Here be Dragons
Posted by A Great Liar
After the sun goes down and the
surrounding forest becomes quite dark, you begin to hear noises of almost
innocent birds or mammals. They may sound strange to you, but the cynic within
would holler and pretend they are nothing. The left hemisphere of your brain,
the curious Sméagol within, seeks solace in common sense. As you prepare to
sleep and lay your head down, you hear a spine-chilling wail almost like a
coyote.
With his one good eye deeply shut,
the old man could see them, and deep in his sleep, he hears the whispers of the
specter in the remote wanderings, closing in with its weight, with the bones of
the universe breaking, giving in beneath its feet, and the silence holding the
woods deep in its snare. The imprints left on the patch of barren gray,
sulfuric and they glowed against the dark.
You don’t come out into the Pine
Barrens for a nice camping trip.
He spent most mornings hiding from
the sun, while the heaven beyond the stone-age roof of his abode is stirred by
the endless flights of nameless birds above. His starved fingers groping,
fumbling into his cowboy leather saddlebag, gaping holes and all, taking out
the yellowed bunch of parchments he had long discovered from his deceased
grandfather's basement, locked and forgotten in their revered family vault. The
parchments looked old, older than the world as the man had always known it to
be.
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