Long Roads Rarely Lead

It may have stretched on forever. The old dirt road ran on the south edges of Mason’s property line, dipped into the forests out west and kept going. He was never quite sure how far it went, and no one else knew either. They heard of the road, sure, but never explored it, never really rode on it to see if it would—some many, many miles past Mason’s farm lands—turn and merge with Highway C or if just kept on going into other counties and states, right into the mountains and then the Pacific and pop up over in China.
An anomaly. That’s the word for it. Mr. Tergermyer had called it that once when Mason had been shopping at the Piggly Wiggly and bumped into him. An anomaly. No one could say why it had been smoothed out in the first place, what lands it tried to connect, or why no one ever used it. Wouldn’t be the fastest way to travel, but it’d beat most of the farms’ drive-ups, which were just ruts and sometimes almost impossible to travel on when long days of rain morphed the lands into bogs, the ruts into mires that sucked at wheels and made spinning them part of the problem.
Where the cows grazed on one of the southern pastures, Mason leaned up against a fence post and stared out past the field, to the lines of trees surrounding the road that led nowhere, that came from nowhere, that did much of nothing. And how no one around these parts could remember it being built—some of the families being here for a couple hundred years—how the trees surrounding it seemed older than time, gnarled and turned in on themselves, knots like moles and limbs heavy as a boulder, how the dirt was so smoothed after no use, no maintenance, no care at all, well, it all bothered him.
Maybe not so much bothered as bugged. Nothing more than a fly buzzing around, but that didn’t mean Mason wouldn’t like to swat the damned thing. He chewed on his gum and slowly shook his head. The last heat of the day stuck to him like cellophane, and the more he tried to release his t-shirt from his skin and find some relief, the tighter it clung.
When he retired, he supposed, he’d have the time to explore. And that wasn’t so far down the road. With Luke and Lils off in college now, how much longer would it be until he could hire a little extra help and take it easy most days? There’d be work for him to do, sure, and he never could see himself being the true retired type and just slopping around like a pig looking for feed, but there’d be less work, more time for the other things.
One night, not long after Lils and Luke had gone to college and left the house, leaving it an old bucket that could never be filled to the brim again, he’d talked with Jackie about what they’d do. A cruise in a few years, she’d said. One of those Caribbean ones. Mason never really liked boats. Traveling was fine, but leave the boats for the fisherman. She’d been persistent about it, and when Jackie wanted something, it was bound to happen. He smiled and shook his head. He’d seen stubborn colts break more easily than her.
He pushed off the fence and pulled off his baseball cap, scratching at the short cropped, graying hair. Hat in hand, poised to land, he paused. Off by the trees on that dirt road, a shape moved through the bushes. He eased his hat back down. A deer? Or was Chancy out there fooling around and smelling every tree she could? Mason went around the fencing, worked alongside the cows where they grazed, the dipping afternoon sun casting longer shadows.
Something had moved. He was sure of it.
The long grasses sliced along his jeans, slow swishes that followed behind. Grasshoppers sprung ahead of him. It was almost quiet enough to hear a squirrel chattering somewhere off in the trees, and that threw Mason off, leading him to pause and turn to look at the cows. They grazed, but the usual noises, their huffs and moos and feet clomping all over had stilled, a quilt tossed over the field and muffling the noise. 
Movement again. Mason whipped his head around. That road. All his years on this farm, his father’s farm, who’d bought the place way back in the sixties to get away from the city, and he hadn’t seen as much as a deer walking down that road. Not a kid on a bike or someone on an ATV.  And Mason hadn’t really given it much thought. Deer didn’t want to be too much out in the open most times of the day, so they probably used it in the night. And there were better paths for biking and off-roading. Near Greenstone Lake were the best.
At the edge of the field where the old tree branches swept aside the grasses, didn’t let them into their domain, he held a hand up to his eye and shaded out the sun. One hand hung around his belt, clipped in there. His back bent, head poked forward, looking into the brush so close yet too thick to see through. Sweat clung to his eyebrows and his breaths began to patter in and out, darting around and unable to make up their minds about what to do. His free hand rested against his chest, and he couldn’t say why, if it was to feel his heart as it pulsed and make sure it wouldn’t kill itself over a whole lot of nothing. Or if it was the start of a prayer coming.
The grasses behind swished, and he couldn’t turn in time.
Chancy jumped, front paws landing on his waist, and wagged her tail. 
“Chancy! You bad girl. Where you been off to?”
She jumped down and circled him before running, following the fences and staring at the cattle. Border Collies never tired. That girl could be out in the fields all day chasing down the cattle and still want a night shift. 
He glanced back at the road, so close now he could make out the packed dirt. Odd thing. No weeds or grass growing on it. Almost impossible unless someone was out here spraying. He rubbed at the back of his head and walked away. Wouldn’t put it past the county to waste what little funds they had on something that dumb.

***

After the cows had been led back to the barn for the night, Chancy’s favorite part of the day—save for getting the cows out into the field—Mason grabbed a beer and went to the front porch to sit on his mother’s rocker, his favorite part of the day.
The apples and oaks crowded their front lawn and joined with the trees lining the drive-up. It was a long drive-up from the highway, too, a good couple miles through trees and the occasional outburst of field, sometimes plowed and planted, sometimes not. The evening light played on their lawns, browning from the lack of rain recently, but still green enough. He turned to his right, to the other chair Jackie would usually be in. Her hands would be holding a book, something new. That woman could devour a library if given the chance. He smiled and shook his head. 
Chancy curled up at his feet, just far enough that the legs of the chair wouldn’t catch her tail, close enough that each rock would graze her fur. 
“Only a couple more nights of just you and me, girl,” Mason said. He sipped on his beer, could nurse just the one well into the evening. “You miss your mama?”
Chancy glanced up, ears floppy and to the sides and tongue spitting out the front. Her tail went up and slapped down on the wood.
“Course you do. And I thought it was lonely when the kids went off to college.”
Twins had been a joy, Jackie had said, but it was always more a burden for Mason. Two crying things in the middle of the night. Two diapers to clean. Two brats crying and screaming. But as the years went by, it became less a burden, more the joy Jackie had always preached it would be. She sure had foresight. He, though, could barely make out what to do the next day.
Chancy lifted her head. Fur edged up on her back. She stood and tensed and slowly backed up next to Mason. Easing a hand on her back, he tried to follow where her eyes went. And in the dying lights and growing dark, it was hard to peel apart the shadows from the real. He thought he could hear a sound like clomping, like one of the cows had gotten out. That sound only lingered for a second, there and gone so fast he couldn’t be sure.
But something was coming down the drive.
Mason eased out of his chair, the rocker gliding forward and threatening to slip him off it. He couldn’t remember a time someone had walked down their drive. Come with a car, ‘course, that was expected, though rare all the same. But who’d be out here walking? And at this time of night? Did he come off that road no one ever used, maybe some tourist thinking it was some hiking trail and getting himself lost?
With some effort to fight off the pains of a long day, Mason stood and moved to the stairs. Chancy stayed behind, quiet. That dog was rarely quiet. She’d bark at butterflies and birds. He glanced down once more at her—a ridge of fur tensed along her back as if someone had creamed it up with gel.
“Now easy girl,” Mason whispered. “Probably someone just got lost.”
The shadows and fading light played together. A branch limb looked like a giant rising from the depths, a bush like a bale of hay. The person seemed to swim in the shadows, moving from one to the next with such ease as though he belonged there. Mason rubbed the back of his hand and shooed away the silly thoughts. Any other time of day, and he’d barely blink.
Where the trees pulled away from the drive and it turned off into the open lawns around the home, the figure stopped. Mason grabbed onto one of the porch’s supports and tried to see the guy. Hard to tell, still, but he thought maybe the man had a bag slung around a shoulder. A duffel bag or bigger backpack. So a hiker, maybe, getting lost.
“Evening,” Mason called out. “Are ya lost? Need some help finding your way?”
Hard to tell what the guy was doing. Mason thought he was shuffling around, trying to pull out something, but that could’ve been the branches’ shadows shifting in the wind. He was about to take a step down the porch when he thought the better of it, remembering the stories from those investigative shows. If Jackie were here, she would’ve slipped inside and had his rifle at the ready, just in case. He hated the stereotype, the farmer, the redneck idiot, with his gun. Shoot at anything that moved. Outside of hunting, he’d used his gun all of twice. Once for a coyote that kept on bothering the cows and another for a rabid dog that came out of the woods. It was only the rabid dog he’d killed, too, and just out of mercy. 
Now, he wouldn’t mind the stereotype.
“Hello?” Mason called out again.
The man didn’t move. Mason wondered if he even heard, but how a man a few hundred yards away couldn’t hear another soul yelling over crickets was beyond him. Mason glanced to his right, then back around to his left, never really letting his eyes fall off the man. Rotten eggs. The smell was weak, but it was there, passing in an instant before the breaths of warm air returned with the night’s stickiness.
Mason had half a mind of calling the sheriff when the man said in low, breaking sounds, “I come from the road.”
When the man took a step forward, it was not a boot, not a sneaker worn and torn, not even a sandal with dirtied toes.
A hoof. Brown fur covering a thin leg, thick and matted. A goat’s, no doubt.
Mason’s breath caught in his throat, and his body flushed in cold chills. God have mercy. God.
It took another step. The rotten eggs returned, the smell thick like a swamp gas fogging the land. And the winds no longer carried the crickets’ sounds. A dry rattling. A breath escaping from a dying man’s lips. And a distant hush of words in a language that was no language, nothing of this world.
Mason stumbled back, almost catching on the porch step. Chancy rushed back for the door and pawed at it while Mason turned and ran.
The thing was coming.
Hooves clapped into the dry grass. A crunch like dead leaves stepped on. Laughter, distant, echoing, deep and wicked, whispered about him, gnats buzzing and filling the air.
Mason fiddled with the front door. His hands were too slippery. He’d lost the ability to work his fingers. All these years, they’d never failed, but now, they were dead and numb. His body shook, Chancy shoved between his legs and growled. His vision filtered in and out; this was all a passing dream that slipped away when he blinked hard enough, yet it never really passed away. It came back. Nightmares of him still trying to open the front door, still trying to twist that old knob in the right way. He couldn’t even say if he was breathing anymore—his heart beat so fast it was impossible to say where one beat started and another ended. It was all the same now. The drum of fear.
The clomp of a hoof hit wood. The first porch step.
Mason grunted and finally grasped the knob, turning it until it clicked and falling into the house with Chancy woven around his legs. He could feel that thing behind him. Close behind. A hair’s length. Something reaching. That smell stronger than fresh mounds of manure left in the sun.
Spinning around, Mason slammed the door shut, seeing a red eye and horn as he did.
Door closed and locked, the silence came. No crickets. No insects at all. They were a white noise most nights, a hum of rising hisses and clicks that settled and melded in with the bullfrogs’ croaking. Nothing now, save for the wind, and even that had lost its voice.
Mason ran a hand over his face, brought back streams of sweat. Bumps rose across his skin, and he rubbed his arms, rubbed and rubbed until they rawed. His mind wouldn’t work, wouldn’t even let him process what he’d seen, what still waited out there, so he gently rocked as if on his chair, stared ahead into the pacing form of Chancy as she patrolled, head down and fur stiff.
Clomp.
It took a step back, and Mason glanced up at the door. Solid wood, thick as a wall, but just wood. Nothing a monster couldn’t tear down. He swallowed, came to his knees and pushed up. Took all of his strength to stand and not fall. His legs had never been this weak, not after all day in the fields, not even after his old jogs—he’d even done a marathon once, not official, but he’d circled out to Greenstone Lake, around through town, out to the Crosby’s farm and back. Beaten as an old rag, but not weak. Not like now. He was a bone with the marrow sucked out, the cracks beginning to show.
Clomp. Clomp.
The porch wrapped around the left side of the house, and about to take a step, Mason froze. Did he lock the side door? He couldn’t remember. Could barely register what he saw.
Clomp. Clomp. Clomp.
Fumes of rotten eggs seeped into his house, stronger than a skunk spray, and Mason covered his nose. In the dark house, it would be hard for that thing to see inside and spot him, but who knew what kinda sight it had. Mason glanced over at the kitchen window, where the porch stretched around, where it seemed that years ago, in a fairy tale time, they’d open the side door, go out to the grill and sit on the porch and eat. Him and Jackie and the kids.
It moved past the window, the shadow falling inside the kitchen.
Mason didn’t dare move, though he knew he had to. His gun was under the stairs leading up to the second story, no more than ten feet away. That might as well have been a marathon. 
Clomp. Clomp. And then, nothing.
Mason took a step. The creak of the old hardwood sirened, and he cringed, wanted to step back, but he pushed on. Another step. Eyes locked on the window, waiting for it to pass again. If it was still on the porch.
He came to the closet under the stairs wondering where else that thing could get into the house. The back door. A window. Climb up the gutters to the second floor. Mason eased open the closet, the swing of the door soulless and without a squeak. His rifle rested in the corner, and he grabbed it. The only good thing he’d felt that night.
He turned, gun poised, ready.
Red eyes shone through the dark of the kitchen window.
“From.” It’s voice came with the hush of old winter winds. Of sulphur and wickedness. Mason had never understood wickedness, had seen people do horrible things, but now, he realized that he’d never seen wickedness. Humans carried out atrocities, but never, not truly, for evil itself.
This thing only served evil.
“The.” Red eyes larger now. Pressed closer, though no face.
“Road.”
Nails scratched glass. The red eyes drew back.
Clomp. Clomp.
The sulphur siphoned out of the house. The darkness seemed a little less dark, as if the stars and last hints of sun remembered they could shine again.
Mason eased his gun down, allowed a hand to drop and pet Chancy. He stepped to the front door and leaned against it. Crickets returned, chirped nervously at first before going back to how they always were. He slid down the wood and clutched his gun. All he could do was sob because now, he knew where the road led. 

***

Daniel Kamin's first novel, RUBY OF THE REALMS, was published by Black Rose in 2010. He short stories published in eFANTASY, Aphelion, Ward Literary Magazine, The Rush, and Hoxie Gorge. His novella GINGERBREAD MEN AND TOAD'S WART was released by The Wild Rose Press in October. You can follow what he's up to on Twitter: @dkamin.