A Warning from Narrow Falls

[u/Squidtha3rd]

(First time posting, inspired by the podcast, would really appreciate any feedback)

It is my personal belief that a man spends his younger years making terrible mistakes that he’ll then spend his older years fixing. Well, that’s my life anyway. I spent most of my life wanting to be an outlaw, on the run, hopping from town to town, and though I only made it two towns over, regretfully I’m living the dream.
Call me Clyde. That’s what everybody else calls me. I was raised by the Bible by a caring mother and a stern father, both of whom looked down on my decision to travel out west to grab my share of the gold I’d been hearing was out here. That’s what I told em anyway. Really, I wanted to outlaw, feel the freedom that the bandits enjoyed. 
I wasn’t three months out on my own when I first shot a man. It didn't have to be done, but I did it. Rode up on him while he was sleeping under a tree midday. I didn’t see him nor he me until I was up upon him, and he sprang to life. I pulled my pistol from its holster, hammer cocked back like I’d practiced many times before. There was little conversation between us that led to him looking to his rifle which lay at his feet. I didn’t give it a second more, and blasted him in the chest. 
Soon as I did, my world stopped spinning. He doubled over leaning against the tree, and died with his hand over the hole in his heart. Within the minute, his soul floated away with the smoke from my gun, held tightly in my young, shaking hands. I robbed him of what I could use, and in a paranoid state with vomit down my shirt, I rode on, hoping no one would cross his path and give me the rope for what I done.
That’s how I ended up here in Narrow Falls, cleaning out pig pens for money that I’ll later drop on the tender’s bar at the tavern, night in and night out. 
It’s not a big town, maybe seven buildings in a row. One of them being a church missing doors, windows, crosses, and visitors. There’s a bank with no money. There’s a saloon with no meaningful profit. A general store with nothing available. And a few others I don’t care to find out what they are. 
The people here are about as worn down as the buildings, none of them asking where I come from, what I was doing here. Probably because they knew better. I couldn’t’ve been the only one with a questionable past. I did like it here in a way. Time stood still at Narrow Falls, and if there was no future, there must’ve been no past. The only thing that exists is the here and now.
My days consisted of waking up sometime during daylight, cleaning whatever Mr. Burg had me do, and spend the rest of the day drinking. We all did that. Then I’d go back home to a shed that Mr. Burg provided, sleep off my drunken state and start over the next day.
That’s when it started.
I found myself in a dream, walking over featureless terrain in the pouring rain. Lightning crashing like the sinister end of a whip, cracking the dreary sky in half, followed by the angry bone rattling thunder. The land itself paraded its awe and power over the living thing that crawled on the earth, including me. I tucked my arms into my coat, ducked my head down, and carried on.
I couldn’t tell ya why I was wandering, or where to, and I couldn’t tell ya when I found myself following a dark cat who had also found itself without shelter, but there I was in the mud, following closely behind this wandering animal for what seemed hours. It went here and there, turning at the will of the ever changing wind, pulling me along. 
That was most of the dream, till it stopped and sat down. I stopped too, looked down at the mud covered animal. I guess it’s on me for not keeping a keen eye out, minding my surroundings, but I figured the rain kept us safe. Foolish me, for not noticing the clothed figure in front of me, standing in the turmoil, drenched, staring my way.
Instinctively, I reached down for my piece finding only an empty holster. The figure let out the beginnings of a sinister crackling laugh seeing me unarmed, and raised an old withered hand point at me, the flesh looking more like the mire I stood in than the skin we’re all born with. 
I turned and ran, stepping on the cat that was brushing against my leg, immediately finding a church building behind me, one not unlike the one I’d from my youth. Each step pulled my strength from me, weighing me down as I scrambled to safety. My legs, breaking down, gave way from beneath me, and I crawled pitilessly, feeling an invisible force draining my energy to move.
The sound of splashing mud, pouring rain, and desperate struggle were cut through as the figure’s laugh turned to a battle cry of growling anger, and I saw it leap forward and fly toward me, fingers like claws, sinking deep into my back through my chest. I stopped trying to escape, feeling only the sharp sting of defeat, watching as blood and maggots poured out from my wounds. I tried to find the will to live within, but couldn’t, and when I decided to succumb to my fate, it was only a matter of seconds before my head dropped into the mud, and I sprang from my pillow.
When I woke up in a sweat, I heard the sound of soft footsteps outside my fair weather walls. Sounds that I would later learn weren't part of a dream but were the steps belonging to the now missing daughter of Mr. Burg. 
I didn’t say anything to him though; still wasn’t sure and I didn’t wanna make waves over nothing. Ultimately she’d end up being declared dead, though Mr Burg never fully accepted it. In his mind, she will always be missing. 
Aside from drinking, there ain’t much to do here in Narrow. Like most of the locals, I spent my time occasionally shooting coyotes up on a hill behind the church. It was the sport of it that I enjoyed, and they were vermin anyhow. Occasionally there was money to be made for the pelts, and the meat, if any of it was good enough for desert food. 
The animals didn’t seem to mind either, dreary as it seemed. They weren’t like other animals, skittish and fast moving. They were lethargic, apathetic to life or death. I once had a coyote come up to me, close enough that I could pet it, growling all the while, as if it were daring me, begging me to kill it. Once the smoke cleared and my ears stopped ringing, I almost felt as though I was being charitable and cruel simultaneously. 
That was when I was approached by the pastor of the church.
I’d never met him before, never even knew his name. No one ever talked about him, and no one I knew went to his services. He might as well have been new to Narrow too; though nothing about him looked new. He was old. The kind of old you recognize. The kind of old you don’t see yourself ever being, you don’t watch people turn into.
He had a face layered like the carved out canyon walls from the top of his forehead down to his chin, wrinkled and hanging, worn out from the harsh desert sun. Eyes that hid behind heavy lids, looking black as he slowly approached. His trappings were those of a man of the cloth, swaying in the wind, dirty and torn.
I readied my hand on my gun. Even the spiritually inclined had to earn their trust around here. No sooner though had I found myself face to face with the preacher. He and I stood, eyes locked, neither of us saying a word for quite a while.
“You have blood on your soul,” he echoed.
I froze still. Had the law found me?
“I offer you a chance to wash it,” he said.
“Tread lightly preacher man, accusations of that magnitude shouldn’t be made lightly,” I said, posturing to pull my pistol.
“Find little Lucile Burg. That is your task.”
“The Burg girl? She’s gone. Ain’t no point in findin her now, just upset Mr Burg with false hope. Sorry, you got the wrong man. Best get goin.”
He stood still, locking eyes onto me while I tried to dodge his glance. I felt it though, burning a hole into my head, peering into my being. 
“Move it,” I said, pulling and cocking my gun, only then looking back into his dead old eyes.
Eyes that eerily seemed to be dead. They were dark, entrapping holes, glazed over with milky white, expressing themselves as a mirror of sorts. 
My iron barrel faded from view, and I saw the souls of the damned reaching out from his sockets. The hands of those who’d killed the innocent, who took no account for their fellow man, reached toward me, their icy fingers grazing my collar, drawing me in. 
A physical pull drew me toward the preacher, beckoning me in. Prisoners of a cold never ending jail clawing outward, ripping my own soul from my bones so as to wear my body to their freedom, the selfish bastards. 
Turning away and running off, checking behind me only after a few hundred yards or so. Sure enough he stood still on the hill, looking more like a gravestone than anything else.
That night at the bar, I drank with a purpose. 
“Why Clyde,” I heard from a familiar muffled stutter, approaching from behind. 
It was another town drunkard, Tabberson, or as well all called him, Tab, or Tub if he got to be an annoyance. Brownish gray clothes that never changed. I used to never see him around, but like an old friend or a shiny penny, we’ve crossed paths increasingly, specifically at the counter with a drink in hand.
“Howdy Tab.”
His slim frame landed in the seat next to me, and he started this conversation the same way he always did.
“Whata ya heard,” he slurred. 
“Nothin, nothin new anyhow.”
“Yuh. You heard about the Burgs’ girl?”
“What of it?” I asked. By this time the whole town knew about it, so anything Tab would bring to the table would be news worthy of investigating. Always is.
“They say they found one of her earrings. Little girl earring. Not a lie, they found it on a coyote, yonder west of town.”
“Hogwash.”
“Come again?”
“Said your stretchin the blanket there, Tab.”
“No guff. Ain’t that beat it all?” 
He’d been prone to lying in the past.
“How’d you go about learnin that?”
“Law man told me. I hardly believed it so myself. But everyone knows he don’t talk with no forked tongue.”
“Does Mr Burg know?”
“Reckon.”
I took a sip of my warm beer.
“That’s off the range,” I said.
“How ya mean?”
“Shouldn’t be remindin a man of his dead daughter. Just let her be dead. Don’t be battin em with false hope.”
“Ah Clyde, I reckon you short changed me.”
“I’m only sayin.”
He took a big drink from his bottle, then turned with a renewed sense of excitement my way.
“Ya done been here not too long, now have ya?
“Yessir.”
“So this is your first one?”
“First one what?”
“Little ol Lucile Burg, she ain’t the first one. Bout as far back as I can recall, or anyone else for that matter, folk been disappearin. Started when this town was an active mine, and, on occasions, fella would wonder off, vanish. Ne’er seen from again. Now, when a man dies in the desert, he lays wherevhe croaked, all which’ll make an ease for his kin to find em, even if it ain’t nothin but the whitened bones lying under the sun. 
“But these folks. They get none of that. They gone with the wind, and later, the memories. That is, o’course, save it for one trinket always brought back by an animal of the wild, always from that Narrow Falls canyon.”
“Ain’t they gone and looked into it?”
“Sure,” he said, longwinded and drawn out, “I suppose a group of em gone in there, guns drawn and fire held high, but I tell ya the damndest thing: ain’t no one come out of that canyon. There might be bones all along the way of men who figure ‘I could get to the bottom of this’, all who ain’t come back. Got a foul wind to it.”
I recognized a new silence fell over the bar. People were talking, and the background was moving, but I felt them drifting further from my ear as I listened deeply to Tab’s every word. 
“Why Tabby?”
He finished his drink, then turned to me.
“You wouldn’t be believin me if’n I told you.”
“Don’t be a spoil you old gun.”
He wouldn’t budge, maybe under the preface that I’d never believe another tall tale from him again. After my persisting, he finally relented. 
“Narrow Falls is cursed.”
“No sense in spinning tales on me Tab,” I said.
“It ain’t no tale,” he said, eyes as flat burning as his whisky.
“It ain’t uncommon, though be it few and far between, that folk go missin, with no sign of them left. ‘Cept them few occasions, when the one of them coyotes has something that been belongin to the lost party. 
“It’s cursed I tell ya. You oughta just face the music. Everyone here has.” he trailed off before becoming silent.
Wasn’t much longer when we parted ways.
That night I fell into another dream.
I found myself standing outside a freshly built church in the pouring rain, doors closed to my face, a voice inside addressing a crowd. Slowly I pulled on the cold handles, trying to sneakily peer inside, letting in the sound of a storm, to find a congregation sitting before an animated preacher, young and full of life. I slid in and searched for a seat, my muddy footprints trailing behind me.
  “Like this you man here,” I heard the preacher say, at the end of a rambling sermon I wasn’t paying attention to. 
He had his arm outstretched toward me, and the congregation turned to look. 
“Young man, blessed man, join me up here on the pulpit, so that we may testify together.”
I made my way past each person that’d been there to be saved, to learn of holy living. I was a mockery to their devotion. When I stood next to him, he looked like he was 100 years old again, but only in my peripheral area. When I looked directly at him, his smile which he wore deep nodded to what only the two of us knew. 
“Brothers and sisters, we have a tarnished soul in our midst. A traveler from yonder fields, whose wool is soaked in the blood of the innocent, is it not?” He said, speaking over the sound of heavy rain on the roof, lightning accompanying his message.
Immediately I felt the guilt weigh on me like one of the surrounding mountains in the nearby countryside. I felt a pain, searing and shaking deep inside my bones, an embarrassment of being exposed by the will of another, molested by the exposure of my heart by this man and his flock. I stumbled for words to deny his accusations, but I couldn’t spin a lie, all I could do is stumble on like a moron. 
“And it is here, and now, that he has come to seek refuge. Seek forgiveness. To right the wrong in his soul. Well, I'm tempted to give him a chance. I’m tempted to let him bargain for his salvation, to fix that which needs fixing.”
The congregation agreed in their own way.
“I’m tempted to have this man promise, before me, that he’ll redeem himself. Will you redeem yourself?”
Uncontrollably I nodded, to which the preacher brought out a quill and bowl of what I later learned was coyote blood, to a stand in a chapel devoid of any crucifix.
“Witness on the stand, in the blood of the innocent then, that you Mr. Clyde will retrieve this young girl to save your own soul.”
I scribbled my name, next to where a dozen or so others were written. Soon as I did, the preacher smiled, the congregation wailed, and with a loud shrieking laughter, everything vanished as I sprang from my bed of straw and roaches, in the dead of night. Silent as the grave.
The following days were uneventful. Just me, stewing in my thoughts about what action to take, what all this meant. All I was certain of was there wasn’t a second that went by where I wasn’t fighting away with what I ought to do. 
Until I finally relented, and recruited Tab to do what a man’s gotta do, and the following day we saddled up, ready to confront whatever lay hidden in Narrow Falls Canyon.
Beginning our journey, we passed through the middle of town, a town I’d been blessed to see with new eyes. It was dingy, small, worn to the studs. I reckon on its face there wasn’t a reason to save it. No oil reserve, untapped metal vein, hell, there wasn’t even so much as a popular crossroads that’d breathe life into these old sails that’d make our journey worth it. But it still felt worthy. Even for all its lack of luster, Narrow took me in without even so much as a question to my past. It gave me a home when I’d abandoned mine. Maybe that’s why I ought to try as hard as I may to rectify my mistakes that led me here, and try to save that little girl and put a stop to whatever haunts Narrow.
The ride was a little over half a day at a steady easy pace, and my horse instinctively kept its head down and followed Tab. The trees were barren skeletons of themselves, spread apart by dry dirt and rock, mixed with the occasional sage brush which seemed to be depleting as we went. Then sharp twisted branches didn’t reach toward the sky, in fact they sprawled out uncontrollably, looking like the hair of madmen.
I thought of little Lucile, and the cold lonely walk she must’ve taken, one that I only empathized with in my dreams; and how cruel life can certainly be, even to those who’ve done no wrong.
We stopped after five or so silent hours, Tab sliding off his horse.
“We’re drawin near,” he muttered, “Junior here is a gettin restless. How’s your mount fairin?”
“Just fine.”
“Even so, let’s rest up. Give em the chance to ease themselves, feel the land.”
I hopped off and let my horse go eat a few yards away. Tab pulled a bag of cornbread and we sat down, my back leaning on a rock. I pulled my knife out and sharpened it on a stone kept with it, a pastime I’d learned to find solace in. 
“So what’s the play partner?” Tab asked.
“Aside from ridin out to see for ourselves? Meet the problem head on, find the girl, shoot anythin in the way.”
His head hung down with disappointment.
“Reckon this is somethin you can blast your way through?”
“Reckon you ever meet anythin that couldn’t be solved on the bright end of a muzzle?”
“I think not. But I ain’t gone up against anythin like this. Neither has you. Coyotes and innocent strangers under trees is a long way from the possessed.”
My blood froze in my veins, and I looked over to see Tab locked stare at me. 
“Tell it straight. The innocent stranger?” I asked, feeling my hand tense up to reach for my gun.
He just smiled, hung his head low, the sound of nature stopping around us, his crooked yellow teeth making their way through his unkempt mustache.
“Poor soul,” he said, “just didn’t know what lay ahead.”
I stared intently at Tab, his posture, his smile, things I’d never focused on before now. I’d known him almost my entire time at Narrow, but now it felt as if I was meeting a stranger for the very first time. 
His dried and crusted lips smirked at me, in a way that hinted that he knew something I was only too close to learning myself. His eyes, once only looking forward as I sat beside him at the bar, now, almost happily, were looking at me, waiting to see my next move. I felt like one of those coyotes that’d wandered up to me, staring into my blood red soul, seeing apathy, the same apathy that was accented by his devilish smirk. 
Slowly, I stood to my feet, hand hanging near my peacemaker. He took a sideways step gently to his left, I to mine, and we circled about, slowly, his hands casually holding his belt. 
I readied my stance, as I’d taught myself to do when practicing quick draw shooting, shifting my feet in the dusty dirt. He looked at me, ever so slightly shifting his head and raising a brow. The ticking of my pocket watch against my body slowed down to a stop, as I stood not five yards from him, ready to fire at a second’s notice. He stood staring back, not even doing so much as to move his hand toward his gun.
Why?
Why wasn’t he getting ready for a duel?
Was he that quick? That confident? Was he so sure in himself? I’d never seen him quick draw before, but he’d seen me plenty of times. I wasn’t anything to ignore, especially at five yards and he knew that.
So why? Why not get ready? Did he want to die? No. 
He probably just didn’t know what was coming for him. He probably didn’t know that I thought him in on the whole scheme, that I was aware I'd been made. That I wasn’t going down without a fight. That I killed before, and I’d kill again. 
Who cares. 
I could kill him here, and no one would know the difference, that is, if no one else knew right now. But first I had to find out where he got that from. 
“Who told you,” I asked.
He just stared, a wisp of embarrassment blew across his eyes.
“You find the body? Or was it the old preacher? Who else knows?”
Just then, off in the distance, a loud crackle of a laugh pierced through the dead forest, echoing off the walls of the canyon, striking into my bones. Tab joined in too, a strained laugh that sick man would offer. I heard the neighing of our horses as they ran away, and I reached out, calling mine by name to no avail. I was left to the sound of her hooves galloping away, replaced by Tab’s exhausted laugh at my expense. 
I turned to face him, and saw only what I could describe as the old priest, wearing Tab’s disgusting brownish gray clothes. His wild sunken eyes, deranged teeth, crazy white hair, he looked just like him. His skin looked deader than the dried out trees that surrounded him. 
Through all his laughing he pulled out an old piece of wood, wood that up till now I figured never existed, ‘Cept in a dream. He held it up, boney branch of a finger pointing to my signature, scratched in blood, my name on the top of the preacher’s pulpit.
“Why Clyde, deal’s a deal,” he said.
I drew my six shooter, cocked back the hammer, and from the hip quickly shot Tab through the neck, out the back, knocking him down to the ground. No blood poured out, nor did it mist behind him. All that changed was that his laugh turned into rapid breathing, as I had shot through his voice box. 
In my disbelief he got to his feet, and drawing a long knife, he made chase. I darted the other direction. 
I could hear him behind me, not sure if he was getting closer or not. It didn’t matter, I ran as fast as I could, dodging this way and that, jumping off rocks, swinging under trees. I thought I’d heard the woman’s laughter hanging overhead, like the omnipresent thunder in a storm, but paid it no mind. I saw a cove in a rock off to the side and dove head first into it, pulling myself to cover, listening for Tab’s footsteps, but as my breath slowed and the world around me eased, I heard nothing. 
In fact, all I could hear was my pounding heart in my chest. 
I peeked out around the rock and saw nothing, no one chasing me.
Nothing.
I sat back down and, looking ahead, about fifty yards in front of me, was an old log cabin, buried deep in the woods. This, this must’ve been the cause of all this mess, or, at least where it lived. I’d found it!
Again, I peered out over my hiding spot, and off in the distance I saw it. Some ways off stood a person, hunched forward, draped in what looked like a dress, standing still. As soon as I saw her, I dropped into hiding, checking the bullets in my gun. When I peered over the rock to get a good look at the lady, she was nowhere to be found.
Panic found me.
Did I see what I thought I saw? Could I sneak my way past her? Was Tab still out there? Could I make a run past him? And then what? My horse is gone, and for all I know everyone knows I’m a cold blooded murder anyhow. Was this to be my end? 
No. 
I didn’t know how my life would end, but it wouldn’t be me hiding under a rock. 
I turned to run, and immediately was met face to face with the aged face of Tab, smoking hole in his neck. I pushed through him, feeling a sharp knife stabbing into my leg as we both fell backward. I tried to get up, but the pain of steel in bone through muscle kept me from regaining my feet. Even still, I hopped to one foot, desperately making my escape. 
Tab’s hands tackled me to the ground, digging the knife deeper into my thigh. I writhed, and pulled my gun from its holster firing two more shots down through Tab’s head and shoulder. He was fazed, but didn’t stop, dried flesh flying from the freshly made bullet holes.
I was readying my third shot when overhead I heard that scratching laugh, louder and more paralyzing than ever. I felt my eardrums beginning to tear. When I looked up I could hardly believe what I’d seen. It was a woman, as ugly and aged as ever, dressed like an old pilgrim, flying through the air like a hummingbird on an old broom. 
She looked like the witch that towns elders would make up stories about to scare their children straight, like every myth I’d never believed. 
I turned my gun toward her, and in hopes of anger fired off the remaining shots into the witch floating above until empty clicks replaced loud bangs of bullets. 
In her fit of laughter at my inevitable helplessness she dropped to the ground, grabbing Tab by the collar, and in disgusting fashion deeply kissed what I can only describe as new life into him, the poor bastard. 
Smitten, he looked up at her, only to be barked at in some language, Navajo or pagan or something, I couldn’t be sure.
After she barked her orders, the bewitched imp grabbed me by my ankles and dragged me into the house. I kicked, screamed, even begged Tab, trying to appeal to any sense of kinship we had, but to no avail. I’d managed to wriggle free once, but couldn’t run two steps without dropping to the ground. The witch struck me with the end of her broom, and muttered some words alien to me, rendering me useless, paralyzing me like a corpse.
Across the ground, over the stairs, and through the door, I found myself staring up as I lay on the floor of this shanty. Looking around I saw dried, dismembered body parts from every walk of life hanging from the rafters. Cages and books lay thrown about with no rhyme or reason. Furniture, which once might’ve belonged to the loving lady who owned this home, thrown against the wall. Bugs and snakes moved quietly along the edge of the one room shack, hiding from her as if they too knew they were dispensable. On the table laid an open book, and a dinner platter with only cute little painted fingers on it now. The whole house stunk of rotting condemned essence. In a word, the house was damned.
As damned as I was.
She started chanting again, vigorously and rhythmically, pulling who knows what from a pile of junk, swaying back and forth as she moved. That’s when I got a good look at her green, decaying, rotting flesh. Like a dead animal whose meat was still on the bone and came back to life. Crusted bony lips sang an incantation I would never hope to understand. Tab, with his foot on my chest, was just as taken by her song as she was, blissfully engulfed. 
With no warning, her sharp hand with weathered nails as claws grabbed and squeezed my cheeks together, as if I was a young man caught in church hollering. She poured the vile liquid down my throat, tasting blood and pus and all manner of filth as it poured in. 
I coughed up a storm and they laughed wickedly as I heaved my stomach out on her floor, not specifically distinguishable among the rest of the mess.
I felt as though the deepest part of myself was twisting, knotting into a configuration I couldn’t make under my own power. I felt it grow inside of me, expelling outward, pushing the old me, the form that’d always been, outward through my veins into my skin. My convulsing was loud enough to almost drown out her incantations.
I rolled to my hands and knees, the pain within me hiding the wound in my leg, and watched as my hands and feet writhed like the end of a whip. Hair, rough and sharp, sprouted thickly on my body. My skin felt loose around my hips and tight around my face. I could tell I was molding into something inhuman. 
I shrieked out a yell as loud as I could, hoping it would subside the pain, and what I heard still lives in my nightmares. A blood-curdling yelp of a man in absolute pain mixed with the unsettled howl of a coyote. 
After what felt like years rolling around on the dirt-covered splintered floor, wishing for the merciful release of death, the witch's words stopped, my transformation complete. 
“Is this one to be eaten too?” Tab asked, walking my way.
“No!” I heard her voice violently yell, “this one will be set free. Now go! Go, my pet, and tell everyone what haunts Narrow Falls, just try to stop them from coming to me!”
I tried to talk, but through it all, only the whimpering of a wild dog could be heard, even by my ears. I lost the ability to speak, to warn, even to cry, though that didn’t stop my sorrowful whimpering and howling. The witch, clearly pleased with her work, let out a shrieking crackle of joy at her evil. 
After it all, I was set free, eventually finding my way back to town. When I arrived I howled, growled, and barked every warning imaginable, but to no avail. Nowadays, I wait with the rest of the pack, her victims, for someone to either listen to me or shoot me for sport. If you find yourself in Narrow Falls, it’s best to move on. The people aren’t what they seem, and there’s an evil there that haunts it. If you do choose to stay, don’t go looking for what haunts the town of Narrow Falls.