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Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see. _________ Edgar Allan Poe, "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether"

In August of 2013, Richard James "Ricky Jack" Lynch escaped from Mount Olive Correctional Complex, West Virginia, in a strange incident which, officially, was the result of confusion when a rabid bear attacked a work camp Lynch had been assigned to. He was never seen again, presumed dead by the claws of the unfortunate creature that attacked him. In his time at MOCC, he had been known to the brass there as being unstable and unpredictable - but years before, he had been noteworthy for something else entirely. On the night of October 16th, 2008, Lynch's cellmate, Lee Roy Howe, a big ruffian of a man easily recognizable by the large tattoo under his right calling himself Mercer County Robin Hood, had hung himself after receiving a visitor. This visitor was single man who had, the guards remembered, and camera footage showed, dressed in an unusual, dated fashion - a greenish-blue suit with matching pants and trilby. It was later proven, that this man, whomever he was, used an alias: his real identity has never been confirmed. Lynch, naturally, was brought in for questioning. Over a period of two days, Lynch told the investigators a long, rambling story, which would have been almost immediately discounted had it not been for the personal intervention of State Senator Archibald Lightfoot by way of his respected attorney, Lorenzito Sandoro, Esq. Lightfoot's motives for doing so were ostensibly because of the problem of prison suicide - a good vote-getter, one could say - but there have been whispers then, and now, that he had an ulterior motive, which, whatever it was, never exactly came to light, although some said it was a personal favor to a valued constituent of his. At any rate, the excitement of the presidential election that year soon made a potential scandal conveniently vanish, and the incident was quickly forgotten...by most people, anyhow. But as it turns out, the testimony that Ricky Jack Lynch delivered was very strange indeed. It appears that in the weeks preceding Howe's suicide, he had been telling Lynch increasingly bizarre, luridly grotesque tales of "folk out in Boone County, people who ain't people n'more, changed people," who were once men, but had evidently transformed into something else. Some of the details Lynch even refused to repeat for being so evidently gruesome. Howe went on to say that "foolish folk, city folk" had taken to searching out these man-creatures in the same way they had been trying for years to capture the Moth Man up in Point Pleasant, calling these half-man, half-beast creatures_Sheepsquatch_, probably corresponding to the celebrated White Things that are familiar to many who know West Virginia folklore. On this he did not, would not, elaborate. But he made it clear to Lynch - with whom it was established he had an intense, semi-sexual relationship - that Howe should not have known this, but found out through accidental means "out huntin that way." And - when asked why Lynch never asked Howe to stop, or ask for details, he went on record, without hesitation, saying: "He a big man. Y'ain't tell no big man like em ta shut up." Dissatisfied, but with nowhere else to proceed, the case was closed and, with Lightfoot's influence, the testimony as presented was entered into the record. It was concluded by the investigatory board that Howe was possessed of an obviously disturbed mind, and that his tales to Lynch were but prelude and excuse to kill himself. This has never explained who the visitor was which called on Howe the day before his suicide - although he seemed to have the proper identification at the time, no one could ever track the man down or definitively identify who he was. It was suggested that he brought news that if Howe ever got out - he was due for release in April, 2011 - he wouldn't last long, because he was a known snitch in Princeton-area meth labs...but being a contact visit, no guards or even inmates overheard what was said between them. Now, it will never be known. Of note, however, was a strange comment, written down on a memo in the prepared dossier which still sits, forgotten in Mount Olive's archives: "Man had strange smile. Guard quote: 'You don't forget a smile like that.' Was not friendly. 'Like a dog when it's snarling' - showing teeth - not friendly." The underline on the last two words is very thick. But the case was closed, and was never brought up again, even when Ricky Jack Lynch escaped - and vanished - some years later. Yet questions remained - uneasy questions, questions of the type that seem to appear in West Virginia, Appalachia, the mountains, with disconcerting regularity, and, just as soon and just as regularly, disappear as the same: Who - or perhaps really what - made Lee Roy Howe kill himself? And what of Howe's insistence that there were - things in Boone County, creatures that once were men, but somehow became something else? Are the two connected? And - is there, it needs to be said, a link between Howe's unhinged, pre-suicidal ramblings, and the very real legends of misshapen, shambling, leucistic creatures that prowl the wild hollers of the Kanawha Valley? Some have dared to make a connection with the unsolved cold case of Derrick Rhodes, a WVU alum who went missing sometime about a year later in October, 2007. Still others have been gullible enough to dump it in books on West Virginia cryptids and therefore lumping these things, these monsters, these White Things in the same murky category as Mothman or the Flatwoods Monster. But it seems theatrical, not to say a little goofy, to address this very real situation with sensationalist headings like What Lurks In Boone County? - a whole chapter dedicated to it, too, right up there with the Greenbrier Ghost and the Moon-Eyed People, as if there were a holy canon of West Virginia spookiness. Setting aside this, however, one still asks: what lurks - indeed? The truth is too often stranger, too often weirder, than paltry fiction. But the truth awaits, even if so few people will want to actually know it, actually grasp it - but - if only you know where to look. And Derrick Rhodes learned that truth, too - it is how he vanished. His picture was posted on MySpace and then Facebook and WCHS for a time: there he was, cute, cubby Derrick, with his chipmunk cheeks and big brown eyes and goofy smile and Mountaineers cap, over and over - but he was never to be seen again. Yet do not people disappear all the time? What would make Derrick Rhodes so different? A white boy vanished into the West Virginia hills - hasn't this story been told before? Of course it has...and it will surely be told again. For it is certainly true that people mysteriously vanish in the United States with astonishing regularity - it is certainly true that Appalachia itself, its natural magnificence at once both majestic and yet tameless, is one of those places on the North American continent that is so exquisitely suited for people to be here one day, and then gone, the next. There are vast forests that have grown back in a delirious vengeance, year after year, after the mountains were reduced to hideous Moonscapes by the ravaging timbermen all those decades ago - they have burst back forth like the oaks of Cornwall as in the misty prophecies of Merlin, whose Celtic people toiled in the tinmines of Britannia ere they toiled in the coalmines of Kentucky, Tennessee, the Virginias. And these seas of woods - sugar maple that burns aflame brilliant scarlet come Autumn, the soft and wistful white pine that stands watch in greenery all Winter, the dogwoods that herald Spring - everywhere one goes, they make perfect places to hide...or for other things to hide instead. So what does lurk out that way, the places where few go, where season by season people die and leave their houses to let, such that Nature reclaims what is naturally hers - what does lurk, what is the truth? Derrick Rhodes found out this truth, one October night. West Virginia around October - Hallowe'en - cloaks itself with an eldritch and primeval majesty: every forest benighted with phantom things that lurk by every shadowy tree. All the melancholy places - the overgrown railroad tracks, the enigmatic shacks with the sad, staring windows - shudder under the burden of a dark energy, and the imagination of the season makes the gathered crows in the rolling fields leer threateningly at passing strangers, and the coffins in the lonesome graveyards seem noisome and unquiet to the overactive ear. _ Country roads_, take me home - voices a million strong will join the hard sunlight of the glorious sunny Saturdays in the Fall, echoing sonorous all over Morgantown, in every bar and dive and diner and tailgate from Parkersburg down to Milton, back to Lewisburg and crisscrossing to Wheeling. But what did John Denver know about those country roads - when it grew dark? An old dirt run where elderly hounds bay at the sound of a rattling diesel truck in the daytime, the tumbling squeals of children playing around the great druids planted by their great-grandfathers, surrounded by Fall trees of golds and crimsons with the clear light of the afternoon - becomes a place where terror lurks just beyond perception, shadows crawling alive amidst the grotesque caricatures of the starlit wood. For the materialist and the supernaturalist and the God-fearing man, each, there is something to fear, there is something to make to pulse quicken and the eyes dilate. Down these darkened paths one's whole world is the car, the truck: it is the chariot, the faithful steed - the gauges and the clock are foreign to the fulgent stars outside but they are closer, they are warmer, whatever color they radiate they still talk to the driver, a one-way conversation, for surely no radio will catch a signal out this way - and the vents blows hot, for where there is heat there is comfort, but where there is warmth, there is life. So in the chill airishness of the Appalachian Autumn, inside the car, the truck, all of these provide some comfort, some grounding, for outside is so uncertain and so deadly and so awful - but there you are, in the driver seat, the interior with all the windows up and all the doors locked. There are trinkets, maps, papers, all safe in the glove compartment, the center console, inanimate passengers along for the ride - the keys jingle quietly, at their place inside the ignition. You are in your own universe, a perfect bubble, with only the road ahead of you, and you are safe, and you'll get on home, you'll get on home wherever that may be. Up a bit high in your vehicle it is just enough to realize, that even with a good view - not only is the world enormous, but that you, mortal, are truly small. That night, that awful night, Derrick Rhodes' F-100 was his ever-faithful companion: snow, ice, sleet, rain, clouds, whatever the outside threatened, there it was, Ford, the blue oval and the breathy, winking letters spelling out the simple word because, so went the joke among his friends, up in the holler they couldn't spell Chevrolet. It was an old truck that roared all of eight of its cylinders with the naked masculinity of a less thin-skinned age, handpicked by his Granddad, passed to his son, Derrick's father, who in turn gave it to Derrick as his first and so far only car. Derrick's dad was like that - generous and well-meaning and doing the right thing only when it was the last viable option. It took his wife, Derrick's mom, dying of ovarian cancer, to have the two of them reconcile after years of bitter awkwardness because Derrick had come out as gay at WVU. The truck had been the steed of the Rhodes men for so long it was practically a member of the family itself - its presence was the product of a strange, forgotten bit of country lore: in the 80s there was that persistent rumor that on certain cars, you could read the manufacturing code to figure out when and where the car was made. Looking closely, you'd avoid the ones built on Mondays and Fridays, because Detroit had gotten so sloppy and the UAW so bad - those_were the ones with the highest defect rates, because the workers would show up drunk, or hungover, or not at all. The Robin's egg blue F-100 was built on a good day, and with the decades proved that it had been assembled with the care and quality of a prouder, bygone America. And it was little things like that - little pieces of the way things used to be, that made up who Derrick Rhodes was: his parents were dyed-blue Democrats because Granddad Rhodes had shook Jack Kennedy's hand in Charleston back in 1960, and his whole family, both sides, had lived in Beckley or one of the little cracks-in-the-road that dot the area around it since West Virginia was still Virginia. His family's great legacy was Rhodes Mufflers, which specialized in Lincolns - top of the line from Ford, of course - since the time of the first Zephyrs down to the Navigators like his Mom had driven...working on cars had given Derrick a strong build but the partying at WVU - always more at home at the frathouse than the classroom - and then the good ol boy habits of beer and burgers had left him in his mid-20s with a young, cubby paunch, just like his dad. And although Derrick was college-educated - B.S. in business administration, Class of '04, West Virginia University, by no means was he stupid - he was still a countryboy at heart, never applying himself beyond the cozy life of the smalltown mechanic taking after his dad and his Granddad, his visiting cousins from Mossy with whom they had worked out would inherit and take care of Rhodes Mufflers if Derrick, only child that he was, never had any young'ns of his own. He knew the roads that sprawled about Beckley like a wandering minotaur's labyrinth- really, he had to, because boys like Derrick have to know where to go _to not get caught. All those unpaved tracks outside the small towns of West Virginia, Virginia - all over the South, up and down the mountains - have forever been littered with the spent spunk and discarded condoms of the lovestruck and the lustful, and this open secret is always met with the moral horror of those that believe in the purity of the rural areas, the American Heartland...apparently oblivious to the dark, sinful things that tick like a clock in those very same hearts. There was no reason for him to get lost. But he did. Derrick, driving home from Charleston, buying parts for the family business - HVAC unit cases, A/C fans, a mess of fuses. He had loaded what he'd needed into the tailgate, kept safe for the ride home by the Leer top he'd installed a few years before. Now, the heater on full blast against the cold, Derrick's truck was his only protection from the cold blackness outside - so cold and black that the truck could have been a spaceship, hurtling wildly through the mad spaces between the stars. He'd spent a lot of time in Charleston that day doing all the things he loved about that city, the only real big town to speak of in West Virginia: he'd gone to the Town Center and had lunch, went up to Corridor G and gawked at all the stores - he should have taken somebody with him, though, it'd have been more fun, maybe his dad, or that guy from Adkins County, what was his name? Bligh - his cousin invited him over to the shop one day, they knew each other from playing football...well, maybe not, he was really handsome, but kind of a weirdo, and younger, that weren't a good look. But he really, really should have brought someone along, because now - he was lost. He'd wanted to take the long way home, so instead of 64, he'd turn at Marmet, he'd pick up 94, then 3, on down to Whitesville where he could get some gas...but something had gone wrong, he'd taken the wrong fork at Seth that he had only been to a few times - was that it? Or maybe it was back further at that place called Comfort, stupid name for the dumbass situation he was in now. The endless screen of trees perched atop the rolling rocky cliffs, interrupted now and again every mile or so by little turn-offs that went to dimly-lit houses - none of it looked familiar to him, none of it had any of the landmarks he was expecting to see. Where the Hell was he? Eventually, he reasoned, he would see a gas station, a c-store, he'd ask directions - he wasn't that far away from Beckley, he couldn't have been, that didn't make any sense. Not once was he fearful, not once did he think something bad could happen: he was sure of himself, of the 9mm in the glove compartment, and his own sense of direction, if worse came to worse he'd pull over, put down the bill of his cap and wait til morning. Still, the road went on - on and on - and Derrick began to wonder if had missed some signs, or if there even_were_ signs...supposedly there were these places called Prenter, or maybe Gordon, he'd seen them a few times but only when, like now, he was turned around and needed to go back the other way. If that was true, he was in Boone County, not Raleigh, not near as to Beckley as he needed to be, then he wasn't as sure of himself, then he would start to worry something bad could happen. He eased off the gas, he put on the brake, heard the truck's engine quiet some. What should he do? If he turned around, there'd be no guarantee he'd be back on the way he needed to go, he'd be wasting gas, and though he loved his old truck the thing sucked down gasoline like a horny trucker slurped dick...which he knew, corny as it sounded, from experience. But... if he kept going, he might have the same problem, and if he really was as far from Beckley as he thought, the nearest c-store wouldn't be for miles, and he'd have to track the motherfucker down on foot. And forget about cellphone service, Hell he might as well have had minus_a few bars. It was past nine o'clock and most of the little mom-and-pop places could be closed anyway - shit fire and save the matches, _why did he want to take the long way home? This was his whole problem, his one big character flaw which his dad knew, his cousins knew, the older men that he liked to hook up with at truckstops knew: he couldn't take anything seriously enough to think things through, and then when things went wrong and folk got mad at him it was like an overly eager dog that got scolded by his owner, he only sort-of knew that what he did was his own fault. And this - this was definitely his own fault. With an exasperated sigh and a swear under his breath, he pumped the brakes, he slowed enough that he could spy a flat little place off the side of the road where he could park for a minute, park and think. He put his truck in park and turned off the engine, shutting off the headlights with it - in an instant he was plunged into a swallowing darkness, the only light being a weak waning crescent Moon and the glittering mid-Autumn stars. He pulled out his phone from his pocket - still no bars - and then put it back, frowning. He still had no idea what he was going to do, or what he should do - but then, luckily or unluckily, he suddenly didn't have time to think about anything else. Ker-thump! Something, something big, had crashed into the side of his car, in the back of the driver's side, In his total confusion, at first, he thought had hit a deer, because he definitely had before and it sort of felt the same - everybody in Beckley, it felt like, had hit a deer sometime. But then he remembered he wasn't driving, he was pulled over on the shoulder of the road. Which meant, rather than him hitting something - it was something that hit him. Ker-thump! It happened again, in a different place this time: nearer the tailgate, from the back. Derrick swallowed, feeling his heart pound against the bones in his chest. What the Hell was that? He had to get out of here. His hand grasped the keys, they were almost about to turn, but then: Ker-thump! Louder, stronger this time - Derrick heard himself yell out in shock. And now his keys were gone...tossed aside in the total darkness somewhere on the passenger side. "Dammit ta Hell!" Derrick swore aloud. He stopped, trying to take a breath, trying to get his heart from beating so hard and so fast - he took out his cellphone to use as a flashlight, trying to find the lucky glint of his keys so he could grab them and start the truck...but nothing. He couldn't find his keys. He sat back against his seat, staring at the shadow-ridden road ahead of him. Even though he could never give anything the seriousness that it usually needed, he was good at thinking on his feet - he'd been in situations like this one before, out hunting with his cousins and getting atweenst a mama-bear and her cubs more than once: you either get thinking and get acting or you wind up dead. Ker-slam! Not as strong as before, and somewhere near the back of the other side. This thing just wouldn't quit. And Derrick needed a plan. He thought a second, he sighed, he nodded to himself: "Fuck it." If the keys had gone up underneath the seat, which they definitely had, he would waste time trying to fumble for him while whatever was out there was trying to get in - he didn't know how much time he had. And even if he did find his keys, even if he could take off quick and run off from whatever had thumped his vehicle - sure, that still left him with the same dilemma as before, he didn't know where the Hell he was going. He'd need to stay, and fight off whatever was on the outside - lucky for him, maybe the only lucky thing about that night and that particular instant, was that he had his Smith & Wesson waiting for him in the car. It was not a smart decision to stay and fight...but then again, where he was, what he was doing, there were no smart decisions, not really, only less-dumb ones. He leaned over to reach open the glove compartment, and reached in. Back he came to the driver's seat, with his gun and his Maglite flashlight, closing his eyes just for a second, to ask his Mom to watch over him. He was shaking some, he realized - but he remembered his Granddad just then, remembered that this was his truck, and he needed to call open the old man's spirit if he wanted to protect it. Throwing open the door, Derrick leapt out, gun at the ready. But... As he stood on the road, as his eyes moved about with the penetrating beam of his flashlight - he saw nothing. There was nothing out here, nothing at all. Nothing - nothing at all. With the Autumn cold there were no insects, and with the loneliness of where he was, no sound of cars, or trucks, no dull roar of the highway, and only the faintest smell of woodsmoke - it was as though, in the night, Derrick was the last person on Earth. On up ahead, faintly, he make out some kind of church, all brick, really old-looking - he squinted his eyes to get a better view, to see if the lights were on, maybe he could go on up and ask for help, he'd be lucky and they wouldn't think he was some sketchy hoodlum... But no sooner had he finished the thought, only a half-second before he was going to make a decision - something, something huge, slammed into him, crashed into his whole body, knocking him a good three feet onto the road. He was gasping for air, his vision a grey fuzzy mass of nothing that stood out against the pitch-darkness - he heaved in oxygen as hard as he could, the wind knocked clean out of him. Then, as his sight cleared, as the shadows crawled back across his view, the black road, the broken silhouettes of the giant trees, he could feel the keen, cold asphalt against his face, he could sense the grim numbing frigidness against the fabric of his Carhartt jacket, his jeans. What had ran into him? Who the fuck would be out here in the middle of the night, the middle of the road, the middle of Goddam nowhere tackling people like it was two-a-days again? He moved his head, first one way, then another - he smelled something, something rank and musky and dirty, he thought he had smelled it before as a boy, maybe, up at his aunt's farm in Summersville, a big animal. He blinked, hard, once, and then again, trying to get his bearings, trying to make sense of a situation that was quickly spiraling way out of control. Now he rolled over - and then he saw it. Something - something stood over him. It was a hulking, behemothic nightmare - the first thing that Derrick noticed, the first thing he was forced to notice, was its size: its shadow alone was so frighteningly gargantuan that it towered over him, an umbral shape that cast a deeper darkness from the dark behind it. It clearly stood on two legs, and walked upright, and seemed to stand up straight, not hunched over, it was used to having the stride of a predator. He could not see much of it - but in a flash, his recovered senses started the terrible process of understanding: First, the animal reek that Derrick thought he smelled was so close to him that he could smell nothing else - musk, the funk of the unwashed creature that spends its days sauntering wild in the fields and the forests and drinking from rivers...it was not unpleasant, it was something Derrick thought he knew, but it was so strong, so overwhelming, that Derrick wanted to - smell more of it, put his whole face in the fur and inhale, like that bad urge you get to whiff sour milk. In the airish night, Derrick could see twin plumes of steam bellow out of unseen nostrils - with each breath the thing seemed to inch closer, leering at him with what Derrick could now see were a pair of awful, gleaming, noctilucent eyes, hard mineral glowing that pierced his heart with a silent, eradicating stare. It was one that Derrick had seen before, but being who he was, had never really put together: it was that dumb, voiceless look of the beast of burden, filled with that silent and patient rage of livestock whose ancestral memories of being raised for slaughter would spell the greatest conspiracy ever put against the human race were it not for the saving blessing of their own lack of intellect. And so did the thing look at him...and he, helpless, could do little more than look back at it. So it wasn't a who that struck him down, it was - a what. Derrick's first thought was that it was a bear - but bears wouldn't be out this time of year, they'd be hibernating. Maybe a - cow? But that couldn't be it either, where would there be pastureland out here? And that was a stupid thought, cows don't go on two legs...do they? No, no - this was something else, something else he'd never seen before. And it scared him. For the first time in his whole life he was struck by the clenching, gnawing fear of the unknown. He'd heard tell of the Sheepsquatch like any West Virginia boy had - White Things the oldtimers called them, awful things that stalked the empty spaces that had been covered over with deep woods and forests...hunters, woodsmen, people who knew their areas had been saying for years something quare dwelt in the woods of Boone County, but Derrick had never, not once, thought he'd ever see one himself. That was bad enough - if he had to choose. But worse, way worse, was that he was defenseless, his gun was gone, skidded down the road to a place where he couldn't see - fuck. He still had his knife on him, but he didn't know if he would have time to reach in and get it...or if it would be effective against this thing, this monster standing over top him still, or if it would just make it angrier and more violent. He glanced to his truck - could he make it back in time? Slide out of this thing's view, get the door open, turn the keys, and go? Derrick was not the most agile thing in the world, but - he had to try, he had to try somehow. Carefully, slowly, he leaned up, inch by painful inch, taking his feet to slide himself across the surface of the road, back closer to his truck. He heard the thing cease its heavy breathing, the snuffling inhale-exhale it had been keeping up all this time - Derrick's bowels turned to ice as he realized it had probably heard him. A clenching fear gripped his heart, worse than before, he didn't even have time or the thought to pray like he had when he had gotten out of his car like a dumbass not five minutes ago... ...when he heard a car approach. His first reaction was a burst of relief: "Aw thank the Lord--" Someone was coming, someone could help him, he wasn't just stuck here with broken ribs, defenseless, with a monster running around! But just as soon as he felt joy, he also felt - dread. Something was wrong. The headlights were clearly that of an antique car, but they seemed too bright_for such an old vehicle, too powerful. That was the first thing. Derrick sat up, drawing in his legs, squinting, before putting up a hand to block some of the light out. At this angle he was affirmed in his suspicion the car was very old indeed - it was black, as shiny and polished as though it were fresh out of the showroom, with a tasteful chrome grille and four headlights, out of which poured that oddly bright electric shine, maybe as though the bulbs had never been turned on and still had their original power behind it. The design of the car looked familiar, and his eyes settled above the grille to look for what he knew would confirm it - yes, there it was, the sharpened star in the square - _it was a Lincoln, a Continental like his Granddad had always wanted, with what sounded like that giant Y-Block engine they put in them, and lost money on every single one ever made. That was the second thing. The coincidence was not lost on Derrick, who remained where he was even as the car braked and then stopped, the clenching fear that the big monster was going to get him replaced by something else, now - a creeping, eerie feeling, like when his mom used to tell him not to go down a certain way outside of town because a haint lived there, that feeling where the world you think you know opens up and shows its true self, the darker half, not as brightly lit. The driver door opened and out stepped a man - he was wearing a suit, maybe green, maybe blue, somewhere in the middle...Derrick seemed to remember the word celadon from somewhere. The suit was made of a fine material that had an uncanny sheen on it, like it was almost reflective of any light that hit it - black shoes, black belt, and a black old-fashioned trilby completed the look of a well-dressed gentleman whose style was a little dated. The man's face, which came into view as he passed in front of his headlights, was...plain. He was any kind of man you would see any day of the week anywhere in America - a little swarthy-looking, maybe, but except for the eyes, which were beady and set far apart, everything about him was totally average and everyday, the kind of man who would blend into a crowd and you'd never notice he was there. Whatever kind of relief Derrick had felt at not being alone on this country road had totally evaporated - now he was uncomfortable, even if he didn't really know why. "Howdy," he said anyway, trying to be casual as he could - he was totally lost away from home and had just had some weird animal try to tackle him, but this man knew neither of those things, and Derrick was not about to act distressed in front of a total stranger. "Y'aight there, boy?" "Oh m'fine, m'fine--" "Well my, my, my--" the man said back. "Now young man, why might ya be out on the road and not in yer truck this time o'night, in this type o'weather?" His voice was calm, gentlemanly, it never seemed to rise in volume - there was a pleasantness to it that was, itself, more than a little unsettling, the kind of voice that Derrick imagined serial killers used, always happy, or at least cheerful, even when it was describing, or doing, horrible, things. "I - I fell," said Derrick, trying not to cringe at his own awful lie. "Comin out here--" He forced a fake laugh. "Call o'nature, yanno - weren't watchin my step--" "Should be more careful," the man offered, but Derrick could tell he didn't care one way or the other. "Yanno where y'at, son?" Derrick shook his head profoundly. "Nah - got turned around real bad - was gonna continue on down--" But the man cut him off: "Why, yer in Boone County, young man." "Boone?" Derrick repeated, mostly to himself - and then, under his breath: "How the Hell?" "Why yes sir, young man -Boone. Why yer not very far from Twilight - the town, although--" He seemed to let himself have a little chuckle, a kind of hmhmhm noise that sounded like it was mocking something, like it knew better. "Few more hours out here ye'll be seein the real twilight..." Derrick wasn't sure how to take the remark, so he just moved on. "Uh - Sir, if ye could tell me how ta get back--" "Now idn't that funny--" The man went on, as though not hearing him at all. "All the quare stuff ye hear out bout this way, n'they call it - Twilight- neither light nor dark - dun that jest beat all..." Again he chuckled,hmhmhm, and he pointed up to where Derrick had thought he'd seen the old brick house in the woods. "Up yonder's the old Cooper place, see if they can't get ye the way ye need ta go." Derrick nodded slowly. "Uh - s'pose y'ain't know--?" "Oh I'm not from around here." Another chuckle - hmhmhm - and for no reason at all, but for the second time that night, Derrick felt a frigid fear creep over him. "But I know my way round - all the same." "Well, uh - th-thank ye kindly, uh - believe I caught yer name?" "Name's Indrid - Indrid Cold." The words caught Derrick in yet another creepy feeling - it was a name he had never heard before and yet it also sounded like he'd heard it before...and having these thoughts at the same time, being both bewildered and familiar, nearly made his head hurt. "Ah, well - thank ye again, Mister - Indrid--" By now pretty roundly freaked out, Derrick decided to tell another white lie: "I'd shake yer hand but m'afraid I scraped it on the pavement, here--" "Oh, no trouble t'all, young man - no trouble..." He paused, as though what he had just said amazed him in some way. "No - trouble - t'all. Now - be careful now," the man, Indrid, said. "Never know what ye'll find out here...hmhmhm..."He turned to walk back to the antique Lincoln, but before he did, his head went almost all the way over his shoulder to look right at Derrick. "Be seein ye, young man..." And then the man, Indrid - smiled. Derrick's eyes went wide, but in a tiny flash of insight he shut them, pretended to wipe them, just in case the man caught his reaction. Because the man, Indrid, and his smile was the scariest thing he ever saw - scarier than the mama bear about to rip his face off that one time, scarier than anything else he could think of, because it was so unexpected, it just happened, it was that same feeling of being told a haint lives in a house but blown up in one single moment of terror like Derrick had never felt before in his life. His mouth, it was - too wide? Too big? There was something wrong, that was the only word that came to mind, something really, really wrong about what Indrid - if that was actually his name - was doing, right now, with his mouth, it shouldn't move like that, it shouldn't look like that, what had happened to this man to make it stretch literally, literally_from one ear to the other. He'd never forget that smile, Derrick thought - never, ever. "Yeah--" Derrick blurted. "Y-yeah, thanks fer--" But he didn't finish the sentence, and he didn't open his eyes. He waited, hearing the crunch of the strange man's shoes against the road, and then his car door opening, and then the engine, that enormous Y-Block that his Granddad admired so much, roaring to life - he kept his eyes closed against the too-bright headlights, and opened them only to watch the Mark II ease on down the road...the taillights glowing, Derrick couldn't help but think, like the red-hot coals of Hell. It was over. Two strange things down an old country road in the middle of the night that, he decided, he'd never want to think about again, or even tell a soul about, unless he was three sheets in the wind. Derrick sat there, trying to put together everything that happened. He'd heard from people that certain parts of the state that he loved being from - _country roads, take me home - had creepy, weird shit happen in them on the regular. The cousin he was closest too was more into the Internet than he was, and she was always trying to tell him about some spooky-story she found and, oh man, it was from West Virginia, and she did that a lot, because there were a lot. And sure, he believed in haints, not just because his Mom told him to watch for one, but it seemed like - it seemed like, maybe it wasn't, up til now he'd never really examined it, and talking about people like they were all the same was just asking to get called out for being an asshole - everyone believed in them, everyone had a story. And now - Derrick had one. He wondered if he should have put his discomfort aside and just been honest with - Indrid, he said his name was...but that smile, oh no, no way, that was just too much. There are always worse things than a big animal that just knocked you over. So now Derrick tried to get up - tried. He let out a pained rush of air as he realized that whatever had tackled him had messed up his ribs real good - his whole midsection was taut with pain, and when he took a deep breath he found that his lungs smarted in his chest. "Fuck--" he whimpered. And just then - of all the times it could have happened, fate fully tempted by thinking earlier that it was all over when it definitely wasn't - from some feet away across the bed of his truck, he heard it: The angry snuffing of that creature that had hit him before. It was back. And it was looking for him. With the other car gone, with no light to scare it off, the creature had nothing to fear - it had chosen Derrick, it had waited for the time to strike, for that horrid man Indrid Cold to make his appearance and then leave, it was back, it was looking for him. Derrick made an unmanly cry of panic as he tried to get up again - he succeeded, scrambling to his feet, his hand on the door handle, no time to grasp the knife. But it was too late. Here it came, everything happening too fast: the tackling crash, the hockey-check into his side that made his hat fly off his head, and had his ribs go from being bruised to cracked or even shattered - stars, closer and more explosive than the ones that lit up the night sky above him, burst into his view, and as he desperately tried to suck in what oxygen he could, he was only vaguely aware that a strong, brawny pair of hands had gripped him, picking him up off the ground, holding him upright, not allowing him to fall back to the pavement. Gradually - gradually - what he could see in the dark, his nightvision at least adjusting, came into focus: The monster was in front of Derrick, inches away from his face. Now Derrick could see most of it clearly: it was a great, ferine thing - tall, maybe four inches taller than Derrick himself, built as a solid wall of muscle, with broad shoulders and outstandingly strong arms...and the whole thing, head to toe, was matted, covered, with whitish, flocculent, wool - like a sheep...hence the name, Derrick thought with an obviousness that would have normally embarrassed him, Sheepsquatch. Its face was hard to make out, but it seemed to have some kind of long snout, like any kind of domesticated farm animal, with two massive horns growing from its head - they were big, powerful things, and Derrick quickly found himself wondering how he had survived a direct hit from them. He wanted to glance away to see if they had damaged his truck, too - but he did not look away, he kept studying this monster, this White Thing that had somehow selected him, unlucky traveler, for some He was being help against the driver's side door of his truck by the monster, the same one from before - holding him up with hands, human-like_hands_, the palms rough and keratinous but the backs covered with curly, shaggy hair. Its eyes were two burning foxfire-lights - they did not glimmer or shimmer, but were made of the same dull glow that Derrick found once in a rotting log, phosphorescence...every other second it would go dark, all the way dark whenever the thing blinked, slow and deliberate, like the dumb beast Derrick had thought it was from before. They reminded Derrick., these eyes of the beast - a little too late, now - of the gauges in his truck, his truck where it was safe, safe from what the dark held and what went bump in it, now he was outside, now he had been swallowed by it. He was unsafe, very unsafe. He should have been afraid. But now - in that instant face to face, pinned helpless like he was - Derrick felt something else, something else in that sickly glow that radiated both the forever-light of the stars and the corpsefire of the grave: He had caught his breath, inhaling hard - the sharp stench of the creature's musk at once flooded his lungs, overwhelming and erasing everything else around him or near him, the smell of the pines that hadn't lost their leaves, the airish night itself. It had been only spare minutes ago that he had smelt the creature before, that the beastly odor had told his brain that it was more than just mere animal stink - it fucked with his head, it messed with his brain, he felt limp, and then fearful, and parcel to this fear, deeper, clawing, was something else, some involuntary string that the monster's smell was pulling...arousal. The way the creature smelled made him both horny - and scared. Derrick had that curiosity that sometimes afflicts boys at a certain age and never properly leaves: the temptation to find some other mammal other than humans attractive - it is hardly the trait of the rural lad, for city-dwellers too will too often have the same ideas cross their minds. But Derrick had never acted on it. There was a large dog of a neighbor's that caught his eye when he was a young teen and just starting to understand that he was queer, and weren't like the other boys, but he had shoved the thoughts out of his mind and never returned to them... ...until now. Musk - the smell of the beast was doing something to him, making it impossible to think like he should have, and scream, and struggle, and do anything other than what he was doing, being mesmerized by a monster that hunters would murmur to each other about over a beer on a night like this. But there was no threat that Derrick could feel, nothing to - fear. And so then it wasn't the smell that was getting to him, no, Derrick was thinking for himself. Even in the chill night he could feel his whole face flush as he realized that an erection was straining in his boxers, pressing up against the fly of his jeans...the arousal he had been feeling before was becoming worse, the fear and the near-panic made confused and He lifted his arms up, slowly, deliberately, his eyes still locked into the green-glowing lights of the beast's - the White Thing's very own. Gently, so as not to alarm his captor, Derrick slide his arms so that now his, and the White Thing's, touched...and he kept sliding them up, up, until his hands, his human hands, grasped the White Thing's own - they were hard and rough probably filthy, Derrick's hands were rough too from being a working man for all those years but not like this. But his fingers met those of the White Thing - and intertwined them. All the while the beast had been huffing at him, its rhythmic breathing deep and gusty, almost like a bull - but now it quieted, it relaxed, as though Derrick had put it at ease. This was what Derrick had been hoping to do - he had hoped to make the White Thing far less aggressive than he thought that it was at first, ramming his car, ramming into him...maybe this way he could reason with it, maybe this way he could slip away and get out of this mess... What he did not expect - what happened right then, that he couldn't prepare for, that he had no way of knowing was going to happen when it happen - was for the beast not just to relax, not just to feel eased and less spooked like the animal it was, but...to kiss him. It had taken its muzzle, the reek of barnyard musk exploding in Derrick's nose, and pressed it against Derrick's face, where a long, thick, sloppy tongue emerged, and pressed open Derrick's lips - Derrick let a surprised glumpf, a choke on the very tip of the beast's tongue, drool dripping down his bare chin. With the beast's saliva invading his mouth - Derrick swallowed it involuntarily, there was so much of it that it hit the back of his throat - in that instant, he understood everything, an epiphany that fried his brain and rewired his mind, his ability to think, the most basic consciousness of living. The beast had a name. Derrick didn't know what it was just yet, he couldn't communicate with it in the language that he needed to, but yes, it - he had a name, a human name that he still used in his grunting and snuffling way, but which had been forgotten with the years. And with that, the terror, the fight-or-flight of being assaulted and pursued, was gone - the beast was no longer a mere beast but something to know, something to want to be familiar with...the veil lifted, the mystery ready to be solved. Derrick relaxed, he let the beast's tongue explore his mouth, his hands slipped out down to his sides, lost in the moment - he should have been repulsed, he should have wanted to tear away and vomit out his disgust, but from the very moment the kiss, deep and hotly passionate as it was began, all of Derrick's inhibitions faded into nothing. They broke apart, the beast's tongue slurping out of his mouth, slimy strings of drool and spittle glistering in the dark between them. The last thing that Derrick asked in his human vernacular, the last words he used in English as still a man, were spoken in a delirious wonder, a plaintive question, a beg to be invited deeper: "What's yer name?" And the White Thing answered - a strangled, mournful holler from the unwashed muzzle of a liminal being: "Abner." The beast's name - was Abner. It was a human name, a name he carried with him in his breast, like Derrick_one that would stay with him forever, even if humans could not pronounce it the way it was supposed to. And so the White Thing, the Sheepsquatch, the friendless monster that just wanted attention and love, and so chose Derrick because he had been unlucky - or just plain lucky enough - to get lost on this lonesome road in the dark. Derrick blinked, once, twice, the same dark adjusting in his eyes, the whole world becoming lighter, the contrasts of the shadows about him becoming a chiaroscuro, then something resembling normal vision - he could not see it but across his eyeballs spots appeared, glowing foxfire bioluminescent where his tapeta lucida would form, the spots becoming oblong smears, bigger and bigger until the both of them were covered by opalescent eyeshine. He breathed in, deep, the Autumnal airishness hitting his lungs, his ribs fully healed by the new mutations occurring abruptly all over his body...and when he breathed out, he moved his mouth, he made sounds with it, he - _called the beast by his true name. It was a word he had never used before, in an idiom that he could only use because the saliva had infected, twisted, and made anew, his very vocal cords. But it was perfect, complete, it was a cry, his glowing eyes suddenly wide with something like grief, something like recognition, something that he had never felt before - the phonemes, thick in his mouth, the components that made up the word, the name: "Abner." Like a star exploding in his head, a mad rush of savage instinct surged through him, every cell, every synapse inside Derrick him, wanted Abner, this hulking shaggy creature that had stalked him and tackled him to get his attention - he was totally eat up with desire, for the horns and for the muscled bulk of its body and its stringy woolen hair... ...and for the dick, the beast, the monster, the White Thing's dick, that now jutted our from where it was hidden in a careful mound of pillowy pelt. It was huge - the word meat did it only some justice, it was big around as a Mason jar, the tip blunt and mushroomy like a human's but vastly thicker, pinker, musclier, jutting from a foreskin that wrapped it in a weighty coat roadmapped with throbbing veins. A fire was lit, and Derrick was burnt forever. He unfastened his belt, he threw it to the road, he ripped open the button-fly of his jeans, jamming them and his boxers around his ankles - he threw himself against the side of his truck, the chill metal jarring him for just a second as he took one hand to his to move his cheek out of the way, presenting himself, his body trembling with sudden traumatic need. Abner bellowed out a call of claim, a territorial noise that any animal surely would recognize - and then he was upon him. His strong hands gripped Derrick's hips with total control, relentless in their desire, responding to Derrick's own - blunt, weighty tip of Abner's cock seemed to hunt around in the dark, poking Derrick's naked cheeks and smearing them with drivels of pre, until at last it found Derrick's hole, which flexed involuntarily, a little flinch at what was about to happen. For Abner's cock was big, way too big, for Derrick to take like this - the thickness alone should have broken him, destroyed him, but Derrick wanted it, the whole thing, in him, deep, until there was no more to take. As Abner bucked again and again, the natural slickness of his unsheathed phallus barely enough to aid him, Derrick could not help but shout, as loud as he could, not caring who would ever hear - his whole body was in a havoc of pain and pleasure, his ring ring opened like this, seeming to consume more and more of Abner's dick as he stretched more, more, and just when it seemed intolerable and he could not go on he would have to, until Abner was hilted, thrusting into him over and over - it was excruciating, he was in so much pain, but he couldn't, wouldn't stop, how good, how fulfilling, it felt to his whole being. He had never felt this kind of depravity before, this kind of animal need, to simply give himself to sexually to another person, another being - he counter-thrusted into the White Thing, into his new lover, daring him to slam him harder, the beast's apple-sized woolen balls slapping hard against Derrick's naked ass, his feet digging into the cold pavement, hands on his knees like a real seasoned whore, something that burned with estrus of rut. He could not see it, and in the depths of his needy ecstasy he could not even feel it, but his hole was changing - yet another dread marker that his time as being a human was coming to a quick close. Wrapped around the beast's enormous cock, straining against it, but exposed to the mutagenic pre that gushed out with a hard huffing bleat from Abner, Derrick's rectum began to toughen, the pigment darken, until it resembled the hide of a farm animal, leathery, stretchy, the pain of the enormous phallus began to abate bit by bit as it adjusted to the size and shape, allowing Derrick - his vocal cords becoming raw with the abject screams of unthinkable sexual pleasure - to take as much as he could, to let it sink deeper into him as he dared. This was a natural evolution: now he could do this anytime he wanted, now he could be better at serving the beast's sexual urges than a mere human ever could - a new mutation that served a sexual as well as practical purpose. But it was not his ass that he wanted filled, not his guts that he wanted doused - his chubby belly suddenly let out an unwholesome squelch, a noise that he and Abner both recognized at once as being of hunger. Derrick choked a groan as he eased off the road on his boots, slicking himself off the beast's cock bit by bit until he could wriggle himself free - his anus, open and pulsing, hit the night air throbbing and hot, the shock of a passing breeze after the heat of the beast's cock making him shake with ticklish pleasure. He whirled around, taking fleeting seconds to tear off those same boots, and completely pull off his jeans and his boxers - he threw off his jacket as well, but the desperation, new but totally complete, to get cum in him, overloaded the rest of his thoughts, and the flannel, with its undershirt, stayed on. In his brain things were melting down - leaving him was his human abstract thinking, his whole world becoming simplified into base primal needs: hunger, love, mate. The mutagens in his blood were reverting him back to an atavistic state, but rather than dooming him to life as mere hybridized animal, he could now experience everything more fervently, indeed more completely, with no more layers of human complication to muddy it. And right then, his whole being was consumed with one need only: sex. He grasped the beast's cock with both hands - it was so heavy, dense and meaty around all ten of his fingers that he had to keep focused to lift it. Each second that passed, each great heaving puff and huff that Abner gave, close as he was to orgasm, Derrick could feel an exquisite throb as the greasy lanolin from the inch-thick foreskin slipped into his palms - the animal musk assaulting his already cock-washed mind. Abner began jerking from the base - drooling with actual, literal hunger, Derrick needed this more than he had anything up to that point in his life, it bolted through his mind and galloped through his stomach. Derrick heard a hefty grunt overhead, and was rewarded with a juicy spurt of pre that, tasting it now, saturated his mouth with a gamey saltiness that enraptured him with how delicious it was. He put his whole mouth to the head, as much as he could, massaging the brawny flesh of Abner's cockhead with his tongue - he felt a hand grip his hair as Abner steadied him, and Derrick felt a flash of panic as he realized that there would be no time to brace himself. Abner was too close to the edge already, he could no longer hold out, he arched his head back and parted his muzzle to bellow to all the world, the mountains and trees and the forsaken road they were on, that he would deliver his seed to his new lover. The monstrous cock swelled until it got so big Derrick couldn't take it from his lips, it throbbed in tandem with a forced-liquid sound from Abner's enormous testicles, and with a billowing gush a flood of semen poured into Derrick's mouth, flooding his throat, he struggled to swallow all of it at once. How long Abner came for Derrick couldn't be certain, there was so much of it, too much of it, his hunger was being sated but there was an overload fast approaching - just as it seemed like he could take no more, just as he was dangerously about to puke from overindulgence, Abner relented, the deluging spurts slowing to a trickle, and then ceasing. Derrick pulled off Abner's phallus with a wet, loud pop, collapsing backward, nearly spent from the endeavor - he felt Abner caress the back of his head, his short brownish hair being rubbed through with hesitant affection by the monster he had just thoroughly pleasured. But now - now a threshold had been crossed. He had drank of the monster's seed, he had come into its animal kingdom by submission and by near-telepathy, there was nothing left for him to do, there was no more humanity to gain, but all of it now to lose. And it began with his head. A dull throb began to ache behind his eyes, then moving to his skull, which throbbed, once and then twice and then again, a pressure growing there that would not surrender - then, with a long, orgasmic groan, his cock leaping back to attention and spurting pre as it happened, his own first nubs, the promise of true Sheepsquatch horns, broke through the skin of his forehead, sending a trickle of blood that matted in his hair...little scurs, nothing to be proud of, not yet. Abner knelt by him, rubbing the small lumps, licking the blood away with his enormous tongue, cleaning his lover, comforting him even as he cried with the migraine that was clouding over him - two more emerged right behind the first pair, snaking out as the keratin multiplied and compounded, so that now, at a painful length at last they grew more, yet more, bigger and bigger, curling tightly as they formed a majestic polycerate, that stabbed the night with its sheer masculine power. Right beneath his new horns, Derrick's ears lengthened and grew, the cartilage stretching and reforming until they were oblong and floppy, blooming with cottony hair. At the same time, his bare feet, soft and vulnerable to the elements, began to shift and evolve as well: tendons and muscular structure pulling up and cracking, aligning him to a digitigrade stance. A sticky webbing had appeared between his toes - it drew them together, pulled and locked in place, the toenails merging as one, and so as before with his horns, keratin hardened across both feet, spreading across the bone and flesh to become great sturdy hooves, which swelled until they were twice as large as before, to support his growing bulk. Seconds passed before flesh of his bare legs tightened and then firmed, becoming taut vellum, a hideous itch bursting from his thighs to his shins as long strands of curling hair walmed their way out of his follicles, clumping together to form dense, lanate wool, similar to Abner's own. He rolled onto his back, his whole body wracked with the changes that were furiously remaking him, piece by piece Now each pump of his heart forced fresh torrents of mutated blood to into his cock, heretofore still human and unchanged...the blood inflamed the veins and the vessels so that they bloated hideously off of the erect flesh, so thick that the unchanged foreskin strained against it. Then, across the skin, purplish blotches appeared, great splashes of disgustingly iridescent mauve, green, bluish, that turned his whole dick into a painful map of blood-bruises - rupturing and leaking on the inside, but just as suddenly caught and rerouted, as the forceful torrents from his heart remade a mere prick, average and unimpressive, into an enormous, swollen phallus, inch after inch being added in length and girth as it grew and grew, second by second. His testicles followed suit, rapidly expanding, bloating until they were freakishly large, the size of healthy orchard apples, his sack swelling to keep up the made pace of their growth, new veins bulging outward on the surface as they, too, pumped the first powerful jolts of blood to keep his new balls fat. All over the bare flesh of the scrotum, the fine hairs on it extended to lengthen, then curl, turning white as they grew, until it was totally covered in more of the wooly hair that coated his legs. What swung before him now was something like the beast's own dick, maybe a little smaller - but far bigger than what he started with. It was long, fat, fleshy rod that pulsed hotly into the cold air. It was the sexiest cock he'd ever seen. He felt a fleeting, almost human regret that he should like his own cock better than Abner's, his new lover, but...it was so big, so manly, how fat it had gotten, furiously pink and bulbous as it protruded, lewd and ready, from his thickened foreskin crisscrossed with pulsating veins, which had started to glisten greasily with the new sebum his body was sweating out. From the corner of his eye he saw Abner watching him, snuffing hard, again that same rhythm but harder this time, more patient - he made noises at him, deep bleats with his thick tongue, and Derrick thrilled electrically as he realized what Abner was doing: encouraging him. He took several unwieldy steps until he came to his forgotten truck, plopping down by the back wheel, taking his own cock into his ready hands and putting his mouth on the weighty head. Derrick's lust grew to fully consume him, lust growing to fully consume him, taking his shaft in one hand and balls in the other, rolling the new heavy orbs in palm while the other stroked...he set upon his own cockhead like a lamb suckling a teat. He could not feed his lust, or himself, fast enough - everything he did heightened and peaked rapidly, the new nature of his genitals obliterating everything else in his consciousness. A spurt, then another, of pre dribbled out of the slit, not quite as fantastic as Abner's but still palatable, and still he wanted more. His own pleasure - the amazing sensation of his own warm mouth slurping his own cock - began to peak now, his, mouth and breath fresh with the new monster he was becoming. Now new testicles churned, a powerful action Derrick wasn't used to yet, his eyes with their now-perpetual glow widening at what he heard them doing, the liquid force of them pumping into his cock, which blew out his pisshole into his awaiting maw. At first his semen was familiar, just like the human kind he was familiar with - plain, milky - but it did not last long, as his testicles expelled the remainder of the useless human seed to make way for the evolved Sheepsquatch spunk that it would produce forevermore, thick, rich, soupy, and powerful. His cum, Abner's cum, the sheer amount of fluid that sloshed in his stomach, was gurgling and rumbling forcefully in his paunchy belly, awash with the tainted seed he had swallowed. Inside, changes were taking place: new organs were developing, others moving to allow for the neoplasms that would serve his new life and his new form. Somewhere he dreaded this, he did not want this, he didn't want a such a fat belly like his father, whose memory was becoming increasingly distant - but his new thoughts, new instincts, totally overrode it, made a mockery of it, no, now, he wanted it bigger, he wanted it as huge as it could get. He groaned aloud, clutching his distended gut, feeling his insides roil, his stomach gurgling and burbling louder, then bloating, hard, becoming taut and round and fat...he was still wearing that button-down flannel and the undershirt aneath it, but his belly, masking the changes inside it, his new rumen to digest with, and perhaps - could it be? - a womb, could not tolerate any clothes on anymore. With a horrible liquid growl his new belly surged to its final, new size, tearing open the puny cotton fibers of his undershirt and the flannel too, buttons flying off onto the road, into the night. He tore off the remaining rags of his clothing, throwing them off in a hurricane of liberation from the vestiges of his humanity, what remained of what had he'd worn to keep away the cold. There he was: Derrick Rhodes, but not the Derrick Rhodes he was born as - great horns, glowing eyes, big proud belly, wooly ovine legs with powerful hooves. He was a West Virginia boy of a West Virginia family that had been part of that state for a hundred years and more - but now, now he had become, like Abner his new lover in years completely forgotten, so much deeper inside it, a part of it as organic and complete as the mountains themselves: a White Thing. By sheer chance, by invisible fate, he was taken into West Virginia's very essence by the most hidden and secretive of its creatures, and metamorphosed into something that was pure West Virginia, vital and total to its very existence. His mind, what was left of it, was a tranquil half-formed blank - it was finished in understanding only the basic animal things of instinct, but there was still logic, a dim remnant, but his final inerasable legacy of being human. He heard Abner stomp the ground, heard him come right at him to tackle him once again - he let out a bleating roar, his new voice a clarion to the empty country road that of his new being, spun back and met Abner's charge with his own horns, the two of them smashing together. Abner made a similar noise back at him, deeper, a bellow to match Derrick's bleat - it was a happy noise, a call to celebrate, a new friend made, an engagement to be married. Now it was Derrick's turn: he lowered his head, he huffed out his challenge, and lunged at his new lover with all the might he could muster from his body - Abner's own horns met his once again with a loud bash. They did this four more times, two each, until they were both laughing in raw delight - or what passed for laughing, low rapid puffs of breath and a tickling baritone from down inside their chests. Now Abner neared Derrick once again, waving his head to get his attention - Derrick leaned back, and let Abner kiss him once again. There was still so much mystery here, there was still so much that Derrick would never know, even his mind had not devolved to that only slightly above being an animal...who Abner used to be, and how he came to live on this road, why Abner was far more beastly than Derrick would ever become, and why it felt so good and so right from the beginning... Sometimes the mystery is things happen at all. His family would mourn him, they would find the trusty pickup and the shredded clothes and they would think the worst, they would never see him again, people would come for him and look for him but he was never to be found. It would be easy to see this fate as cruel and terrible, but what awaited Derrick in his old life, after all? This was no better, but certainly no worse. They separated, a long strand of amorous drool slopping between their mouths - with his new nightvision Derrick saw Abner move his lips into something like a smile, and Derrick smiled back. Abner took Derrick's hand by the wrist and tugged him away - further down the road, toward the old church that Derrick had thought he'd seen, and together they ran toward it, tamping the ground hard with their hooves, and together they melted into the darkness of the West Virginia night. ...from across the street, the headlights of a Lincoln illumed to life - the driver's door open, and out stepped Indrid Cold once again. He adjusted his belt, straightened his suit, and made the short distance across the road to the old brick church. He rapped on the door - shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits - answered from behind it with a drowsy shuffle, two muffled voices, and then a wedge of light into the darkness when the door opened. At the threshold stood a tall, lanky man with a carefully-kept beard, his big green eyes, downturned as thought from perpetual suffering, wet and rheumy with late night drunkenness - there was a nauseous waft of corn that betrayed a whole evening of corn squeezers. "Evenin Henry," Indrid began, with the same unnerving calm that marked whatever he said, however he said it. The man, Henry, nodded at him, but turned his head to be somewhat askance. "Indrid," he said. From behind him a thuggish-looking, unwashed white boy in a wifebeater and jeans sauntered by, giving Indrid one of those profound nods that are the only vestige of manners some men have. "Who's he?" Indrid asked Henry, as though he already knew. "Name's - Howe. Does work fer us." "My, my, my--" Indrid answered. "He oughta be careful. Dun want em knowin too much bout--" He paused, again with the twitching corners in his mouth. "What y'all do." "He'll be fine," Henry said, turning back. "Be careful, anyhow," Indrid murmured. "Accidents happen, yanno - Henry..." At this, Henry sighed heavy, flaring his nostrils indignantly: "Whatcha want out here, this time o'night, Cold?" "Looks like Abner found another, Henry--" Indrid said, doffing his trilby to reveal slick-backed blackish hair. "Was havin trouble on the road - said his name was - Derrick." Henry now came out from the doorway to peer back at the woods behind his church - there he saw the beast that had tainted and turned Derrick, slopping his new lover with his great tongue, laving his face lovingly in saliva that almost glittered in the starlight. Slowly, Henry turned back to Indrid with a grim expression, nodding slowly. "So he has..." was all he said. "Been awhile since there was a new one, ain't that right?" The corners of Indrid's mouth twitched oddly. "Yes - yes it has." "But he'll have a marvelous life, won't he? "Not a care in the world. Most folks give anythin ta have that..." He paused, narrowing his beady eyes to study Henry as he was in the doorway. "Why, Henry? Why do ye bother?" He held up a hand the other man could answer. "I believe I know why - family, ain't it? Yer daddy, n'his daddy, that son o'yers - protectin em thangs from pryin eyes..." Henry nodded again, quicker this time. "Yessir - that be correct." "They'll outlive ya, yanno." Now Henry shrugged, conceding the point. "Well, I s'pose--" "But neither one o'y'all's gonna outlive ­me." He smiled - and Henry, who should have been used to it by now, flinched, heavily, his hand gripping the molding of the doorway he stood in. Back came his hat, and then Indrid Cold turned on his heel, and walked away. Henry closed the door - but not before looking back again over his shoulder at the young man, Derrick, and Abner, youngest of the White Things whose name had been forgotten by those who had once known him all the way back when Eleanor Roosevelt was trying to build that town in Preston County. There was nothing for him to say - God would take care of the rest. Derrick Rhodes, as human being, disappeared that October night and was never seen again, yet he lives still, as many do, with a truth that few are ever afforded and fewer still can ever handle. In the world that everyone else knows - the world by daylight, the quotidian comfort of the known and the routine - the truth, the actual truth, is something that so few people can ever grasp, although sometimes, like in the case of Lee Roy Howe, they come close, and sometimes also, like whatever the furtive influence of Archie Lightfoot was probing for, they can guess. But West Virginia itself is as unknowable as the night sky, with all the stars in their proper place - for, although it comes out every time the Sun goes down, and though you can see it and study it and behold its beauty all you like, what it really is, what it really does, can never be entirely figured out. Perhaps it is better this way. Some cold nights in Boone County, though, the people who found that truth, the profoundest truth about West Virginia the state, and West Virginia the state of mind and behind - some cold nights out that way, you might see them, and you might glimpse the truth too. If only you know where to look.