had disappeared.

These must be the Bone Men of which the clerk had spoken.  While I watched, they began to close in on the Michaelman.  They never seemed to move, but when I blinked, they would be closer.  And there would be more.  Until nearly the entire crowd had been replaced by Bone Men.

Strangely enough, Oar did not try to run.  He accepted the long fingers wrapping around his neck with a nod and a peaceful smile.  "I have spread His word in this terrible place and rescued the sheep that have been led astray."  Even though I was certain he didn't know I was there, it seemed as if his words were directed at me.  "I will go back to His embrace knowing that I have done all that He asked."

"No."  All of the Bone Men spoke at once, in a thundering rumble that shook my bones and weakened my muscles.  "The Tall King does not suffer trespassers lightly.  One has words for you."

Oar Ellis lost his serene smile.  His eyes widened until it seemed as though the dark irises were lost in a sea of white sclera.  "No!"  He shouted, pulling against the pale hand imprisoning him.  It did no good, as the Bone Man pulled him off his feet and began to carry him further into the garden.

The weight on my shoulder lifted.  I looked back to find that my own Bone Man had disappeared, probably to join the rest as they followed Oar further in.  I waited until the last Bone Man passed, then followed in their footsteps.

"Sen!"  Sam called out, her voice sounding so far away.  I turned around and saw Sam, standing at the end of a long corridor framed by black trees.  I stretched out my hand to her, and it seemed to reach out for forever.  I felt her fingertips touch mine, then she wrapped her hand around mine in a firm grip.

In an instant, my bodyguard was back at my side, breathing raggedly.  "Sen!  What the hell do you think you're doing?  You said you were going to stay out of trouble."  She realized then that she still had my hand in her grasp.  She glanced at it, then at the trees towering over us and opted to keep hold of it.  "Don't you have any survival instincts at all?"  She pulled me toward the way she had come, but I dug in my heels and pulled back.

"They took Oar Ellis."

Like always, Sam sneered at the Michaelman's name.  "Good riddance to him, then."

I resisted her pull once more.  "I need to know what happens."  I needed it like my next breath.  With every fiber of my being, I needed.

Sam gritted her teeth and pulled out her gun, holding it against her leg.  "Fine.  If we end up stretched like taffy, I'm going to paint "I TOLD YOU SO" on my mask."  Black leaves crunched under our feet as we headed further down the path.

After an eternity/after a moment, the path opened up into a clearing filled with Bone Men.  A space was cleared in the middle, and there knelt Oar Ellis.  And before him, stood the Tall King.

We give the New Gods names that try to define them, when really all we do is mock our own inability to comprehend them.  He is tall, as tall as the trees.  He is man-shaped, but even a child would see that he is not a man.  He forces rigorous structure on the people and cities in his domain.  Why?  Why does he do that?  Why does he seek to turn people into faceless automatons?

I am scared now.  The Tall King stands as high as the tree-tops, but his aura spreads through the clearing and beyond.  I see now that the trees are made in his image, tall and thin and black.  He has no face, but I know that he sees me.  To him, our half-masked faces must stand out like glaring beacons.  There is no hole deep enough to hide me from his attention.  He will find me.  He will always find me.

I hold Sam's hand in a white-knuckle grip as we stand at the edge of the clearing and watch Oar Ellis being put to trial.

Oct 15, 2083: The Honeytrap

It seems as though it has been an eternity since I last put pen to paper.  In my dreams I stayed home.  I took over my father's ranch, found a partner and raised children.  I can see hazy, half-formed images of their faces.  One was freckled, the other had a loud and boisterous laugh.  The years pass, and so do they.  The children drift off to form their own families, occassionally visiting with little ones of their own.  Soon the yard is full of children playing games, limited only by their robust imaginations.

The happiness is shortlived, however.  A sickness comes and soon I stand alone among a field of gravestones.

I woke up with the crusted residue of shed tears on my face.  I can still feel the weight of time on my shoulders.

When I awoke, the sun was barely above the horizon.  It is still a cold sphere that cultivates the general aura of desolation prevalent throughout the landscape.  There is a low fog hanging around the river beds.  It carries a strange near-life; out of the corner of my eye it almost pulses like a heartbeat.  The sunlight seems to drive it back to the bottomless depths.

The desolation seemed to have affected my traveling companions as well.  They packed up the camp without any words, heads bowed low and shoulders hunched.  I feared the answer before I ever asked the question.

"Where's Anthony?"

"Forget about him," Sam cautioned me, while at the same time the caravaner jerked a thumb to the house where the young man had chosen to spend the night.

"'E's in there."

I started walking toward the house and was quickly intercepted by Sam.  "You don't want to see it, kid."

The caravaner gave a harsh bark of laughter.  "Let him.  He ought to understand what the Tall Man will do to trespassers."

I stepped around Sam and she grabbed my arm.  "You don't want to see what's in there."

"No," I agreed.  "I don't.  But I think he's right. I think I need to understand.  If I don't, how will I know what to be afraid of?"

Sam let me go, worry etching deep lines in her brown.  I took a deep, fortifying breath, and started walking toward the house where Anthony slept.

Daylight gave the house a more ominous tone.  What was once warm and forgiving the night before could easily be seen as a gilded deathtrap.  A harsh, remorseless aura pressed down on me with every step.  Perhaps most unsettling about the exterior was that the porch steps did not creak under my weight.  The complete absence of sound proved more oppressing than any sighs or groans could.

The door swung open weightlessly with a single touch.  It bounced lightly against something, then swung back, coming to rest partially open.  That brief glimpse into the room beyond was enough to understand why Sam did not want me to see the aftermath.

The walls were painted in red pinstripes where bloody wires and circuits had been tossed and left to follow gravity's slow progression.  Small bits of unidentifiable tissue lay scattered here and there throughout the room, but the majority of his body had been stacked neatly by the fireplace.  The only thing that seemed to be missing was the head.

I remembered how the door had seemed to meet resistance before it should have made contact with the wall.  I feared the answer before I asked the question...

I peered around the door.  There, in the furthest corner, was a head full of sandy blonde hair.  As I watched, it rustled, then began to turn.  I stumbled away from the door, trying unsuccessfully to perform some combination of retching and shouting as the contents of my stomach finally rebelled against the gory sights.  Sam's eyes grew wide as I fell to my knees beside her, and she pulled her gun from her holster.  The gunshots made my ears ring, drowning out the sound of my vomiting.

I heaved until there was nothing more left to give and my vision was turning gray from the effort.  When I finally looked up, it was straight into the caravaner's smug gaze.

"And good riddance, I say.  Anyone who gives in to these monsters is nothing better than trash."  He pulled a small green can out of his shirt pocket, only to have it plucked out of his grasp by Sam.  Without a word, she turned and hurled it into the distance.  The caravaner, initially stunned by her brazen move, was goaded into action a the soft 'plonk' indicated his precious tobacco had landed in a bottomless stream.  He snarled at Sam, who met his eyes with a cold stare.  Whatever he found there evidently wasn't worth the fight.

The caravaner spit, a thick glob of tar landing directly on Sam's boot.  "Unload your stuff.  You're walking."

Oct 14th, 2083: The Empty House

We ruined the first couple of hides, of course.  Then Anthony managed to connect to the mainframe long enough to download a video.  He talked us through the last couple of hides, and come the next couple of days we should have enough to make a purse or something.  Excuse me, a satchel.  I know Sam well enough to know that she will scoff at anything so frivolous as a purse.  Practicality, that is the word Sam lives by.  Hm...  Maybe I would be better served to use the fur to line our boots.  Though we are out of Jack Frost's territory, the chill can still be deadly to those who don't take proper precautions. 

We are following the Missouri down to the next major town, Sioux City.  In this land, the Tall Man is king.  The borders of his land are clearly delineated.  At first, the stagevan traveled easily over the remnants of the cracked asphalt highways.  Then it stuttered and started to drag.  Underneath the stagevan's wheels, the asphalt had become covered in a black grass.  The sun seemed dimmer, a cold white orb in the sky. 

We stopped for water and the driver insisted that we tie ourselves to the van before refreshing our thirst.  I refilled my canteen and saw that while the water was clear and cold, the river had no bottom.  I dropped a blade of grass in the water, and rather than floating along on the current, it slowly drifted downward into the abyss.

As we traveled, we saw areas of forest and grassland that were taken over by black vegetation.  I watched a deer, startled by our approach, run into one of the patches, then disappear from my sight.  No trees for it to hide behind, only grass that immediately stilled as if it had never been there at all.

The entire day I felt as if sandpaper were being rubbed on all my nerves.  It seemed the entire party felt the same way, everyone was irritable and short-tempered.

We stopped for camp at dusk in an abandoned town.  All the buildings but one were crumbling, victims to the ravages of nature and time.  The sole exception was a lone house right at the edge of town.  While not as pristine as it might have been before the Sickness, it was the only one that seemed to have four sturdy walls and an intact roof.

It didn't take a genius to sense that something was wrong about that house.  I did not argue when the driver told us to set up camp in a building with no roof.  Anthony, however, took exception. 

"Why not that one?"  He argued, while I lit the fire.  Sam rolled her eyes and shook her head, then slipped out to hunt for our dinner. 

The stagevan driver tucked a wad of some black stuff in his lip. "It's a trap, kid.  Plain as day."  As he spoke, a flash of lightening ripped across the sky.  Oar and I worked together to brace a tarp over the fire so the approaching rain wouldn't extinguish it.  The heat from it was outstanding, it seemed to singe my flesh while I was still several feet away.  I had no doubt the small fire would be adequate to heat our roofless room.

Anthony and the driver exchanged more heated words, then the boy stormed off as large drops of rain began to patter.  His bedroll thrown over his shoulder, he disappeared through the door of the one intact house.

Our stagedriver spit a wad of noxious black liquid into the dark.  "Stupid."

I volunteered for first watch and during the darkening twilight hours my eyes stayed on the house where Anthony slept.  He had not yet appeared by the time I woke Oar for his shift.  I hope that no harm befalls him during the rest of night.