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Cobbler's Dell, Idaho; March 16, 2016

The bearded stranger turned his attention from the carcass of the wolf-like creature, and stared at Therese with intense yellow eyes. The pot-induced clouds that had numbed her mind panicked and vanished like convent girls at a furcon, and she was on her feet and running towards the abandoned town of Cobbler's Dell, seconds before the angry outburst, "Bitch! I'll kill you" reached her ears.

Holy shit!, what kind of crazy hillbilly calls his pet wolf "Michael?"

Too many smokes and too much bourbon had not done her stamina any good and she coughed, stumbled and wheezed her way towards the most promising cluster of derelict buildings. The stranger was still yelling at her but had not yet taken up pursuit, like he was giving her a headstart.

"Hide all you want, I'll find ya!", she heard him yell. "Oh, I'll find you alright."

_Shelter! _

It was a two-story house, built from stone and wood. The door was long gone and empty window frames followed the panting journalist like hollow eye sockets, but it provided a hiding place from the crazy hick. Brock had asked her to bring him a printable story, but now it seemed that the obvious headline would be:

_ Denver journalist attacked by strange hillbilly and his mutant mutt. _

Therese flung herself through the door and stumbled into a nineteen-forties style ante room. She registered broken furniture, cooking stove and fireplace, before the sound of approaching footsteps reached her, and she knew that someone waited just outside the open door.

Shit! how could he find me this quick?

A flight of stairs led to the second floor, where a landing at the top of the stairs would give her a vantage point to defend herself with the rifle. Funny, she had bought the Tikka Whitetail with the obsessive intention of tracking down Sophie's killer, but now the idea of hammering a round of thirty-ought-six into a fellow human seemed distant and dreamlike, even in self-defense. She leaped up the stairs in two jumps, but when her foot landed on the seventh step, the wood gave way under her and she lost her balance. With one leg stuck in the hole and the other in midair she slammed, stomach first into the stairs. A terrible fire shot through her midriff, and she felt something tear inside her.

Oh God, Can't breathe.

She yanked her leg loose from the broken step and crawled the last few steps to the landing, hands and knees and heaving for air. She propped herself up, back against the wall and slid a cartridge into the chamber. Come on, motherfucker! I'll put one between your eyes.

The stranger approached the flight of stairs, then he stopped and pointed the head of his axe at Therese; she had taken something precious from him and he was desperate enough to kill in return. Tears streamed from his yellow eyes and left trails behind, where they dissolved the grime on his face. "Mikey!" she heard him whisper and he climbed the stairs in grim determination. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears and the cabin seemed to be cast in an impenetrable darkness. Although she could see bright daylight outside the window, it felt like the sun only probed a few golden fingers into the house.

_ I'm passing out, that's why. _

The Tikka broke the silence as it went off in her hand almost by its own will. The bullet hit the stranger in the chest, and sprayed a geyser of gore from the exit wound in his back. The impact almost lifted him off his feet and sent him spiralling down the stairs. He reached out for anything solid to hold on to, but his fingers caught only whisps of mountain air and he landed on his back in a loud crash of broken wood and splintered bones. Moments passed while Therese's vision slowly returned. She struggled to breathe; _No passing out, not now. _

The stranger lay on his back at the foot of the stairs, one leg still resting on the lower steps. He made a series of retching noises and kept twitching his fingers aimlessly. "Oh God", she heard him say. "Oh, God", then the retching noises returned.

Did I even pull the trigger? Therese had no recollection of aiming at the stranger or pulling the trigger, but her trigger-finger held on to the memory for her

- yes you did; you pulled the trigger and killed that guy.

Therese tried to stand up, but bolts of pain in her chest turned the staircase into a nauseating merry-go-round of pulsating lights, and she knew that she would have to climb or crawl over the dying man in order to leave the house. She dared not move or approach him out of fear that he might reach out and grasp at her ankle. Her blouse was sticky and when she looked down, she was covered in blood. She unbuttoned the blouse and a white bit of broken rib poked through an open wound in her chest.

Oh man, I'm so screwed.

The wounded stranger convulsed in a series of spasms, then stopped moving. Therese waited a few minutes, composing herself enough to begin the endless journey down the stairs. Bleeding from the open wound and knowing that she had to get outside and call Brock, she moved from the safety of the landing and began descending the stairs on all fours.She stopped at the third step and poked the stranger's foot with her boot, and when there was no reaction, she inched her way across the warm corpse. She felt a short pang of pity as she rested all her body weight on his stomach trying to scramble free. I hope I don't hurt him or anything, but the realisation that the man had meant to kill her made her blank out feelings of pity or revulsion and push herself forward and away from the corpse. Outside, Therese picked up a length of rusty piping and got to her feet, using the pipe as a walking stick. Just get going, one step takes the next, and she worked her way towards the spot where Brock had dropped her off. Ceour D'alene was four hours away in a steady stride, but she knew that she wouldn't last half a mile with a busted lung.

Gotta call Brock, gotta get to a hospital.

She reached for the phone that Brock had given her, and it flashed between one and a half and two lines of reception. Thank God for the bedouins! She punched in his number and waited for the ring-tone, but the speaker only gave off a steady stream of static.

Dammit! I can't hear it ringing.

She began to walk towards a barren ridge, maybe reception was better up there. As she moved closer, the signal slowly crept up to a comfortable two, then two and a half. She climbed the sloping ridge, which looked circular like the uneven edge of a broken clay bowl. Then she was at the top, looking down into a shallow crater. A nine foot monolith of an almost crystalline type of rock stood erect in the middle. The top part was flatter than the rest of the column, and it looked like a large nail hammered directly into the ground.

_So that's why they call it the Cobbler's Dell - this thing must have been here for hundreds of years. _

Therese checked the reception and called Brock again. Reception rested at three lines out of five, but all she heard was a whining drone of static noise, like a choir of a million tiny clicks wailing out of sync.

_ Shut the fuck up and give me Brock!_

She moved towards the monolith, and the static only got louder and the reception signal grew stronger, until the noise broke into a cacaphony of otherworldly shrieks, hisses and clicks.It's the rock, she realised. It had been the rock all the time; Brocks military-grade piece of crap phone had picked up on some signal radiating from the mineral rock, and not a 4G signal. I'm so dead. There was no way to get to Ceour D'alene on foot, and Brock's precious bedouin telephone was as useless as a dead frog. She slumped to the ground and crawled into the shade provided by the silent monolith.

Cobbler's Dell, Idaho; March 17, 2016

"Hey lady! I wouldn't sleep there if I was you."

An unexpected voice brought Therese back into confusion. I must have dozed off. She was on her side and resting uncomfortably on the course rubble. She sat up and looked around; the sun was up and not quite at zenith. _How long have I been out? _

A black man in his late twenties looked at her from his jeep some thirty feet away. He got out of the car and took out what looked like a portable tape deck with an attached microphone from the passenger seat. "Are you alright?" He approached her slowly while pointing the microphone at her.

Am I alright? She thought. I've got a busted ribcage and a punctured lung, oh and I'm dying too. Her rib still hurt like a bitch, but breathing was painless. Sleeping must have done me some good."What time is it?"

The black man looked at his wristwatch, "almost ten thirty."

Therese calculated that she'd been out cold for most of a day. She was still hurting from sleeping on the bare rocks, but she didn't feel like she was dying anymore. Vague flashes of last nights dreams bubbled to the mind's surface; dreams about christmas and dancing around a tree. It had been so dark and the christmas tree was on fire, burning slowly like a nine-foot candle. She shook the memories from her mind, yesterday had been one motherfucker of a day.

"I think I have a broken rib", she said.

"I can take a look at it if you want."

Therese hesitated. She knew that she was in need of medical help, but she was not going to let any random stranger with a boom-box fondle her breasts.

"Trust me," he grinned. " - I'm a med-student".

"So what's up with the microphone? You're doing medical rap, or what?"

He burst out in a hearty laugh. "Jeez,lady! Can't you see a black dude without thinking that he's a rap artist?"

"Cobbler's Dell is not the first place you expect to meet a med-student with a boom box".

"The name is Ian," he flashed a toothy smile at Therese. "Ian Parks. I'm a medical student at Idaho State, and this here baby," he patted the recording device, "-is a Geiger counter. It measures radio-activity, and that mineral rock you've been using for a pillow last night is giving off a signal."

To her surprise, getting up was almost painless and she walked to Ian's car with little effort. She unbuttoned her blouse and allowed him to examine her chest.

"You're pretty bruised up, alright, but I don't think that you have any broken ribs."

"And you can tell all that, without an X-ray or anything? Last night I had a rib sticking right out."

"Trust me, if you had a broken rib poking out, you'd have cursed me all the way back to Ceour D'alene when I touched it".

Therese studied her chest. There were clear angry bruises where she had slammed herself against the broken stairs, but no trace of the gaping wound from yesterday, only a few cuts which explained the bloodstains on her blouse.I must have been more fucked up from smoking weed, than I thought.

Ian had short curly hair and sported a goatee. He had kind eyes and a friendly smile and seemed like someone you wouldn't mind spending time with. He looked to be around twenty nine - four years younger than herself. "You've got very gentle hands," she said as she buttoned her blouse back up. "You'll make a great doctor."

"Thanks, but what are you doing out here anyway?" asked Ian.

Yesterday's events returned in vivid details: the wolf-like creature, the wild-eyed stranger and the sight of him crashing down the stairs with half of his back blown away.

"I think I might have killed someone."

Ian took a step back "You're on the lam from the cops?"

"No, right here, back among the ruins. He came at me with an axe and I think I remember shooting him."

They drove the half mile back to Cobbler's Dell in Ian's jeep. The ruined houses looked just like they did the day before and the two-story house with the dead stranger stood as she had left it, dark windows still gazing at the rare visitors.

"So, where exactly did you shoot the dead guy?" Ian's voice called out from inside the house.

"It's right by the stairs", she shouted back.

"There's nothing here!"

Terese entered the ante room and saw Ian by the staircase. He was alone, and standing right where the dead guy should be stretched out. Ian shrugged, "I Don't see nothing."

"Maybe he was only unconscious and crawled back out to die?"

"Well, he must have called the Jan-Pro cleaners before he left," said Ian, "cause there ain't any trace of blood either."

"I was up there", Therese began to climb the stairs. The boards creaked under her, but this time they held her weight. "That's the hole I fell through", she pointed at the broken step. "Then I sat right there, bleeding my lungs out."

Ian climbed the stairs and flashed his light at the wooden floor. "There's dried blood up here alright."

"Thank God! I thought I was going crazy."

The situation was the same by the clearing in the woods: where Therese had expected to find a carcass of an unusually large wolf, she and Ian found only faint traces of movement in the undergrowth, but no dead animal, and her backpacks were untouched by hand or claw.

"Maybe it's been eaten by other wild animals", said Therese. "Either that or..."

"Or?"

"Or it got back up, like the man who chased me."

"Lady, dead people and wolves don't just get up and walk away" said Ian. "I think you've been reading too much Steven King."

"I don't know. It felt so real"

"Listen, are you on some sort of medication that could make you - see things?"

Therese sighed. "Alright, I'd been smoking pot." She reached into the backpack and took out the box of tampons. Ian held one of the reefers to his nose and his face contracted in a grimace.

"Sweet Jeesus! Don't smoke that shit; nobody knows what they've put in it to spike it up. [**]"

He handed the box back."Lady, you've been hallucinating like crazy -that's all."

"The pot is for medicinal purposes", said Therese. "I've got high inter-ocular pressure."

"You should use proper meds for that, prescribed by someone who actually knows what they're doing, not by some stoner dude from your local headshop."

"I have eyedrops somewhere," Therese rummaged through the backpack and her fingers found the small plastic vial.

"Latanoprost," Ian nodded. "You gotta keep that in the fridge".

"There ain't any fridges out here, so... I smoke weed."

Ian laughed out loud, "That is one lame-ass excuse! Toke up all you want Lady, but don't give up on the drops."

---

_Ian Parks, a twenty-nine year old medical student from Boise had driven to Cobbler's Dell to undertake an interim project. Testing equipment for measuring radon gas would net him $5000, almost enough to pay for his tuition fees. I've had the pleasure of interviewing Ian several times during the research for this story, and he explained how it takes the instrument a few days to get enough radon sample for an accurate reading, preferably in an undisturbed place. The mine in Cobbler's Dell had not seen a whole lot of action for the past seventy years, and seemed the perfect choice for setting up the equipment. _

- - -

Ian shone a Nitecore flashlight into the open maw of the mine, from where the cart-rail protruded like a rusty tongue.

"I'm not sure that I want to do this, Ian", said Therese with some hesitation. Ian seemed okay, but she did not know him well enough to follow him blindly into some dark mining shaft."

"Come on, we'll only need to go in a couple of hundred feet to set the detector up."

Together they followed the iron tracks that had once transported ore to the smelting ovens outside. One hundred years ago, this place had been alive and thriving with silver miners, their families and their lives. Then, thirty years later in 1946, an unknown miner turned off his carbide lamp and left Cobbler's Dell behind as the last remaining person.

Therese and Ian followed the trails, until they reached a cul-de-sac around 1000 ft from the entrance. Ian held his flashlight high and let it shine on some fifteen mining trolleys that were parked here. The trolleys were filled with fist-sized rocks in various hues of grey. Therese took one in her hand; it was heavier than she had expected and the surface had a cool metallic gleam to it. Stripes of dark blue ran through the rock in several places.

"I think it's silver ore", beamed Ian. "With this kind of dough, I could pay my way through med-school." He took a few rocks from the trolley and tried to fit them into his coat pockets.

"But it's gotta belong to someone."

"It's been standing around for seventy years; nobody cares anymore. Grab a few, I'm heading back to Coeur D'Alene to have them analysed."

Back outside, Ian jumped into the jeep and started the engine. "Wanna come?" Therese was tempted to join him, just to avoid any more surprises with teeth, claws or axes, but Ian's words had calmed her, and she relaxed in the knowledge that the things she experienced the day before were all down to alcohol withdrawal symptoms - and killer weed.

"I'll be alright", she said. "Gotta get on with the feature-story."

---

Cobbler's Dell had been a community of more than hundred people and twenty houses. Built in the late nineteenth century, the town saw a steady population until circa 1920. Then little by little, the town depopulated until the late forties, where someone shut their front door behind them, and left the town in the care of random hikers, who would seek shelter for the night before moving on to their destination.

- - -

Therese visited a small chapel with panelled windows. Ten rows of pews could seat roughly eighty people - almost the entire town. A book of psalms still rested on a broken calliope that had once provided music for the sermons, and a large, illustrated bible in three volumes lay on the pulpit. The chapel was in competition with the neighbouring school building about having the most impressive and loud bell. The chapel won in size, the school in usage, since the school bell rang every day - the chapel only sundays. A few hundred feet from the school, Therese stopped in front of another of the two story buildings that was the most common structure in Cobbler's Dell. But this one was in much better condition than the rest, and the windows had been recently cleaned. She took a deep breath and cocked the Tikka; so far the town had thrown wolves and axe-men at her, and if the place held any more deadly surprises, she was all prepared for them.

"Anyone home?"

Therese felt awkward calling out in a place that had been abandoned for more than seventy years, but someone had taken their time to clean the windows, and that someone might still be around. The house was almost similar to the one she had hid in the day before, but in better condition and most bits of broken furniture had been cleared out. Upstairs, the single room was furnished with a table and two chairs, shelves and drawers, and two adjacent camping beds.

She halfway expected to find mining equipment, but there was none to be found; no hatches or helmets, only spare hiking boots, camping gear and piles of books. Whoever lived here had time on their hands to read. Two large backpacks rested on the floor next to the desk, one of which was neatly packed and the leather straps were fastened. The other back-back was open, with a toothbrush and a bag of instant cocoa halfway sticking out.

A small desk stood by the window, and here she found a metal mug that contained dried remains of cocoa, resting on the front page of a paperback novel. The drawer in the desk was broken and didn't close properly all the way. Therese tugged at the knob and the drawer slid open. Inside she found a few pencils and a handful of loose sketches. The paper was fresh and one of the visitors must have drawn them recently. The motifs were mainly course sketches of some of the aged mining equipment found all around Cobbler's Dell.

| | |

The shelves contained only a single object -a picture in a glass frame. It was a colour photo of the bearded stranger. It was hard to believe that it was the same man, as he was all smiles and holding hands with another man on a sunny beach. He looked to be in his mid thirties, the other man a few years younger. They wore shorts and T-shirts with psychedelic patterns in loud colours, and looked comfortable enough around their photographer to allow their love for each other to shine through. The man looked happy and relaxed, and not like someone who would stalk random strangers at axe-point only months later.

She was about to put the photo back down when something felt out of place. It was the same guy, no question about it, but there was something about the way that he looked into the camera. The photo showed him having blue eyes, not yellow. Someone had written a few words on the reverse of the photo that read.

_Fort Walton, july 2015. _

_Longing to be with you in C.D. _

Love you,

_Michael. _

- to be continued -

Follow link to play the soundtrack for this part:

https://www.sofurry.com/view/1000408

Author's Notes[** The observation is based on my conversations with Ian Parks. I have since spoken with the owners of the Budding Prospects Dispensary, and they insist that their products are all natural, and have not been spiked or tampered with for additional potency.]