The Dog Barks at Midnight

In 1911, smoking vigilantes -self preferred "the Guardians"- assembled under the empty water tower. Within, Claws scraped on finish. Creatures chewed on the lunar moths. Outside, the ring of chaperones worked in harmony. With each club bash, the victim bit into the rope they gave him, and they grunted pulling the heavy bat away, respired with steam evaporating from their collars, glowing in the sterile cold moonlight.

One struck the dark and the club planted in the ground. filth blossomed between them. The victim shook from the crack he heard. They used an oar.

The vigilante swore, blinded by the night, held it out. The fracture down the middle widened and he dropped the weapon. The victim wriggled over weeds, grains of dirt rained from the folds of his suit, the canvas over his face soaked up moist dust. The binds around his hands tangled with weeds and roots. He tried to crawl away, but the leash struggled against the water tower leg. 

they tied a second leather tang around an open pipe and left him hanging with his feet inches from the ground. When midnight came, their sinuses congested, their lashes frosted. Even the beer they sipped jingled with frozen substance. One vigilante boiled water over a fire. He poured it into a jar of whiskey and syrup.

The moon shined but a hurl of wind drew purple curtain its gleam and the fire burned blue and melted the water pot. Steam and wet ashes splashed, and they stood in collapsing darkness, lit not by stars but by staring eyes in the  overgrowth around them.

The water tower tapped and moaned. Steam gurgled from the open pipe. The rodents scampered to the roof. The hefty creatures climbed down fallen branches. The smell of sulfur hissed. Ancient water dripped from the pipe onto the victim. His shutters agitated his wounds, torn clothing hung in loops. Each drop embedded a dozen ice needles in the back of his head. He hung there for two sunrises.

Two hunters shared the valley, but found the deer fled. Together they found a path in the corn field made by deer feeding on the corn. Believing it to be where the game went, they followed it around to the old water tower where birds picked at the corpse. The water stopped dripping, but the water cased a crown of ice around his head. One hunter ran off to find help, the other watched the tang snap, and the skull shatter with the ice. 

Just this year, in Elkhead, Nebraska, the country treasurer- Zard Stihl- lost his job after five years for racketeering. He spent one year in prison, then on the day of his release came to the shack of the old hermit that lived nearby the river dock. Signs reading “trespassers will be shot with or without persecution” greeted him, along with spiked chains hidden along the gravel driveway.

 The treasurer stopped for a short visit, then spent some time in the country side, then slept in a motel. In the morning he got into a taxi to take him to the airport. Instead the taxi pulled down a country road. The driver forced him out at gun point, where they waited for another car to pick them up.

Five vigilantes drove him to a sow shower, where they stripped him naked, ran him under the shower faucets, and in silence, under red hoods, in sequence, each cut sections of him away and packed the pieces in drink coolers covered in the trunk, and rinsed the rest of him down the drain, and let the swine lick the splatter from their clothes before burning them and changing back into day clothes. By the time they finished, as planned, night fell. The temperature sank. They tossed the contents of the coolers into the river, and listed for each segment to splash before tossing down the next. Snow flakes fluttered but melted in the ditches.

They drove away, and morning came after a long quiet night. The tired old hermit woke up every dawn because the ghost of his hunting dog still wanted to be let outside. He let his hand hang off the bedside. The ghost licked his finger tips, and he awoke to a thunder of rapturing pistols far away, carried by the wind through his window. So he took her out, and found himself lingering the river side further each morning into the swamps of the flooded beds.

Cranes ate trout flapping in the receded pools. His breath fogged his glasses, but is dog kept lapping his fingers, until they warmed again.He used the blood in his extremities to wipe the haze from his lenses, then found something sharp sticking from the mud. A metal plate, with red starch and waxy kernels crusting one surface.

The old hermit didn’t assume that he found the piece of metal the doctors sewed into the scalp for the country treasurer after his car crash a decade before. He thought it some odd fragment split from a truck for some garbage from the river bottom. He didn’t think any human living or otherwise came down this far. The sand hardened, and the river banks froze. That's where he found the lower jaw in the mud, with ivory dentures intact. Then he wondered if the fibers on the plate came from human ligaments. The sun peeked through morning clouds and shined against the blood droplets on the ice. The bridge loomed overhead. He found strips of fat with skin still tattooed, radial bones washed clean by the water, and two coolers inhabited by feral river pests.

He came beneath the bridge where he saw the fog dissipate over one lane cleared into the corn rows. A perfume honey scented decay hung over his head. He stepped inside. Deer tracks and red cobs carpeted the path. It twisted in waves. He found himself exhausted and confused, but he sat and relaxed, watched the sky until he saw the southbound birds flying, and he'd find his way again.

He went around basins of erosion and creeks where empty pesticide barrels lay submerged. A dead semi truck sat in the grass. A rusted chemical trailer lay off before the rest of the path. The old man walked through the trailer door, and crawled out the hole on the other end. The rest of the path lead him to an iron shack on small property. The morning cold dried his mouth and hands, but no smoke rose from the chimney. No lights warmed the interior.

The old hermit felt the dog lap his fingers again. The front door remained locked. The keys still hung in the truck ignition. Both its doors hung open. The engine died long before, but still steamed.

Around the other side he found the vigilantes hanging from the porch.

Rumors lasted for years, and gossip lingers to this day of spirits that haunt the flood grounds. But no one listens to the old hermit when he tells them, “Zard Stihl hired the old mob from 1911.”

He knew because he came to his trailer one night, and told him. “I know your the last living one." The hermit stayed silent until the treasurer offered rewards. He gave the hermit  city documents declaring his home wiretap free along with an unattended checking account in accommodation for his secrets, then vanished to the old water tower to drink the cursed water.

The old hermit didn’t bother arguing with folk, nor did he try hiding from the ghosts that barked into his windows at at night and awoke him from shaking nightmares. He heard it dripping even in his sleep. The dog licked his fingers warm one last time, and the old hermit let it take him to the water tower where the "guardians" waited for him.