In the Deadlands (31 page)

Some are big men, some are small men,

some are children.

                                       
They're all kinds of twisted

                                       
shapes.

This is where they were supposed to have found the lost 31st patrol.

                                       
About twenty feet inside

                                       
the tortured rocks.

i suppose they must have wandered around until they ran out of water.

Then they sat down to die.

They say that when a patrol gets lost in the deadlands it's because they tried to cross the tortured rocks. Once they go in, they don't come out.

They get confused

and can't tell which way they came.

They could be twenty feet from the edge of the tortured rocks

and not know it.

                                       
The rocks are closer now.

Shouldn't look at them for too long.

They start to remind you

                                       
of things,

                                       
or people.

                                       
Obscene shapes

                                       
doing obscene things.

                                       
i once saw a rock that looked

                                       
like

                                       
two people embracing.

                                       
A man and a woman?

                                       
Two men?

                                       
Disturbing.

Disturbing because,

reminded me of two men i once knew. They had disappeared in the deadlands.

                                       
tortured

                                       
twisted

                                       
frozen

                                       
petrified

i looked away.

Above,

the sun is a pinpoint of white hate

                                       
no heat

                                       
no warmth

In the deadlands the sun radiates death.

We're closer to the tortured rocks now. i can see why you would lose your way.

They grow right out of the deadlands floor.

                                       
writhing

                                       
scarred with blacks and reds.

You can't see more than ten feet into the tortured rocks.

You can't walk more than ten feet in a straight line into the tortured rocks.

After twenty feet or so, you're lost.

                                       
Funny shapes among those rocks.

                                       
There's one that looks like Pa.

                                       
Could be.

                                       
The deadlands swallowed up his
                                       
grave when it took the house.

In the Deadlands

i guess the deadlands gets to you after a while.

They say that there are sand dunes inside the tortured rocks.

The wind blows the sand into the deadlands,

and it's caught by the tortured rocks.

They say that the rocks have been carved out by the persistent grinding of the wind, and that's what gives them their agonized shapes.

They're about a hundred yards away.

It's the commander's intention to go into the rocks this time.

Dumb.

There is a different set of God in the deadlands.

                                       
We're closer to the rocks now.

                                       
We can see how the potholes
                                       
and pits become deeper and
                                       
more jagged.
                                       
We can see how the rocks grow
                                       
out of the deadlands floor.

All the ruts lead to the tortured rocks.

Nobody knows if the tortured rocks cover only a few acres, or hundreds of miles.

There may even be several areas of tortured rocks.

Nobody knows.

You can't map the deadlands.

One patrol thought that the rocks were only a few acres, or at most a few miles.

They decided to walk around them.

We are still waiting for them to return.

                                       
That was twenty years ago.

We are going into the rocks now.

The commander has a length of cord. Every ten feet there is a knot in it.

He loops one end of it around a rock.

                                       
The rock is grotesque

                                             
hunched over
                                             
deformed
                                             
twisted

The commander loops the cord around it

and we go in.

Clambering over one another,

stumbling through agonized

shapes of stones,

shards of souls,

               
shattered,

               
frozen

in a writhe

of torment.

Across crevices of fear and

               
through corridors of pain

The wind picks up in intensity.

It whistles through the rocks.

               
It shrieks.
               
The rocks scrape at the entrails of the wind

                                                   
and it shrieks.

The sun falls into the night behind us.

                                       
Darkness.

                                       
Only the whistling of the wind,

                                                       
the moaning
                                                       
of an injured beast,

We sit in a circle.

The light is in the center, a silent beacon

slowly revolving

casting agonized shadows

                                       
of the rocks closest to us

onto the twisted souls of the ones farther back.

                                       
Darkness beyond.

There is little talk.

A few of the men smoke

                                       
cigarettes like tiny eyes in the night.

We are five hundred yards into the tortured rocks.

We could be twenty miles.

Or twenty feet.

It's all the same.

                                       
The wind subsides

                                       
and changes

                                       
and picks up a new note,

                                       
a mournful note,

                                       
a keening,

                                       
a wail of something...

                                                       
something
                                                       
large
                                                       
and watchful,
                                                       
waiting,

                                                       
biding its time,
                                                       
crooning to itself.

The ground is hard and uneven.

Sleep is troubled.

In the Deadlands

We are coming out now.

Thank your own private gods.

According to the cord we are five hundred yards into the tortured rocks.

And now we are coming out.

The commander winds up the cord as he walks.

Every ten feet he winds up another knot. We will wind up a total of one hundred and fifty knots.

We struggle back the way we came, following the twistings and turnings of the aching cord,

clambering over one another,

                                       
sliding and scraping,

pathetic in our eagerness to escape.

The rocks are red and yellow and black.

They arch and twist with painful frenzy.

They reach out with sharp plucking edges

to scratch and claw

                                       
the tender flesh.

The floor

is uneven and gouged.

Ridges protrude

at obscene angles,

and crevices sink away into bottomless abysses.

                                             
and i can feel
                                             
a warm hungry presence.
                                             
an enveloping
                                             
throbbing
                                             
flood of. . .

The commander winds up thirty knots.

We go on

in wordless agony.

The only sound

is the scraping of boots

across rock,

and wordless

               
grunts of pain

as rock scrapes across flesh.

The sound is hideous.

Like a giant crab scrabbling across rocks and gasping for breath with deep rasping sighs.

Far off

in the distance,

i can hear him

clicking his mandibles

and tapping at the rocks with his claws

               
as he comes clabbering after us.

                                             
A cold taste of lonely. . .
                                             
a sense of longing
                                             
For that hot throbbing
                                             
presence.

The commander winds up sixty knots.

We stumble and stagger—

the floor catches and grabs

and tries to trip.

The rocks turn and twist.

They scratch

and cut

and slash.

The sun hates with a fury,

The orb has become an eye of sleeting agony.

a white stare of deadly bright.