Loss of Spirit III - The Strawmen

Sometimes, it isn't the right thing that pushes people to dig into the past. The things you find while digging might find you.

    Albert Hughston, chances are, you know someone like him. Hard worker, but no achievements of real note. That's not to say he doesn't contribute to society. Well, not in ways that you or I will notice. Albert is a man who does work that goes on behind society's veil of noticeable deeds. A man of numbers and coordinates, a man who creates maps of things that the average citizen will simply shrug off. You'd be right to think that he was always pushed, technology always right behind him. Riding the wave forward as far and as fast as he could. That's where it went wrong for Albert. While he was happy with his way of doing things, his chosen profession thought otherwise and he was left in the technological dust.
    Part of the magic of all this lay within the time of just forgot. There was a world wide interest in the new blast crater. Volcanists, geologists, biologists, astrophysicists, every kind of 'ist' you can think of came from around the world. They would have sifted through rubble, dug through thrown ashes and debris, but they didn't find any of that. They didn't come away with a single answer. It was a true mystery about how the crater came to be in the first place. What all the highly trained people, with all their instruments, hate is a true mystery. They couldn't find a single thing to hook on to, to begin to scrape away any of the mystery. All they could tell the world was that it didn't come from space. Whatever created the crater had to have been something inside the crater. They couldn't find anything at all that even suggested a hint of what really happened. So, it looked like the entire scientific community shrugged, threw their hands in the air, and walked away.

Loss of Spirit III
The Strawmen
By
Kevin R. Chelsea

    
    “Come on, it will only take you five god damn minutes to go back there and throw it on a disk for me.” Albert wanted to slam his hand down on the counter, but he held his anger.
    The stress this man had to endure had dusted his dark brown hair with gray. Normally kept in fine working order, it looked as though it was wrung through nervous fingers. It was the mad, graying hair of a man trapped in the middle of can't go forward and can't go back. His fleece vest was stretched around the middle of a growing paunch, the vest showed signs of forestry. Patches of dried sap matted the fabric along the front. The back, a man sewn rip jagged up the back, probably made from climbing through a barbwire fence. The trousers, spic and span, it was the one thing he let himself splurge on. Though, you know he'd wear through those in not too long. The boots he wore looked like they'd been across leagues of land and still were comfortable. Ready and able to go as far as they needed.
    Albert had the face of a kindly old fire stoker. It was a while since, but the wide smile that he could beam across a room would make everyone wonder what happy news they must have missed. That smile had done its job and carved their lines. He wasn't as old as people thought him, his cheeks were fighting to keep jowls from dragging, they still didn't make an appearance - yet. His eyes didn't have the droopy look to them - yet. The strong green tint wasn't washed out by seeing too much, they still had a glint in there.
    “I'm sorry, Al, but I can't do that. Only for contractors who updated their certificates.” Cindy, a long time work friend of Al's, could only sit on her hands.
    “What am I supposed to do? This is the last place I thought I could count on.” Albert folded his hands on the high counter and looked down at his feet, it didn't enter his mind that it looked a lot like begging. “I got bills.” Albert's voice was starting to rise again.
    “Al, I'm sorry. I, you, well, we're all on the same boat now and the provincial government put the new laws into effect after all the looting. You know about Fort Loughner, we can't just let people wander in and do what they want anymore.”
    Cindy was right and Albert knew it. People just wandering onto the empty reservations made for tense situations. Ft. Loughner made that all to clear, but still, it shouldn't be enough to shut down the honest working man. They did it anyway.

    After the incident, a small war nearly broke out near a large reservation in Alberta. A nearby strip mine's employees were the first there. Most of them were almost family to the people who lived on that reservation and, in all likelihood, would have permission from their gone friends to use what they wanted. Things started to simmer when people saw dump trucks driving off with all they could carry. What they didn't know, it was done with the most respect in their hearts. After all, they missed their friends. Most of them missed their friends. Some were only there for the loot, one of those started bragging. That switched the label from 'friend' to 'looter'. Looters enraged two clear groups of people.
    One group was angry that it seemed to be first come, first serve. Everybody should get a shot at getting things they wanted or needed. The other group were those who were sickened by circling vultures. The local politicians tried to sort it out, then one of them decided to voice a contrary position. Mr. Henderson, a local M.L.A. who was born a few provinces away, said that the government “should get first pick”, they would reclaim some of the heavy equipment and make sure they weren't being hoarded. That anything useful should become public property and people could rent them at reasonable rates.
    That did not sit well with anyone. The RCMP tried blocking the roads in and out of the reservation. Looters saw this as strong arm tactics and things got nasty real quick. Looters snuck in past the barricade and proceeded to load up a school bus with anything they wanted. Unfortunately, there were many guns, mostly hunting rifles.  They fired up the bus and tried to make their escape through barricades. The bus tires were shredded by the RCMP stop-sticks, it veered into a ditch and the occupants were ready for a fight. They broke out some of the bus windows and began firing at the approaching officers.
    Two of the officers were killed in the initial fire fight. The people in the bus were all killed, two dead cops and five more seriously wounded in a gun battle that lasted just under three hours. The bus and attending police cruisers had more bullet holes than people could count. The bus has been filled with TVs, computers, dvds and dvd players, mostly things electronic. The assorted electronics were streaked with blood and most were converted to air-cooled units by bullet holes. To the officers, these idiots died for stuff they probably already had. To everybody who was there and saw most of it, the cops killed to save stuff that nobody really needed. Instantly, the mood of most witnesses had changed and it became a lot more dangerous.
    The troops were brought in to try and keep hold of an escalating situation. Everything, which didn't seem like it could get worse, did get worse. The RCMP and army were hauling away everything they could get their hands on. They figured that there would be no fighting if there was nothing to fight over. The whole thing became a government against its people thing. Another RCMP officer went down, shot from someone hiding in the spontaneous parking lot of news vans, protesters vehicles, and nosy people. There were a lot of them. When the officer barked into his radio about shots being fired from the parking lot, all hell broke loose. The cops and heavily armed troops opened up and fired in the direction the single shot came from.
    A day that most of them would regret for the rest of their lives. There were people in those vehicles, mostly kids and the ones who were looking after them, older folks and older siblings. If Jennifer Garret didn't try to run in between the firing squad and her eight month old baby, maybe everything would have turned out worse.
    Jennifer was one of the nosy folks. Just out to get out of the house. A new mom who was reintegrating into society. Still learning that babies are a lot more resilient than worried moms think them to be. She only planned to be there for a little while so she parked by the road on the corner of the temporary parking lot. Somewhere she could turn around without worrying about hitting another vehicle. After making sure that the baby was asleep, she cracked the window and snuck across the road. There, her friend had made a campfire for cooking. It was across the road from where the parking lot was, the blockade was about 100 meters away to the east.
    Jennifer walked back and forth across the road, checking on the baby every little while. She was just about to pour herself a cup of coffee when a shot came from somewhere behind her, somewhere in the group of news vans. She was half crouched and was looking over to where the shot came from when she heard the faint yell of the cop. A few seconds later, a few small pops from one of the RCMP pistols. That turned into a constant thunder of firing weapons. She saw a few holes appear on the front fender of her van and she forgot about any danger.
    It only took a few seconds for Jennifer to sprint across the highway, arms waving in the air, no one could hear her voice. All she wanted to do was to get Derrick to safety. The adrenaline that must have been surging through her kept her on her feet, even after being hit by five bullets. Two hit her in the right leg, one of those cut the femoral artery, that alone doomed her. One shot pierced her stomach, then two up high in the chest. Her friend would tell reporters that Jennifer was still running like she didn't feel them at all. She only went down when a bullet punched a hole through her top lip and exited the back of her head along with broken bits of teeth, skull, and cerebellum. She would be buried beside little Derrick who struggled to survive, but lost his fight a few days later in the ICU. First, he would leave his little gift, tiny Derrick Ryan Garret would save many lives.
    This one incident solidified two clear sides, the people who witnessed what they called a murder, and the officials. The RCMP and the Canadian army were already in a high state of agitation. They felt that the public should be compliant after all this. The people there felt that they were in danger, then they got angry. Worse, they got armed. A lot of them had slipped away into the fading daylight. The RCMP and army took this as a good sign, maybe the public were starting to see reason. It didn't last long, a lot more vehicles started showing up. People climbed out holding rifles and pistols. A few of them brought extras and were handing them out among the crowd.
    This made for a volatile situation, the RCMP barking orders, the army yelling into radios for some kind of backup. Not a single person there even tried to deescalate the situation. The people who wanted nothing to do with the whole deal didn't leave, they moved off to the side. The trained soldiers only saw this as a flanking maneuver and they began to get jittery. People were yelling and taunting, the RCMP were trying to restore order by threatening them. Both armed sides were using the screams and moans of the injured as reason for the other side to just go away. More fingers were pointed at Jennifer than she ever had in her whole living life. Now she was being used as a point for both sides. All the while, her blood made a wide puddle around her.
    The only thing that seemed to reach through to all of them was the whooping siren of ambulances approaching. There were three from the closest town and one that must have been in the area from a nearby city. All given a clear path through the crowd. One of the paramedics, Sandra Mosley, as soon as she saw Jennifer's body laying on the road, began berating everyone there. Fingers began pointing and shouting got louder. Jennifer's friend had struggled through and had to yell into the other paramedic's ear that there was a baby in the van.
    The other paramedic, Ed Henry, ran over to the bullet riddled van, shoving armed people out of his way. When Ed looked inside, he saw that the tiny bundle had a large red spot on the white blanket. He yanked open the door and lifted the car seat out. Ed rose the seat above his head and saw there was a bullet hole torn through it. Ed yelled at Sandra, she was covering Jennifer, she looked up and saw something that always broke her heart. Ed had a look on his face she only saw when he was scared. It felt like a punch to her chest when she saw what he was holding.
    The yelling voices were only getting louder. Sandra pulled the gurney out of their ambulance. Ed lifted the tiny bundle out of the car seat and laid Derrick down. Ed unwrapped him as carefully as he could. There was more blood than the little guy seemed to have in him. A bullet grazed his right side, but a graze for the little guy was exponential for his little body.
    Ed had his ear close to Derrick's chest, then near his mouth. He couldn't hear anything over the shouting voices. He clapped his hand over his other ear and tried to listen again. All of a sudden, he could just make out the loudest shrieking and pissed off voice he ever heard. Ed pushed it to the back of his mind as he worked to save Derrick.
    Sandra had lost it, thank god for her bullhorn that she liked to carry around, just in case. Later, Ed would find out that she had actually punched a man in the face as hard as she could. The guy she punched dropped like a rock. Then when the crowd settled, she started in on the RCMP and the army. They were still trying to bark orders at everybody. They became quiet when they saw a pissed off 5'2 woman screaming into a bullhorn advancing on them. All the while, she was spewing the longest tirade of swear words they had every heard strung together. If Ed could have looked, he would have burst out laughing at seeing a whole mass of heavily armed people staring at their feet like shamed schoolkids.
    That was Derrick's gift, he saved many lives in his own little way. Ed didn't have time to enjoy that though. The other ambulances were already pulling out and screaming away into the dusk, trying to get their patients to the hospital as quick as they could. A military helicopter was already on the way and another from the city. As they left, Sandra driving, people were stowing away their guns. The RCMP and a few army medics were running across to see how they could help. Everyone there wondering what they were just about to do to each other, wondering where their sense went

    Albert remembered seeing the aftermath on the news. They reported the incident as a shootout, but witnesses kept reminding people that only one side had been doing all the shooting. Tensions were always high when it came to the subject of what actually happened. Eventually, the subject would boil down to the murders that the armed forces and RCMP committed. Of course, they spun it in their own direction. An officer went down with a wound and they were only returning fire.
    Gun control went out of control for the citizens of Alberta. Rural areas were stringently locked down of any kind of firearms. Rifles were being forcibly taken from people's homes under the new laws that popped up over night. Door to door searches, people with registered firearms were the first to hand over their weapons. They were assured that their property would be returned after the threat of armed conflict was over. Most of them saw that their weapons were actually being destroyed. Some government mouthpiece actually gloated over their victory during a news interview. Rural residents were, to say the least, very upset. The people from the cities were relieved that they were being made safer by a caring government.
    The same caring government began putting into place a series of very useless legislation. They instated a lot more government officials into places that they thought could help ease the citizens into the changed world. Of which, one of those officials thought that people just wandering around out there, near the reservations, should have some kind of certificate to do so. Some way to track those people with those certificates would be even better. It made sense to people who never actually left their cozy urban lifestyles. The furthest they would wander was maybe the suburbs. That was what made Albert's life a whole lot worse. The certificate he needed wasn't hard to get, but the upgrades he needed for his aging hardware and software were astronomical.
    The frustrating thing was, he was close to his goal. The number he calculated, for upgrades, was within reach. If only the company he contracted to would just let him finish a few more jobs. Albert let some things, he thought he could survive without, slide. His pickup needed new tires. He could use some new winter boots. He cut out everything that he considered fun. All the applications for loans and grants he applied for were mostly ignored because they were on the back burner. Those people were too busy trying to keep up to the wave of new rules being put in place. Albert was swept away in the bureaucracy.

    Cindy had called upstairs to reach the manager. She really did feel for Albert, she could see the predicament he was in and she wanted to do what little she could. So, the “big man” can striding into the room from down the hallway. He just liked calling his corner office, “upstairs”. He shook Albert's hand and told Cindy to go and cut the cheque that they had for Albert. He explained to Albert that the company had to move forward to stay in compliance with regulations. If they didn't, a whole lot more people were going to find themselves out of work. Albert knew it wasn't good when Cindy would not meet his eye when she handed him a sealed envelope. The big man ushered Albert towards the door, keeping up a constant jabbering that said the same thing in about eight different ways. 'You must understand...', 'It's the way it has to be...', 'We wouldn't do this is we didn't have to...', and 'We'll always have a place for you here'.
    Albert knew that. They weren't really bad people, just doing what they had to do. He climbed in, put on his seatbelt and started his truck. He would have to go to the bank and deposit his cheque. Albert ripped open the envelope and looked at the amount. Those rotten b******s used a loophole to cut half of it out, his hands began to shake. He was so angry he forgot to unbuckle his seatbelt when he tried to climb out of his truck. Those sons of b*****s, after all this, still trying to save a buck. Albert would at least make “the big man” explain this one. It took a few seconds for him to figure out that it was the seatbelt holding him back. In that time, he saw that the “Closed For Lunch” sign had been put up.
    Strictly speaking, technically even, Albert knew that they could have, and according to their contract, just told him to get lost. Tell him to take his dinosaur equipment and go back to the stone age. Told him that he couldn't work within the new regulations because he still needed to be wired to everything. The government wanted to keep track of as many people as they could while they worked out there. Which meant wireless, Albert couldn't do that �" yet. Technically, Albert knew those things so it helped calm him down a little. That, and knowing it would be Cindy getting the worst of his anger. It still didn't feel fair though, he was so close to keeping up.
    While Albert backed out of his spot, in his mirror, he could see the big man's big one-tonne truck parked there. It would be a nice going away present, accidentally bumping into that shiny truck, but Albert wanted to keep that last little bit of money he got from them. They would take that and most of what he had squirreled away. Albert laughed, he knew that there were more than a few eyes watching him leave. So that's what he did, he just left.


    Albert Hughston, a man slowly being left behind in a world that he thought he knew. While stewing in his own rage, a little trickle of a thought floated out of nowhere and implanted itself in his head. You could say it was Albert finally getting that wireless connection. Head west, it said to him. So he picked up and packed up and threw everything into the back of his pick-up. While he came up to the sign that signified the Alberta / BC border, Albert rolled down his window and gave all of Alberta the finger. A motorist heading in the opposite direction, into Alberta, threw his hand out the window and gave Albert the finger.  He laughed, let Alberta worry about the newly insulted visitor.

    What Albert found funny was the glut of cash he was enjoying. After rolling into the closest town, to where he was trying to go, he went and found as many maps as he could of the area. It was dark, the only places still open were gas stations and late night fast food joints. So he didn't really find all that much, but for a man of his talents, it was more than enough. Albert shelled out for a nice motel room, the next day he'd have to go pick up some camping supplies.
    Sitting at the small desk inside the room, he fired up his laptop and connected to the internet to do a little research. The online maps he found of the area were pretty good, he overlayed those with the ones he found. While he outlined the crater with a pencil, he started humming a song he hadn't heard in ages. It was a bubble gum one hit wonder. He just felt giddy.
    The next day, Albert found a place that suited his needs perfectly. A surplus store that specialized in the hunting and finishing industry. He made two separate trips, both loaded down with a shopping cart full of the needed assortment of gear. Enough food and water to last a week. All the while, the question didn't occur to him once, why was he going out there? If he stopped and thought about it, Albert would see that he was burning through his savings with no plan in place. The tired looking gent at the register didn't seem to mind taking all that money though.
    The next stop was a local office. The little place had a large glass front with an aluminum door by the bay window. A filing cabinet filled the space where the mannequins probably once stood. The glass of the door still had half of a sticker on it. The part of the sticker he could see appeared to be from the clothing store that must have went out of business. It was now the headquarters of a “Licensed Land and Construction Surveyor”. Albert questioned the place, but it looked like the only place that had anything to do with geological research. A bell jingled when he opened the door to the office.
    Aside from the walls, which were covered with assorted maps, the first thing he noticed was the half hunched form of the only person in the place. A pair of magnified eyes swung Albert's way, they looked almost surprised to see someone standing there. The man had a slouched pair of shoulders. It might have been just the way he sat at his desk as he worked at the computer. The head that sat on those shoulders looked like it belonged to an older man. The hair was already stark white and the guys ears seemed comically big for the rest of his smallish head. Oddly enough, the guy seemed to fit this office with its thorough wall coverings.
    The old man, who might not have been that old actually, raised his elbow and put it on the L-shaped corner desk. The desk matched the walls of the office, but instead of maps, it seemed to be covered with post-its and assorted boxes of paperclips, rubber bands, and stamps. Albert almost laughed when he finally took in the awkward size of the monitor that the guy was looking into. It wasn't a LCD monitor as much as it was a television. Something people would have sitting in their living rooms. Beside that, sitting against the wall with a screen-saver wavering on it, was an old 4:3 19in monitor. Maybe this guy knew his business, looked like he must have been in the field for a good long time.
    “Uh-huh?” The old man leaned back in his chair and stretched his elbows back.
    “Yeah, hi,” Albert didn't know how or where to start, “I'm going to be headed out to the crater and I was wondering, well, I don't know, can I?”
    Albert almost felt stupid, standing there asking permission. He fully expected to hear a bunch of regulations about heading out that way, or anywhere near it. Albert had all his stories straight for no reason. Instead, he was met with a knowing eye. The old guy only gave him a shrug of his shoulders. Albert held out his hand and was surprised by the wiry strength the man must have had in him. His name was Lester Harrigan, worked in the area all his life. Albert figured that Lester must have been putting in his last couple years before retirement. Lester's face was heavily weather worn, a lot of hot summer days and freezing winters took its toll. It was his eyes that looked straight into Albert though, tell all the stories that the wanted, but Lester would give him a look that said that he should try pulling the other leg. When Albert tried to explain why he was there, Lester gave a small smile and held his hand up. Lester only grinned and told Albert that he didn't need permission for that. The stupidity that Albert felt changed to curiosity.
    “Yep, go knock yourself out, you'll be back before too long.” Lester sat down in his old office chair, it creaked as he leaned back.
    “No,” Albert reached up and patted his shirt pocket to see if his pen was there, “no paperwork?”
    “Nope.” Lester barked a laugh, Albert couldn't tell if he was being mocked. Maybe the old bugger just laughed like that.
    “Well, alright, I'm guessing there's places to camp out there?” Albert thought he better ask.
    “Oh yeah, you'll see the places where all the other people, like you, set up shop. Just pick a nice place and settle on in.” Lester was smiling, he had his spindly arms crossed while he looked at Albert.
    “Anything I should know about the area?” Albert knew that he was missing something, the old man's demeanor was screaming it. “Seems like you're not telling me something.”
    “Nothing to tell you. Well, nothing quick, if you got time, just grab a cup of coffee and I'll fill you in. Might be I'll stop you from wasting your time out there.”
    “I wanted to be set before nightfall, long story?” Albert eyed the dingy coffee pot sitting on a file cabinet.
    Lester sat up and put his elbows on his desk and shook his head. “Nah.” It dragged out of him. “Tell you what, I'll even help you out a bit. Get yourself a cup of coffee while I print you out something.”
    “Okay.” Albert took a styrofoam cup from the stack sitting by the coffee pot. He hadn't seen those in use for a long time, but there they were. A relic out of the recent past.
    The room he stood in seemed to be made of cork-board and maps. Everywhere he looked around the room was covered in maps. Some old, some new, but all of the same place, the surrounding area. It didn't seem to fluctuate much in elevation, looked like a bunch of rolling hills marked with a river gouged down the middle. Albert heard Lester give a, 'where are you, you buggardly thing', he almost laughed when he saw the old man. Lester had his head tilted back while he gazed into a 35in monitor. Old and new combined behind the desk. Lester smiled at the computer and let out a short, 'ha! Thought you could hide', a few seconds later, a loud buzzing from a familiar sounding piece of equipment came from a room Albert couldn't see. Lester was printing some kind of map.
    “There we go, this should help you find your way around out there if you still want to go.” Lester pushed away from the desk and turned to face Albert again.
    “Why wouldn't I?” Albert slid a seat over from a table and sat down, he put his cup on Lester's desk.
    “Good question.” Lester just shook his head. “Where you coming from?”
    “Out east, worked in Alberta for a long time. Decided to come out this way.” Albert didn't want to say that it was a 'spur of the moment' feeling that pulled him west.
    “Hear about Fort Loughner? On the news? Happened in Alberta so I guess you might have.” Lester pushed his glasses up with his thumb.
    “Oh yeah, hell yeah. Was messed up over there for a long time. Made being in our line of work a hell of a lot harder. That's part of the reason why I headed this way.”
    “Yep, was a hell of a thing what happened over there.” Lester shook his head while he looked out the window.
    “Things like that been happening around here?” Albert just wanted to get the story started, day light was wasting.
    Lester sighed. “Nope. Nothing like that. I know you might be in a rush to get out there, but you're not going to find anything. If you do, it's going to be nothing worth staying for. I seen people like you head out there and not much long later, they're packing it up and heading back out to wherever they came from.”
    “What? Why?” Albert couldn't understand why they would do that, just up and leave an honest mystery.
    “Well, fella came by not long after it happened, let me copy all his points, all his notes. Said that most of those,” Lester lifted his elbow and motioned to the map on the screen, “he got from other scientists and geologists out there. They knew what they were looking at, but it didn't make any sense. It's just a big hole in the ground. No debris from anything from the sky. No evidence of anything that might've made an explosion that big.”
    Albert heard all of these things, read a few articles about it, but here was somebody who had experienced it and he still couldn't believe what he was hearing.
    “You know about craters, right?” Lester pushed up his glasses again.
    “Yeah, I seen Meteor Crater in Arizona on a field trip for school once. Clearwater Lakes, that one in Quebec was amazing, people are still studying that one as old as it is.” Albert felt a stirring of the excitement he experienced when he was learning what he needed for his career.
    “Well, what you got out there isn't a crater, it's a hole. There's no lip around the edges. There's no shatter cone in the middle from an impact. No debris thrown to hell and gone from something hitting the earth at the speeds needed to make that big of a hole. They couldn't find any signs of brecciated rock or shocked quartz. The damn seismographs we have just north of here for that old, dormant volcano would have picked up something, but it didn't. I even looked up satellite shots of the area before and after. Now there was a good amount of time between them, but nothing there to see. The area out there is covered in old beetle kill pine, that stuff will catch fire if you look at it funny, but none of that went up. Some of it is standing not more than a few feet in some places from the edge of the hole.”  Lester had his arms crossed and he was staring out the front window, his eyebrows were furrowed as he told the story.
    “I know it's big, but how big are we talking here?” Albert crossed his own arms and stared up into the corner of the office, trying to picture all this.
    “You'll see, I'm printing a real good map of it for you.” Lester didn't look away from the window, he lifted his hand and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder and then crossed his arms again.
    “Don't know about your story, but all this only makes me want to go and see for myself.”
    “Yeah, I know what it must sound like, but every time I seen people heading out of there, they always looked disappointed. Somebody stole their ice creams or something.” Lester cocked an eyebrow and shook his head, he sighed and looked at Albert. “That ain't all of it either.”
    “What you mean?” Albert was sitting up to reach for his coffee, but stopped and sat back.
    “There were stories from before all that happened.”
    Albert thought for a minute, “looters?”
    “Mmmm-nah.” Lester pulled down the corners of his mouth and shook his head. “Well, people were trying to live there, they must be all dead. But even before that, I know that the people studying after all the indians gone, they let a couple things slip.”
    “Like?”
    “They say you heard things out there. I think that's one common thing that runs through all of those places. You hear about the other reserves all over the place? People try to live there, but they cleared right the hell out, right quick too. Said that they were being used as guinea pigs out there and if they stayed longer, they'd disappear.” Lester put his hands up in front of them and rotated his hands, palms in to out, meaning 'no more'.
    “Yeah, heard something like that.” Albert nodded.
    “Heard it's still like that in some places around here. Indians left a hell of a thing behind. My buddy who worked out at Plymouth, a strip mine, said that he had to quit because there was a hole out there. Not like the crater out south way, but worse. A hole you couldn't see that sucked up all the sound. Some people stayed on out there, but he couldn't keep going down into that mine. Told me that he was scared that he wouldn't come out some time if he kept heading down there.”
    “That's what it's like out there?” Albert saw that Lester was thinking hard on what his buddy said.
    “Hmm? Oh. No, what's out there is different, but does the same thing. It'll push you out. You'll find a good reason to leave if it's not the boredom that gets you first. You better hope that's what it is. If it's not, you'll start having weird dreams. That's what my buddy says.” Lester pushed himself to his feet. “I know that look, nothing I say is going to stop you from going out there.”
    “I don't know, now I want to see if for myself.” Albert picked up his cup and drained it.
    “Yep. Just don't go tear assing your way around out there. Got a map for you here, let me get it.” Lester sighed and walked into the back room.
    Albert heard Lester rolling it up and the twang of an elastic sliding around the cylinder. Lester came out and gave Albert a look that said, 'you mind me now'. Older folks seemed to learn that and it usually worked.
    “This here map would cost anybody else a pretty penny, but I know you're going to be headed back this way. If you find any good stories, you tell them to me in exchange for my map here.” Lester held it out over the desk.
    Albert smiled and took it.
    “I'm telling you, be careful out that way. I know it's not going to seem like anything, but it's going to get in your head. Clear out when it does, just come back here and let me know what's what. At least you can take a break from it all.”


    Those words stuck in Albert's head as he drove out of town and turned off the main highway. He let his mind travel ahead of him, he tried to imagine what the place might look like. The thought that it would look exactly like a meteor strike wouldn't leave his mind. Finally, he stopped and unrolled the map that Lester made for to him. Right away he could see that the hole wasn't anything like a crater. The measurements that people must have made were incredibly detailed. He wondered how Lester could speak of something so interesting as almost boring.
    The hole was just that, like a big ball fell out of the sky and pressed into the earth then disappeared. If it were an impact, there would be be the initial impact site in the center, there wasn't one. The edge of the crater would be raised and deformed by the lay of the land. It wasn't, the land rose and fell in an almost perfect circle. The bottom wasn't flattened in any kind of way, it was a gradual decline into the hole until the bottom, the lowest point. It had to be almost spherical in shape, whatever made the hole anyway. Humming the same bubblegum classic, Albert rolled up the map and set it back down on the seat beside him.
    He finally took notice of his surroundings. He was parked along the fence on a gravel road, both sides of the road were hayfields, huge fields. He let his eyes trail off into the distance. Across the field, the only thing to break the view up to the treeline, was a small lake. On the other side of that lake was more hayfield. Then a thin green, blue line of trees. Being a man who walked these kinds of places for most of his life, he knew that people would get out and try to walk that distance. They would reach half way then look back and see that they were in the middle of nowhere. Between a treeline, that still seemed the same distance away, and behind them a tiny dot beside a barbwire fence they could barely make out.
    It finally hit Albert's mind that he was seeing a lot more than he was looking at. Above the treeline was a mountain range, blurred through the haze of distance. The Rockies? Yes, it had to be. To get to where he was parked, he had to cross those mountains and they were huge. The highest points were covered with snow. He could make that out easily. He shook his head, amazed at the distance he could see.
    A vehicle caught the corner of his eye, the glint off the windshield flashed his attention back to where he was going. There was a large pickup, covered with mud from top to bottom rolling by. He could see there was a rack in the back for the people who worked in the forest. It was slowing down, the driver and the passenger looking at him. Albert shifted his truck into drive and lifted a hand to let them know he wasn't broken down. The truck passed, they must have been just heading back home from work. Must be running machines, in the back of the truck was a large diesel tank with a hand pump. They waved as they passed.
    As Albert drove along, he kept an eye out for places to camp. Lester said there was a lot of places, but the sites that Albert drove past were all too far away from the hole. He could see that there were masses of vehicles that must have made the trip out there. Anywhere that was flat enough to park a vehicle showed the signs of a parking lot. Not a whole lot of garbage though, at least they were considerate. He knew he was getting close from what he remembered on the map, there was a deep cut valley before he reached the edge. Plus, there were signs that were getting closer and closer together.
    The signs pointed out that anybody going in that direction should slow down, the road disappeared into midair with no warning at all, aside from the growing number of signs. What was eerie was something he didn't see, Albert would always imagine seeing a police car or some kind of vehicle with lights on top making him stop. Maybe to present papers or something. Lester had to be telling some kind of truth, it seemed like people came out, shrugged, and left.
    The sun was starting to cast longer and longer shadows. Albert wanted to see, but he didn't want to end up flying off a cliff so he went slower and slower. Finally, he saw some road signs sitting right on the road. Behind those were concrete dividers that crossed the road. He rolled up to the signs and stopped. Still expecting a vehicle to come blazing up to ask what the hell he was doing, he checked his mirrors. Nothing. He shifted his truck into park and turned off the engine.
    Before him, it seemed brighter than it should have been. Probably because the hills that made the deep valley were gone, the sky must have been a lot wider than it was before. Albert got out of the truck and looked over to the left. On the side of the road was a small gully that followed, he could see that there was a stream that used to flow down there, but it must have dried up. Which was odd, if there's one thing that won't stop just because a big hole appeared, it was flowing water. It was something he definitely wanted to go and check on, wherever the water stopped flowing.
    On the right side of the road was a steep incline of a hill that reached up pretty high. On both sides of the dry creek-bed was the steep incline of hills. The water must have been working for centuries, no, thousands of years, back to the ice-age, to cut the deep channel. The hills were covered with pine and fir, Albert inhaled and it hit him that he wasn't on the Alberta flatlands anymore. It made him smile. He finally noticed that the hills were cut off in a jagged straight line, on the map, that was the edge of the almost perfect circle.
    Dirt. From where he stood, that's all there was to be seen inside the hole. Albert climbed over the dividers and a small wave of vertigo washed over him when he saw that the road just disappeared in  mid air. The cut made to the ditch on the right side of the road even showed. A small 'V' shape that went down from the road surface then it climbed up to the hill side.
    Albert's steps got smaller and smaller as he inched toward the edge. Finally, he got down on his hands and knees and began to crawl. He could see that people must have done the same thing, there were marks on the ground from people pushing sharp objects into the compacted earth, checking to see if the road would hold them. It should have, but didn't, made him feel safe about reaching the edge. When the fingers on his right hand reached the edge, again, a wave of vertigo hit him. He seen his share of broken bridges on his travels and never felt anything like he was feeling at that moment. He gazed over the edges of sheer cliff faces in western Alberta, sure, it was scary, but it didn't effect him the way this did. Maybe it was the way that the road just stopped. Like existence disappeared and he was going to poke his head out there to see where it went.
    Somewhere far away from where he was, Albert heard a rock tumble down into the hole. For some reason, it made him want to stop and turn around. To get the hell out of there. He heard the rock tumble, it would hit other rocks and bounce, fall and continue to tumble. It started other rocks and dirt falling, he put his forehead right down onto the ground and waited for the noise to stop. With his right leg, Albert pushed forward and pulled with his right hand. Slowly he saw more and more of the hole, the crater appeared before his eyes. When he was looking straight down a drop, he figured about twenty feet, he took a long and shakey breath. It wasn't so bad. The drop from where he was didn't just end in a flat spot, it eased into a long gradual bowl shape. It wasn't easy to see the middle, it would have to be something you'd measure. Just to find the lowest point would take some doing.
     Albert looked for signs that there was water that might have evaporated or sunk into the earth. No, nothing like that. Over the winter there had to be a few feet of snow all around and inside the huge bowl, that would mean a lot of water. Albert was sure that scientists would have thought of all those things. He would go and talk to Lester about all that. Even if it wasn't official stories he would be listening to, it would be something. How could they just leave?
    Albert looked around, just letting his eye wander. There was a rock in the road beside him. It was pressed into the hard packed earth, there were grooves gouged in it. He seen these before, they were from the graders that upkept the gravel roads. He was up on one elbow, he ran his fingers over the gouges in the rock. Then he gazed over the edge of the drop and looked for signs of the same thing. Maybe whatever made the hole, left the same kind of signs. No, nothing like that. He did notice a huge boulder that must have been buried for millions of years, it was rounded and pressed into wall. It left a void of dirt around the edges because it was shoved feet further into the wall of the bowl. The people studying this whole thing had to see stuff like that. Why did they all leave?
    Albert kept those thoughts in his head while he let his eye trace the upper edge of the huge bowl. The trees. He started looking at the trees, they were still standing there like they had always been. There should have been roots sticking out, reaching out into midair, but there was none.
    “Damn it, why would,” Albert shook his head, “how could you just up and leave this?”
    There were a million questions and no answers, worse, he was the only one there. He imagined sitting with Lester asking about all these things. Why and how, they could sit around all day just speculating. Albert wanted to crawl down into the hole, but he couldn't do it just yet. It would have to be sometime later, maybe the next day. So he tried to find the best place to do it, probably to his left. Along the dry creek-bed, he poked his head out and looked down to see where it was in relation to the hole. It looked like there was a trail worn into the dirt down there. It was a sharp angle, but it wasn't a drop, a place he could just walk into the hole.
    With his mind made up, he had to find somewhere to set up camp. After crawling away from the drop, he got to his feet and dusted off his hands and pants. He tried to think of the smoothest place that was closest. Just up the road, a few kilometers away, he remembered seeing a few flats of land that was used as places for people to gather. Probably trucks full of equipment, a small tent city full of very smart people. That left. For no good reason. Maybe they did find answers and it was something they didn't want to share with the world? If then, why would they just let anybody just wander right up to the hole. Albert decided that he would set up camp right at their vacated spot. He would make his own investigations from his new camp grounds. He shifted the truck into gear and drove off.
     Albert checked his watch, it was getting a little late so he had to get his tent up pretty soon or wind up sleeping in the truck. Behind him, the sun had already disappeared over the hill, but further east everything was still enjoying the last of the day. The chance that he would look and see a reflection was too great to even guess at. The sun had to be in the right spot and he had to be at the right spot. He had to be a very specific height and stand in a very specific spot just to be able to see that glint of light. It wouldn't be long before Albert would be working in the lights of his truck or by firelight, but he had to see what might have made that reflection.
    Hopefully, Albert thought, Lester would have whatever it was on his map. He unrolled it and set it out on his hood. The pegs for his tent holding down one side of the map and he reached down to pick up a rock to use for the other. It wasn't hard to track where he was if he traced his finger back along the road from the hole. Using his compass, Albert lined up where the glint came from then ran his finger in a straight line on the map. The map showed some kind of structure, probably a house. The place had to be empty. On the map, it was inside reservation land.
    A few more kilometers up the road, he remembered seeing a house with vehicles still parked out in front. On the map, that place was off reservation land so people were probably still living there. The house up there, on reservation land, would have been abandoned for a long while, but it would be a good place to leave his gear. Instead of just leaving here beside the road, in his tent, and hope people didn't swing by and haul it away. With that thought, he decided to make for the empty house.

    When Albert drove up, he had to stop and swing open a gate. He just hooked the gate to the fence and left it wide open. Up the road from the gate was a small cabin. The one large window, that must have been the living room, was broken. It looked like the place was stripped. There was nothing on the front porch. All around the place weeds grew high. Even the road had a healthy growth of grass between the tire tracks. Across from the cabin was a small shed, the door for it was torn off and laying on the ground a few feet away, it was empty as well. Albert shrugged, he could find some nails and fix it.
    It entered his mind that if somebody came by and asked him what he was doing, he really wouldn't have a good answer for why he was there. Albert figured the the truth wouldn't hurt. He was going to be studying the hole and this was a good place to leave his stuff. He didn't feel comfortable with just leaving it beside the road. Besides, there were no tire tracks, anybody that came by this way hadn't done so in a really long time. Let them ask.
    What he wanted to do was go and check out the cabin. Mainly just to satisfy his curiosity, but if he was going to be staying, it would be nice to take stock. He settled himself into the cab of his pickup for a minute, then sprung into action after he imagined how uncomfortable it would be. He decided to see how fast he could get his tent up. He still had a good half hour of usable daylight, enough to at least sleep on his back instead of on his backside. The job was done in plenty of time, he even had time to walk up to the trees and find a little bit of firewood. By the time the first stars were blinking into the night sky, he had a nice fire going. He kept wondering about who lived in the cabin. He tried to imagine people walking in and out. What it would look like to see a family through their front window. Sitting at their table eating dinner or gathered in the living room while watching TV. Albert laughed when he realized he was imagining white people.
    It wasn't long before he was struggling to keep his eyes open. Albert done a lot of thinking, about 'who's, 'why's, and 'where's, but mostly 'how's. The few things he seen at the crater, the hole, made it obvious that Lester had no idea what he was talking about. It was fascinating and he couldn't wait to get back to see what else he could find. Albert halfheartedly kicked dirt onto the dying embers of the fire then climbed into the tent.
    An always trusty roll of bedding made for a familiar place to lay, it made him smile. It wasn't soft, but it was what he was used to, he had to camp out a lot. Not long after hitting the switch on his lantern, he drifted far off into deep sleep The dreams that came up on him were very odd. There was a treeline, he saw himself digging. All the while, a lone coyote was howling off in the empty wilderness. A sound so melancholy that Albert felt bad for the little guy. For some reason, it felt like the coyote was howling for his lost friends. That the coyote was calling out into the emptiness, trying to lead them home. Although, there was something wrong with it though, it wasn't home. The coyote was insane, if anybody followed it, they would disappear into the empty.
    Albert sat up, he'd slept all night. The dreams that he had during the night slowly evaporated and blew away like the morning dew.  There was a chill in the air, it was familiar, something he'd felt all the time. Winter was lurking a few months away, but you could always feel it coming. The sun was already shining on his tent, blue and orange lit up with the projection of shadows coming from the trees a long way away. Everything seemed tilted, everything was right side up and the same way it was when he went to sleep, but it wasn't right. The dreams slid down his spine and back into the earth beneath him.
    For as long as Albert could remember, he would never sleep the night all in one shot. He would wake up every once in a while and shuffle around under the blanket, to find a new and comfortable position, then drift back off. This time, nothing woke him up during the night and he woke up to a huge amount of pressure in his bladder. It made getting up and moving a priority, still painful, but he needed to get out of the tent before too long. He made it as far as getting the flap open, he just let it all go while he knelt with his back arched. There went his morning, he would have to move his tent. It must have been the fresh air that kept him under.
    Albert was up and mobile in not too long.  He put a cinderblock on top of another and used it for a chair while he ate breakfast. He turned and looked around in the daylight. A hot cup of coffee washed down his breakfast, which made him think about his supplies. He had bottled water, but he didn't want to start using that for everything. The small cabin. He looked over his shoulder. There wouldn't be any water there, even if there was, no way to pump it. Albert laughed and dropped his head, he would go and check anyway. He wanted to see inside anyway. He did use one of his bottles of water for cleaning, all the while shaking his head. Waste. He just left his dishes on the truck hood, he threw his towel into the cab and closed the door. Housekeeping could be done after seeing what there was to be seen.
    The place was ransacked, people probably only took the things that they could actually use. Which was almost everything by the looks of it. They left a few blocks of wood, a few more cinderblocks piled beside the shed, a few rusty barrels sitting beside a 8in steel pipe that stuck up a few feet. There was a fence post tied to the pipe with rope. It was obviously meant to last years and years, people must have drove into it more than once. The cap on the pipe was cracked.
    He took a walk around the cabin to see what was what. He peered over the three foot high walls that surrounded the porch. On the front porch, there was an old metal shelf that had been pulled down. It leaned against the railing. Beneath it, the wood was oil stained, whatever was on it was gone, but whoever did it must have just let the oil spill out onto the deck. Yet, they took all the containers. The wooden porch floor was still in pretty good shape though.
    Albert took a few more steps to look through the window by the porch. If there were curtains there, they were long gone. Inside, a checkered tile floor that was covered with dust. There were pieces of the grasses, straw, that must have blown in through the broken living room window. All blown to the corners of the room. There were no foot prints in the dust. When he saw that there was a closed door, he moved to the next window. That one was covered. His imagination kicked up a notch and he tried to think of what might be in there. He walked around the corner, the porch in the back was the same as in front. It was empty though, just stuff that blew in on the winds. There was another window for the room he couldn't see into, it was covered as well. The back door had three two-by-fours nailed across into the door frame and into the door itself. A few feet beside that, another window, he looked in and saw the kitchen. It was in the same large, open room as the living room. There was an outlet for a stove, that must have been taken. He walked around the corner and there was the large, broken living room window. It was the biggest window so he figured it had to be the living room.
    Albert noticed that the windowsill was cracked and scratched, whoever took stuff from the cabin probably thought it faster to just shove stuff out the large window. The same checkered tile pattern from the back room went wall to wall. In this room, there was nothing at all but the dirt on the floor, the bits of grass and weeds that must have blew in were pushed into the corners. There was water damage, he could see the mark of it on the walls. Where the snow probably piled up and when it melted, left a water mark. The light bulbs were gone, the pipe for the long gone wood stove was just an empty hole in the ceiling. Rain must have poured down through that every once in a while. As he studied the wall, he saw there were lighter shades of paint in neat squares. Pictures, of course, but they were gone as well.
    Something really didn't sit right with Albert the longer he looked. The place felt empty. Felt dead. People lived in the cabin once, they left, then people came and stripped everything out. Even the doorknob for the front door, that was gone. Somebody propped a stick into the hole left vacant and that was holding the door closed. That wasn't it though, Albert seen places like this before and there was always something there. Something common to all those places except for this one.
    Albert took a few steps away from the cabin and closed his eyes. He listened for any sign of life. He turned his head left, then right, all he could hear was the very small breeze barely moving the leaves on the trees across the way. He stayed perfectly still for almost a minute, he could hear an airplane. Not a single chirp of a bird or chipmunk. No squirrels or ducks. Cows, horses, dogs, or anything. He looked into the cabin again, into the kitchen and there were no droppings of any kind. No white splatters of white bird crap, no rat turds, no signs of mice. There wasn't even any insects.
    “What the hell is going on here?” The sound of his own voice made him jump, it was so damn loud.
    All that made Albert angry, how could they just leave? There were so many questions just left unanswered. Which brought him back to why he went out to BC in the first place. He thought of a huge hole that appeared then promptly ignored by the scientific community. Hell, there should at least have been a few sects of crazy people hummin-an-hawing all over the place, but there weren't any of those either.
    Before hopping into his truck and taking off to see the hole in the bright daylight, he wanted to see what was in that back room. He walked onto the front porch and lifted his foot to kick it in. He gave a silent 'I'm sorry' to whoever owned the place then gave the door a hard boot. The stick was there for show it seemed, the door slammed against the back wall. With no backstop, he almost put the door through the wall. He expected to hear scurrying of small animals, but heard nothing but the creak of the hinges. He pushed it back and took a careful step inside. Testing the floor to see if it could hold him. It felt as solid as it probably ever was.
    Still, Albert took slow steps to the door of the room that had been sealed against the daylight. The door for that room was closed, the doorknob was still there. It turned easily. He took a deep breath, making sure to keep his mind on what he smelled. If there was some kind of body in there, the stench would probably still linger. He pushed and the door swung open easily. Nothing, nothing too far out of the ordinary anyway. There was am old kitchen table sitting against the wall, it had nothing sitting on it. Since the windows were covered, he could barely make out what was on the floor. Dozens of ripped and torn record covers. They littered the pile, along with broken records. Along the other side of the room was the dim outline of a mostly empty shelf, everything there was probably carted away except for something he hadn't seen for a long time. An old record player. It had a 7in single on it. The record had to be older than the hills.
    The hills, that thought made Albert remember a very oddly shaped ridge. With the questions piling up, so many, he wanted to get on them. First place he wanted to start was at the hole. He gave the pile of broken records and torn album covers a quick glance and walked out. He closed the door and left.

    It was odd that people called the hole a crater. If they just had a quick look, it would be more accurate to call it a bowl. It looked more like a basketball cut in half with a jagged edge. The lowest spot was at least two kilometers away, still, where it entered the hole wasn't flat. Since the hole was closer to a hollowed out sphere, the only flat spot would be right in the middle.
    Albert half slid, half walked down into the hole, digging in his heels so he wouldn't slide out of control. Before he even came to a full stop, he picked a spot across the bowl and couldn't stop looking at it. It felt like he was concentrating so hard on something that he couldn't think of anything else. Every time he wanted to go and study something, he'd find himself just staring at nothing in particular. Mostly thinking about what he was thinking about. His mind would always lead itself into a closed loop and get stuck. He felt like he had to get out of the hole.
    As far as Albert got was where he figured the center was, the lowest point of the bowl. By then he was finding it too hard to formulate plans more complex than where to get back out and how to walk there. That is exactly what he did, he made for the lowest edge of the hole. He didn't think he could make it back up the hill so he took the easiest way out. It took him further away from his truck, but that didn't enter his mind, it was just easier. He could barely remember why he was there in the first place.
    It felt like the entire earth was playing games with him. He kept putting his hands out, but then he would realize he wasn't actually staggering. Whatever was happening was only in his head, he was making a nice straight line to where he was going. It was only a kilometer at most, but it felt like it took a few hours to get there. Albert stumbled up the slight grade and out onto the real ground. He kept walking in a straight line until he thought he was far enough away then let himself fall onto the ground.
    Albert's senses took their time to come back. He looked around at where he was. Closest to him, he saw that he was lucky that he didn't sit in a group of cactus or put his hand in the middle of it. Those damn things liked to surprise you. One would ride your pant leg all day then give you a jab when you thought you were safe. A good ways away he saw sage bushes, he could smell them. The grasses that grew in this part was that tough old tundra scrub. He found it odd that his truck was parked in a forest area, and just a few kilometers away was this place. He looked over, further east, and saw that he was pretty close to the river. The hills disappeared into a deep valley with unforgiving sides. Even the maps showed that.  Back west, he looked across the hole and saw exactly where his truck would be parked.
    “Son of a b***h.” Albert shook his head.
    Now he understood why people couldn't study this place. Well, that place. Over there. Not more than fifty steps away. His picked up a rock and threw it. It kicked up a little dust as it bounced, it rolled to a stop before getting to the hole. He looked at his watch, of course. Damn it. It was a twenty dollar job, but been with him for a few years, now it just stared that dead, gray screen at him. It couldn't be too far past noon. The sun was just hitting the middle of the sky, clouds were somewhere else, smart enough to stay away. Whatever the hole was, it had a pretty good defense against people who would want to get too nosy.
    Whatever the place did, it sure did suck all the moisture out of you. It wasn't hard work, he wasn't sweating, but something about it made him thirsty. Which wouldn't have been a problem if he could just find a creek. It would be running right past where Albert was sitting, there was even the telltale mark of cattle going down there to drink. The ground was still churned up into a fine powder where the cattle all clambered down to get their fill. Albert sighed and got to his feet, his mind flashed on a huge canteen of water sitting in the truck. Placed on the floor on the passengers side, kept in the shade to keep it nice and cool.
    Albert didn't even bother walking down to where the creek flowed. He could see it was dry, grass already reclaiming the bed. Gravel did nothing to stop that growth. He reached down and picked up a small stone and threw it, there was a loud clacking sound and the stone bounced out onto the other side. Albert sighed again, he let his eye travel along the dry creek bed until it disappeared around a corner, the road, when it was there, must have followed along the stream. For a brief moment, his old curiosity came back and he tried to imagine when the last drop of water flowed past.
    The road cut its way into the side of the hill, that too disappeared around a corner. That made him wonder when the last vehicle to use it was. Albert looked west, the direction where his truck was, then east, to where the road disappeared. He turned around and looked north across the valley, the hill stretched up a few hundred feet and looked to be pretty steep. Greater than forty-five degrees so it would be a tough climb. On top of the hill, the map showed that it leveled off to a plateau for stretched out for a long way. If he climbed that, with no water, he would be dumb. Because doing that with no water would be more than he could handle. Still, he let his eyes trace the top of the hill, it was sheared off by the edge of the hole which made for a pretty good drop. Not something he would want to try and brave in the dark if it took him that long to get up there.
    Albert turned around to study the south side of the valley. The one he was closest to. It was covered with trees, the other side of the valley was dotted with very few. The angle and height was the same, but he would be out of the sun climbing through the woods. His experience told him that there was too much moss to make it a safe way to go. The top of the south side was also a plateau, but it broke up into rolling hills the further it went.
    The loud rumble of a jet drifting by made him look up. It was in the eastern part of the sky, headed north. It left a long white contrail that was already breaking up in the wind. The season was trying to change so he couldn't take too long to decide what to do. If he was going to do something really stupid and try to climb a damn mountain to avoid a nice clear and smooth walk to his truck, he would have to get going soon. Or get stuck and wander around on a mountain with a cliff just lurking in the night to give him a nice surprise. With his eye on the jet, Albert was sure he saw something move in the corner of his eye.
    From where was standing, there was a creek bed, couple hundred meters of grassland, barbwire fence, the road, another barbwire fence and an oddly placed trail of willows. Above the willows, on the hill, was a bunch of bushes that only grew near water. It was surrounded by aspen so there must have been a natural spring there. The cow trails that lead to it were only promising. He started making his way up there. Only getting hooked up at the first barbwire fence when he couldn't decide how to go through. He found a stick and used the forks of broken branches to prop open the wire.
    On the other side of the road, there was a cut through the ditch so trucks could drive across and up the hill. There was a wire fence, he opened it then stopped when he was putting the pole back through the bottom loop of wire. He looked around and remembered that he hadn't see an animal anywhere near the place. Still, he did feel a tinge of guilt for not closing the gate. Ranchers across the country would smack him in the mouth for committing such a sin. Albert dropped the wire-gate to the ground and turned to walk up the hill.
    The trail that lead into the little stand of bushes was covered with boards. Grass grew up on both sides and between the planks. The wood looked fairly new, but the small box where the spring was looked at least a hundred years old. It was covered with a new board that had a handle on it. Albert pulled the cover off, inside was just filled with grass. Where the hell was all this grass getting the water to grow? There was a small dipper that sat on the bottom of the shallow hole. He picked it up and looked at it. It was dented from decades of use, but now it was, he threw it back into the hole, useless.
    Albert walked out of the bushes and stood looking towards the hole. Then across to the other side of the valley. There would be water down by the river. He tried to imagine what it would be like to walk down there. It wasn't too far, but the map only showed a sharp drop into a deep chasm in most places. Could get hurt if he was down there until night time. Not a place to really wander around in the dark. He looked back up the valley to the hole, this time was sure he saw something out of the corner of his eye.
    Up the side of the hill, not too far from where he was, the tree line started and just below that was something that caught his eye. A bare patch in the grass, on the higher side sat a big rock. Almost a boulder. It had to be a marker of some kind. He walked over, always looking up into the trees for something watching. He stood at the edge of the bare patch of ground. There was a clear border of grass around the edge. Nothing grew on this spot by the look of it. When he was working out east, sometimes he would wander across the graves of people that died out on the trail. Maybe settlers, their graves would look the same, but usually had a modern marker to pay respects to the dead. The grave he was standing at had to be old, very old.
    Whatever was buried there had to be from before the area was settled because there were cemeteries at all the reservations. They dated back pretty far, even before the christian religion invaded their beliefs, the places where the dead were buried were usually marked somehow. So, it had to be one of them. A grave would be a find since most of the deceased natives had been exhumed for study. Especially one so near the hole.
    Albert was enjoying that his mind was thinking coherently about all of it. Every time he tried to get a line of thought going, while he was in the hole, it would fizzle out. There, he could think. The top layer of the bare patch was dry, there were cracks in the earth. Not big ones, but he could see that the top most layer had curled around some of the edges. Maybe it was the heat of the summer that did it. In the middle was claw marks. Something had been trying to dig there. A dog? They had to be fresh markings, anything else would have faded with the winds and natural erosion. Albert almost started kicking at the dirt to see how much he could get off, but he thought that it would be disrespectful.
    The dipper, it would make a handy instrument in a pinch. He half walked, half jogged to get it. After a few minutes of scraping away a small indent in the dirt, he decided to make a better tool. Who else was going to be using the dipper for anything anyway. He got a rock that felt good in his hand and used it to flatten one side of the dipper, using the grave marker as an anvil. There, that worked a whole lot better, it even made getting the rocks out easier. He threw the dipper to the side when he felt the ground give way to something new.
    Cloth, it was cloth of some kind, he could feel something underneath that felt like sticks. The cloth was folded over, it had to be a wrapping. He found an edge and pulled. A few things happened in very quick succession in his mind. Sticks? What the hell was he thinking? He knew what it was and he thought it was sticks at first? The second made him stand and stumble a few steps back, the blanket wasn't very old. It had a very modern looking pattern woven into it.
    Albert stood there absently rubbing his hands up and down his pant legs. He had a choice, a very clear one and he knew it. Nothing weighed to one side or the other, it was up to him. He could just rebury whatever it was that he just found, do it in the most solemn and respectful manner he could. Just walk away after that and report it to somebody. They would want to know about this. Or, he could continue. He wished he had gloves, his mind was made up.
    It wasn't anything besides the callous disregard for his profession, his career, that made Albert continue. He would show somebody that he could still contribute. Yes, he didn't have anything to record his findings. Not even a sheet of paper and a pencil, but he had a mind. He could remember and he could lead somebody to the burial site. All Albert could think was that he wanted to be useful to somebody.
    Albert shook his head as he stood to pick up a stick. His tools would be a bent up old water dipper and a stick. He sent up a silent apology to nobody in particular then chuckled. He stopped when he was sure he heard somebody laughing along with him. Albert first thought of reasons why he started to see and hear things. He had been in isolation, a whole night sleeping and a morning trudging to where he was. That wasn't long, but considering what he had to go through to get there, it was isolated enough. He took his tools and headed back to “the dig site”.
    If Albert could think of all the times he saw a dead body, he would probably stop what he was doing and just get going on his way. Only once did he see an actual body, it was at a wake for his cousin he attended as a kid. The memory of that was mostly surreal. All the other times were the “dead” he saw on television. It didn't enter his mind, as he started to clear the dirt away, that he might see something he wasn't prepared for. From the small hole he already dug, he started removing dirt towards where he guessed the head was. One thing Albert did notice, the ground below the first few inches was moist. Some of it felt more like mud than dirt. He couldn't stop after he started, he was going to see what he would see.
    He cleared most of the dirt off the bundled wrapping of blankets. Grass was stuck to it, whoever it was had to been rolled into the grave and got all that grass stuck to him. Or her. Albert swiped his forearm across his forehead. The wrapping looked like those colourful Navajo weaves. Bright colours tried to show, but was dulled by the soil. Using his stick, he pulled away the edge he saw, the other edge was right there so he pulled that one away. There was more soil underneath that. He was sure that he felt something inside the blanket, but why would they wrap dirt around it? With the dipper, he brushed and scraped away until he could see what he was dealing with.
    The next layer had a ragged edge to it, it was a hide of some kind. Probably deer, but it was so mud-caked he couldn't tell. He could just see the fur. Biting his lower lip, he reached down and lifted it away, it flapped down onto the blanket, still, nothing he could see. The other side, he pulled and that fell away. A sharp breath forced its way into Albert's abdomen. He almost crawled backwards. There was a hand.
    It was very clearly a human hand, just dirty. Albert expected to find a pile of bones or just a lot of dirt. However, the hand he saw, with no other way to put it, looked like it belonged to somebody who died just a few minutes previous. It was dirty because it was underground, but it was pale underneath that. Whoever buried this person did so recently, maybe. That didn't explain the rocks that were still pretty difficult to get out. The earth on top of the body had settled over a very long time.
    There was more than one hide covering the body, Albert kept uncovering until finally he only had one more. The last one was covering the face. There was something new to his mind, only noticed because he was already used to the absence of bugs. He hadn't seen one since he got to the area. So he noticed the one lone ant that crawled out from underneath the hide. He watched it struggle up, out of the grave, and onto the marker. It was a small thing, if he was used to seeing them, he would barely notice it. He took a deep breath and reached down with his stick, he was going to move the last covering.
    Albert's eyes welled with tears. There were so many different things wrong with this whole situation, but none of them were hitting. All he saw was the sad face of a woman, it looked like she was sleeping. Her hair was matted to her head, like she was put into the ground right after dying a long hard fight against some sickness. Albert's shoulders bobbed up and down, he dropped his stick and ran his sleeve across his eyes.
    Albert looked up and it hit him that there were more marked graves. Some higher, some lower on the hill side, but they were definitively in a row with the treeline. Albert looked down at the woman's face again. He wanted to say he was sorry that he disturbed her. That if he could take it back and just go back home, he would. That's exactly what he would do, he would just pack up all his stuff and head back to Alberta. People wouldn't hear about these rocks, they would only come to dig them up.
    Before leaving though, Albert had to rebury the woman. It finally hit him, this wasn't a native woman, the bone structure was different. This was barely a woman, had to be a girl that was in her mid-teens. As he looked, he noticed that a bump formed on her cheek. It was a small bump, just a few millimeters across.  Albert knew it wasn't there a minute ago, he bent to take a closer look, another bump appeared beside it. The same size as the first, they looked like welts. Then another, and another appeared. Within a few seconds, her face was covered in welts, it was hard to look at her like that.
    Albert stood up, eyes wide, he took a step back and he saw a small black spot appear on her cheek. It had to have been the first welt to show up, a small ant popped out and crawled away. Her face began to bubble with activity, small black dots appearing all over her face. Then he noticed her hands were like that as well. Welts bursted, some with little black dots still burrowing their way to the surface. Then it was as if her skin exploded, no longer recognizable as a pretty girl, ants marched away from her exposed skin, what was left made Albert begin to scream in a high pitch as he turned and ran.
    The stick, that Albert used to prop the barbwire fence open, snapped when he accidentally kicked it. The pain of a long scratch along his leg brought him to his senses. He dropped to his knees and his lungs burned, he was gasping for air. He didn't want to look, but he had to. He turned and saw that he ran a good long distance without stopping, ran until he got hung up in the fence.
    The little hole that he had dug on the hill side was barely visible, but he could still make out the dark earth and a brightly coloured flap of blanket sticking out. That made him push himself up onto his feet and start to walk. He didn't care what was going to happen, but he was going to make it through the damn hole and to his truck. He would stop at the cabin, throw all his crap in and be gone as soon as that was done. Whatever was in the grave would be left for somebody else.
    Before making the trek through the hole, he still had the presence of mind to try and gather as much of his senses as he could. The vision of hands, covered in ragged and chewed flesh, springing out of the ground to keep him there forever didn't help. He began marching across the hole, there would be a climb at the far edge, but he would make that. By the time he reached half way across, he mind was circling back and circling back to seeing a human face boiling with welts, little black dots trying to get out. Unconsciously, in his addled state, Albert scrubbed at his own face, scratching at an itch that was never there.
    There was something that seemed to help him reach the edge of the hole. A little help that he sorely needed. It was a piece of trash that must have been blowing around. Something that was left from the scientists trying to pass the time, a single playing card with writing on it. It lay beside his trail, but he left it there.
    Albert wasn't sure he could make it to his truck when he managed to get the traction to pull himself out of the hole. He lay in the green grass for a minute before staggering to his feet. His mind was already starting to come back and that made him happy. He could, at least, try to stop the thoughts trying to invade. All he wanted was something to drink. His hands came away sticky as he used trees to pull himself up. Sap covered his hands up to his sleeves, he didn't care, he just wanted out. There was water in his truck.
    By the time Albert got back to his truck, his head was throbbing. His full canteen felt so heavy he was worried that he would drop it. He drank until an ice spike railed into his forehead. A sandwich, that he didn't think he would be able to eat, was half way gone. He was starving. He slammed the door and pulled the keys out from the ashtray. A minute later, he was turning his truck around.
    The sun was making very long shadows by the time Albert made it back to the cabin. The sun shone in through the kitchen window, through a window in the living room, and out onto the ground. Albert noticed this as he drove up to where he parked the day before. When his brakes squeaked, he could swear that a coyote howled at just that second. Albert shook his head and put the truck in park. It didn't take long to stuff everything inside the truck.
     There was one more thing though, he had to go see something in the cabin. There was all those records in the back room. They were the only real remnants he saw for himself. Everything else, left behind by the cabin's residents, were gone, either stolen or confiscated. That's what he figured anyway, when the people did it, it was looting, when the government did it, it was confiscating. He didn't want to take, he just wanted to see. He found his flashlight and checked to see if it worked.
    Albert opened the back room door and walked in, flashlight shining on broken records. He noticed he was humming that song from before. He was glad to be in a state of mind that let him do that. It was weird, what the hole did to scientists and their curiosity, it must have done the same for terror. What scared Albert seemed so far away. The records on the floor weren't anything remarkable. Just stuff from the sixties and seventies. Old country albums for the most part. The only record still intact was the one sitting in the old record player. Albert pointed his flashlight at it and cocked his head to read the label. He remembered the name of the song he was humming, there it was, written on the label.
    “Chewy, Chewy, The Oh-” Albert froze.
    Something forked into his brain and a fear that he never experienced before shot up his spine. It was worse than seeing what he saw in the grave. The thing that visited him in his dream was huddled somewhere in the room. Maybe under the old table. With its rotten grin, it was watching him and it wanted to hear some music. He knew if he saw it, he would lose his mind. Even the presence of the thing was enough to show him the horror of something that lived in the infinite darkness. Something that wanted him, it wanted to take him. Whatever it was, it writhed with insanity that covered its skin. It shimmered with scratching and itching nightmares that wanted to burrow into Albert. He scrambled out of the room and out the front door, he could hear his voice wanting to break into screams as he tried to catch his breath.
    With his mind almost gone, he forgot where he was, he just backed away from the front door. It was wide open, in his horror struck mind, it looked like the maw of some unnamed thing. Albert didn't notice his heels kicking the side of  the cinderblocks. A few quick steps back, trying to keep balance, he fell and hit his head on a rim. It left a bloody gash, he was lucky that it stopped bleeding while he was unconscious. Albert, with his mind overcome with the rotting and sickly horror that was toying with him, was trapped in his dreams with it. The thing seemed to pull the night sky over his unconscious body.
    Albert could only see blobs of black struggle their way out of the ground along a treeline. One of them had it easy, it was half uncovered. In the stark black of night, he could only imagine what they looked like. They were all wrapped in blankets with long strands of straw stretching off their coverings.  Only vague shapes that began their long and labourious lurch towards the one that had woken them up. In the pale moonlight, Albert could only see shapes that were vaguely human.
    They ignored the hole that was gouged in the earth, they floated across the sky from Albert's point of view. He was walking along with them, knowing he had to wake up before they got to the cabin. They made strange turns in the sky as he watched, they were following the road that was no longer there.
    Albert's head spun as he opened his eyes to see the night sky. He couldn't get to his feet, the best that he could do was roll onto his side and push with his legs. When he was underneath the truck door, he reached up and slapped at the handle. Hoping that he would be able to pull himself up. The effort to do that, to make the briefest of contact with the handle, was too much. Dizziness whirled through his head so hard that he fell forward and his head hit the door. There was laughing coming from somewhere, Albert fell on his face and passed out again.
    The putrescent mob made their slow march through the trees. Albert couldn't tell how far away they were from the cabin though.. Coldness washed over him when he realized that they were more than half way. The things left the road, he could hear the soft splash as they trudged through the water. The dead wretches crested a hill and panic rattled Albert. He tried to make himself wake up.
    It worked, Albert took stock of the stars again, they were different. They moved, more than a couple hours since he last passed out. There was definite laughter coming from somewhere, nearly a shrillish giggling that only brought thoughts of a never ending darkness. A darkness that would press into his head if he stayed for much longer. Albert sat up, he pressed his eyes closed and almost went down on his side. A few inarticulate sounds came out of his mouth, he realized he was trying to swear. Trying to work himself up, it didn't work, he fell over on his side and down into the nightmare again.
    Albert saw that they were topping the last hill, a few more turns along the road and they would be  within eyesight of the cabin. Would they see an unconscious Albert laying on the ground beside his pickup? Albert began to sprint towards the cabin, ahead of the things. He didn't know if it would help. He gagged and turned, they were right behind him. Albert turned back and looked, he saw a figure in the dim light trying to crawl. Seeing that made his mind sway to one side and he noticed he was on his hands and knees beside his truck. He knew he shouldn't, it would make his head spin, but he had to turn and look. All he saw was the darkness of the trees. The things coming were too dark to make out against the background.
    The odour he should have smelled at the grave site, but didn't, he finally noticed. It was something long gone and putrid now. Something that belonged in the earth, not shuffling its way up the road. Albert reached up to see if he could make it to his feet, one last shot. His hand found the top of the hood and he pulled. It was no good. The sound of a long, dragged step across the dirt road made him move fast enough. He crawled into his tent and fumbled the zipper closed.
    Under his blankets, Albert lay perfectly still.

    Shuffle. Closer.

    Shuffle. Closer.

    Shuffle. Closer.

    Something brushed the side of the tent. Albert started to scream.

******************************************
From the BC Provincial Chronicler

The Public Health Agency of Canada had quarantined a pair of hunters who came upon a grisly site last Monday. The hunters, who wish to remain anonymous, found what they thought was a looter's camp site. A pick-up truck, which was loaded with surveyors equipment, and a tent set up beside an abandoned cabin. In the tent, they found the remains of one Albert Hughston. When authorities arrived on scene, they immediately called in PHAC. Although the disease has been largely eradicated all over the globe, it would appear that Albert Hughston had somehow contracted the Smallpox disease and died at his camp.

PHAC is reassuring the Canadian public that this is a very rare case. The quarantine of the hunters is only a precautionary measure and done according to WHO protocol.
******************************************

The End.

Author's Note

Version 3: Not much to add really. Little fixes that made it flow a little better. I got 1 more version to do I think because of the thing with "He was standing" and "He stood"... stuff like that. Plus, there's a couple places where my tongue got tied reading. I want to fix those. I scroll up and I can see things I can fix in EVERY paragraph. People might wonder why I get lazy to write, it's not that part, it's looking back and seeing what I could fix. I'm not a perfectionist, but I like to see coherent structure.
Like this, for example, and I'll show you how I drive myself crazy every time I read through stuff I wrote.
--------------------------------------------
A few more kilometers up the road, he remembered seeing a house with vehicles still parked out in front. On the map, that place was off reservation land so people were probably still living there. The house up there, on reservation land, would have been abandoned for a long while, but it would be a good place to leave his gear. Instead of just leaving here beside the road, in his tent, and hope people didn't swing by and haul it away. With that thought, he decided to make for the empty house.
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In this 1 paragraph is 3 separate places. Where he's parked, the house where there are cars parked in front. That place is off rez land so there much be people living there. Unlike where the glint is coming from, that "place" is on rez land so all the natives who were living there are probably gone. And there is the place he is parked.

So I want to condense the writing I think is bad and expand where it's not so clear. Like this sentence, to me it makes sense, but when I'm reading it out loud, it seems vague and unnecessarily long.
"A few more kilometers up the road, he remembered seeing a house with vehicles still parked out in front. "
It is supposed to fit better with the rest of the paragraph so I need to strip out the main elements.. 2 houses, 1 on and 1 off rez land. The one that is off has people, maybe. The one on is probably empty and would/might be a good place to store his gear. BUT... in the last 2 sentences of the previous paragraph, I already mentioned that it should be empty. So I can take out a bunch and hope, with all my might, that people remember that fact. BUT... since the entire story is already about all the natives gone, maybe I could just say it's on rez land and would be a good place to store his gear because it's probably empty. I mean, he sees it on his map. And just looking ^ up there in this browser window, I can see mapmapmapmapmap... too clustered with maps so I'll have to fix the previous paragraph.

Now, imagine thinking like this about EVERY damn paragraph in the story and you'll be in the same ballpark as my insanity. lol
Though, I do like the dialogue between Albert and Lester [my notes say "Lester Harrigan?!? Seriously?!? LOL" with an arrow pointing at it, well, I thought it was a funny name, but left it in anyway] mostly because Albert is dialogue as I figure people would write in their own stories. Lester actually talks like we do. I left all the blatant grammar mistakes inside his quotes because, well, it reads better to me. I should record that part so you can hear my Lester voice.

As I read through the Ft Loughner (Lori Loughlin was probably stuck in my head when I thought of that weird name) I sounded more like the guy from "The Spirit of The West" radio show. Which is the same one I read StoryTeller in.

Well, I think I'll leave the DVD commentary for the 4th version with is not on my planner for a while. I want to fix up 'Loss of Spirit II' and get that back up on the site. I already did most of it with a good twice over. And broke it up into a bunch of chapters so it's going to be a short book instead of a "short" story.

You folks take er easy, eh!

Version 2: Forgot to add notes.

Version1: There, all done. Now you got to understand that this is almost (except for the first few paragraphs) raw writing. I'm going to spend a while going through it back and forth fixing errors. But, since it is what broke a writer's block (AKA: Kevin being lazy to write) I'll leave it as is for a couple days.

Reviews

[Norma M Sutton]

OK . . . THAT was creepy. And it's good, it sucks you in and won't turn loose until it's done with you.