Robert Duperre - The Gate 2 - 13 Tales of Isolation and Despair

But the song did not move him as it once did. He heard the human voices, heard their worry, their sorrow, their desperation and exhaustion. Where was the joy in defeat? Where was the worship to the heavens as the lions consumed them in arenas? He opened his eyes. Where the Hell was he? A brief whisper, something intimate yet foreign, brushed against his heart. When the pain flared in his knee, and his prayer remained denied, he dismissed the feeling, hardened his heart, and limped for the door. As he did the choir began another song, one that seemed sickly perverse given all their circumstances.

“He touched me,” they sang. “Oh, he touched me, and I’ve never been the same.”

Lie, he thought. Damn lie. They were the same, everyone the same, and that was the fucking problem.

He turned the key in the ignition with a shaking hand. The radio flared up with the engine, and breathing heavily, Jake stared into nowhere, his hands on the steering wheel, the car still in park. Going home meant giving in. It meant accepting a long, painful life. It meant living on the aid of others, of constant awareness of his loneliness and lack of friends. Could he endure that? So many times he had thought no, and only a sliver of hope kept him from opening that shoebox.

But what hope was left? God had touched the entire world, and in less than a week things were back to normal. All the sorrow, the heartache, the good and the bad and the rich and the poor and the weak and the strong, all living in loveless discord. The same. How could he believe things would get better when that very prayer had given him nothing?

The words of a song on the radio slowed, and the sudden tempo change plucked him out of his mental coffin.

“ Good won’t show its ugly face ,” the verse began.

Jake turned the volume up, imagining the church he just left filled with such vile, ugly good.

“ Evil won’t you take your place? ”

Was that the reason for the return of pain? A callous reminder that the world wasn’t perfect?

“ Nothing ever changes…nothing ever changes… ”

The devil’s inertia was too strong, and who was Jake to fight against it? What if…what if…

“… by itself! ”

Jake turned off the car and removed the lid from the shoe box.

The clip had thirteen bullets. A sudden inspiration hitting him, he ejected the clip, removed one bullet, and then shoved the clip back in. He got out of the car. Gun in hand, he limped back into the House of God.

He would be an inspiration. He would be a source for change. Their arthritis, sores, and bad coughs would return, but his wounds, his bullets…they would remain. They would remain throughout the lives of every man, woman, and child in that small white building. Forget pathetic wounds like sight, breath, and touch. He would show them God’s true power. Sorrow. Death. Horror. Loss.

Let God heal those wounds.

Then all would see.

Twelve disciples.

Twelve bullets.

One Judas.

David Dalglish lives in Missouri with a wife that is way out of his league and a daughter who was obviously conceived of better stock than he offers. He is the author of nine books, all blatant ripoffs of World of Warcraft and Dragonlance. His dream is to one day be an accountant for a Vegas prostitution ring.

Of all his books, his most popular to date are the three novels in the Shadowdance series— A Dance of Cloaks , A Dance of Blades , and A Dance of Death. His other series include the tremendous Paladins series, possibly the best writing he’s ever presented and The Half-Orcs. He also compiled and edited—as well as wrote many of the tales included within—the anthology A Land of Ash. To read more about David and how overrated he is, feel free to visit http://ddalglish.com.

The howling began at sundown.

Abigail Browning sat up in bed and drew her legs to her chest. Her entire body ached from the day’s hard labor, muscles and joints groaning each time she moved. She cocked her head and listened as a tingling sensation crept from feet to knees to chest to head. These noises weren’t exactly unexpected—Mort Hollis, the gruff old man who’d sold her the farm earlier that day for thirty gold coins, had warned her about the ramshackle town of Westworth’s savage nightly visitors and told her to make sure her doors were locked tight—but there was no way she could have anticipated the alarming rawness of the sound.

It started as a rumbling, drawn-out mewl that drifted through the cabin like the hum of a distant motor. Soon higher-pitched screeches joined in, echoing in the audible space above and below the originator. The sound wavered in tone, scaling up and down, creating an abstract, primal melody. The window shutters rattled with each variation in timbre. It almost seemed as if they were shaking in fear. Abigail felt the same way.

She glanced to the door, expecting it to swing open any second and a frightened toddler to sprint into the room. He would dive under her covers and wrap his quivering arms around her while she in turn wrapped her arms around him, the way she did any time the coyotes back east began their nightly song. She would then whisper into his ear that all would be fine, nothing could hurt him, she would always be there to protect him.

But that wasn’t going to happen. Nathan was gone. The Incident saw to that. Tears streamed down Abigail’s cheek as she saw his once-beautiful face swollen and bruised. She remembered touching his forehead and felt the coldness of his flesh once more. She hadn’t cried as she held him then, covered in blood, cradling him in her arms and singing his favorite lullaby, pretending nothing had happened. She more than made up for that now. Her body quaked with guilt from the memory, from the guilt of not having been there to protect him from the bastard until it was too late, and she choked on her sobs. It felt like her sorrow would never end.

And still the howling continued. Even as she wiped her cheeks with the dirty towel from her nightstand it persisted, filling the air, becoming thicker, more resilient. Abigail swallowed the last of her sorrow and swung her feet off the bed. The slatted wood floor was cold, the air even colder, and she wrapped her arms around herself as she stood up and wandered to the window.

Pulling back the shutters, Abigail gazed through the open portal, across the expanse of dust and dirt. She saw her cattle out there under the fading red sky, still as death, as if they too were captivated by the alien sound. Behind them was her fence, a crumbling barrier built from the rotting trunks of the last trees that grew in this barren part of the new world. And out there, beyond the cows and dirt and fence, rose the red clay cliffs, their rocky surfaces glimmering like blood in the day’s final light. She saw nothing odd, no monster, human or otherwise, that could make the sound she heard. There was nothing but an endless expanse of sand and stone.

She thought she saw a shadow bolt across her periphery. Abigail slammed the shutters, locked them, tiptoed across the room, checked the safety bar across the front door of her shack, and then leapt back into bed. She rolled into a ball, sticking her head beneath the covers and breathing deep, trying to instill the warmth of her breath into the atmosphere inside her cocoon. It was cold at night, made even colder by the memory of her son and the strange, shrieking beasts outside.