"Wild Card" by Barinellos
"No Good Deed" by OrcishLibrarian
"Fox's Run" by OrcishLibrarian

A high, shrieking whistle shattered the silence of the train station. Kaverick jumped. He looked around at the others standing on the rickety, rotted platform, waiting for the long, black train about to roll in. They were a bizarre assortment, each standing as far from one another as the platform allowed, with one exception. But Kaverick just clutched his one beaten and battered valise, RATC approved, of course, closer to his chest and tried not to let his eyes fall on any of them for too long. There was no sense in drawing their attention toward him.

The whistle screamed again, closer this time, and Kaverick could finally hear the sound of the train itself. The noise started as a low rumble, but built fast until it was rolling thunder into the station. Kaverick shuttered as he saw it. He had heard tales of the Night Train before. He knew what it meant to board it, what the true cost of its tickets were. Legends say the Night Train ran to the end of the world, or perhaps beyond, but the destination didn’t matter. Nobody boarded the Night Train heading to something, only away. And Kaverick was running away as fast as he could. It didn’t matter if he had to run all the way to the Hells.

But, as the train stalked toward him on the platform, he found himself questioning his decision. The train’s engine car was a frightening abomination, the metal twisted into a demonic approximation of a face. It might have resembled a human’s face at one point, but seemed fixed in an eternal scream. But it was dusk, and the light in the station was virtually nonexistent, and even staring directly at the horrifying visage, Kaverick could not quite bring himself to believe that he was truly seeing what he thought he was. It must have been his imagination. It must have been his fear.

Kaverick jumped again as the Night Train seemed to crash to a stop, as though it had struck some unseen barrier. If the others on the platform gave any notice of the strange occurrences, they gave no sign of it. The train sat there for a few seconds before the door of the single passenger car opened. Kaverick noticed that no passengers stepped out of the Night Train. Before he could think on this fact, the rest of those gathered on the platform stepped forward to board.

The first to enter the train was a one-eared fox who seemed tall for his kind, dressed in casual trousers but a respectable gray suitcoat. Then came a second fox – it figured the foxes would board first – this one had an oddly bent tail and was wearing a colorful vest and a low-sitting card dealer’s visor. This second fox carried an RATC approved valise. Behind him, a centaur followed impatiently. She was wearing a tanned leather hat and a simple shirt with sleeves down to the elbows. At her waist, Kaverick noticed, she wore a belt with two pistols hanging; an open warning, or an open threat. Behind her was a short human wearing a tattered black shirt and poorly patched trousers. He was speaking loudly, apparently trying to get the attention of the centaur. It was not working. After the boisterous man came a nog woman in a simple dress. She, too, was constantly talking, although she seemed to be speaking solely to herself.

Then came two female humans who looked, from Kaverick’s point of view, to be mirror images of one another. They were dressed in identical robes, and between the two of them, they both carried an RATC approved suitcase. They paused at the door, which was just a bit too small to allow them to pass through at one time with the valise between them. Silently, they repositioned the suitcase in front of them to allow access. After them came a Vash man, his own RATC suitcase slung over his shoulder and a strange doll of a Vash lizard in his right hand. Then there was a woman dressed in the habit of the Sisterhood, her right arm bound up in a sling. The final figure in this strange line of passengers was a tall woman with her head held low. She seemed human, but her ears, which stuck through her dark hair, came to a point.

As soon as this last woman passed into the Night Train, Kaverick himself moved forward to enter the train, as well. He hesitated just before stepping on, a sudden chill climbing up his back. He pulled his case tighter to his chest, and considered simply leaving the station, but before he did, he glanced behind him. All he could see was shadows. As Kaverick’s breathing grew heavier and faster, he could swear there was something in the shadows, staring at him. Kaverick swallowed air and stepped aboard.

The passenger car was long and surprisingly spacious, with a row of seats lining each of the side walls. Most of the other passengers had already claimed seats for themselves, and many of the remaining seats were in varying degrees of disrepair. The Night Train had a certain reputation, and some of the seats, or what remained of them, hinted that that reputation was well-earned. The one-eared fox sat in the very back as he stared silently out the window, while the centaur woman took a spot in the middle on the right, where a seat used to be but had been removed. The Noggle woman and the loud human man took seats near the front, and were still speaking loudly. The Vash, the odd-tailed fox, and the long-eared woman took remaining seats as far from the others as they could.

The two robed twins stood awkwardly in the middle of the aisle, looking around. Kaverick stared at them for a long time, wondering what, or who, they were looking for. Suddenly, he realized that there were no seats left that were together, between the spread-out passengers and the unusable seats. After several long, uncomfortable minutes, the woman with the sling noticed them. She was sitting by the window, and the seat beside her was empty. Quickly, almost hurriedly, the woman pushed herself out of the seat and offered it to the twins with a gesture. They uttered a brief thank you, in perfect unison, as the Sister responded with something about angels and took another seat. Kaverick shook his head, and took one of the few remaining seats near the back.

Several long moments passed, not in silence – the Nog and the loud man saw to the absence of silence – but without true conversation, before the door at the front of the passenger car opened. What stepped out from that door made Kaverick’s eyes grow wide. It resembled a minotaur, but only in the vaguest, most grotesque way possible. It was tall, but thin, and impossibly so. Kaverick had never seen a minotaur with so little muscle, or fat, or flesh. The creature’s hide was a sickly sort of blueish purple, and his horns, rather than jutting out to the sides, had twisted toward the center, entangling with each other like brambles. He surveyed the passengers stoically for a moment, then smiled a wide, twisted grin.

“Greetings, everyone!” The minotaur’s voice was shockingly friendly. “I’m Wrex, the ticket collector. Welcome aboard the Night Train to World’s End!”

“Been working here long, Wrex?” The loud human asked.

“Most of my life,” Wrex said happily. “Why?”

“Just curious,” the human replied with a smirk.

“Well, we can’t be falling behind schedule, so, tickets, please!”

As the passengers fumbled around for their tickets, and Wrex began moving from one to another to collect them, Kaverick took another suspicious look at everyone else. None of them were looking his direction. It was as if they were intentionally avoiding looking at him, or the case he carried. But one of them knew. Kaverick was sure of it. They couldn’t have known it all, of course. They couldn’t know which one he was. But the dead ticket seller back in Vice Gulch must have tipped someone off. It couldn’t have been avoided, and Kaverick was not about to be caught. Not now, not when escape was just one night’s train ride away. All he had to do was figure out who was hunting him before they figured out who they were hunting.

Sister Temperance had only been on a train once before, and she had spent that trip hiding inside a sack of mail, with no food, and no water -- with nothing at all besides her hymnal, which she had held tightly with white-knuckled fingers. For seven days and seven nights, she had prayed wordlessly for the angels to deliver her safely to Verkell, and, by their grace, she had made it to the city without being discovered.

Now the train she had just boarded would carry her in the opposite direction. This time, she was riding in the passenger compartment, instead of in the mail car, and, this time, she had a ticket. But she still said a silent prayer to the angels as she had stepped aboard. This train felt dark, and she could not shake the feeling that there was more aboard than the collection of strangers who had just entered. But the Angels’ mercy had seen her through her first train ride, and she was certain they would see her through this one.

For nearly an hour as the Night Train screamed its way down the tracks, Sister Temperance kept her head down and prayed silently, with little movement beyond that of her lips and the occasional repositioning of her right arm, which itched in her sling. Her instinct had been to start preaching to the passengers immediately, but with a surge of will and a prayer of understanding to the Angels, she had refrained. The Supreme Mother had made it clear that her mission was to bring the Virtues to World’s End, and it wouldn’t do to get herself thrown off the only train that went there.

Most of the passengers did not seem particularly inclined to talk to one another. The man who had taken the seat at the front of the train was one of the few exceptions, and he seemed willing to talk to anyone and everyone, regardless of their interest in the conversation. He had introduced himself, to everyone and no one, as Benjamin “Blaster” Kapp, who had apparently been up and down the Waste more times than the sun had. He bragged loudly that he was a bandit, and one with a long and storied resume, but assured everyone that he was off the job tonight. Sister Temperance was thankful, not because he wasn’t working, but because he was an opportunity to save a wayward soul.

Once an hour had passed and the passengers seemed like they were beginning to settle in a bit, Sister Temperance made up her mind to begin her work. She knew, from the Supreme Mother’s warning, that preaching to all of them at once was a very poor idea, so she set her mind to speaking to the passengers individually. She had hoped to speak with Blaster Kapp and perhaps show him the folly of his sinful ways, but he was always engaged in one-sided conversations with someone else, and Sister Temperance was determined to stick to her plan. She first tried to speak with the Nog woman, but through the old woman’s babblings, all the priestess could discern was her name, Langi Thrash. After five or ten minutes, it became clear to Sister Temperance that the Nog was either uninterested in or unable to understand her words. She would try again later.

She next tried to speak to the Vash, who was still carrying a dummy in his right hand. The dummy was also shaped like a Vash, but was green instead of the dusty-red of the living, breathing man who carried him. Sister Temperance tried to speak to the man several times, but he would not respond. He would not even look at her. His doll, on the other hand, stared straight at her the entire time, and even moved to follow her as she stepped aside to allow the ticket collector Wrex to move past her. Sister Temperance was just about to give up for now, but when she turned away, she heard the Vash clearing his throat.

“Aren’t you going to introduce yourself to me?”

She turned around, a smile crossing her face. Perhaps she had made progress after all! But when she did, she noticed that the Vash was still looking away from her. “I…I thought I had,” the priestess said.

“No,” the dummy said. “You introduced yourself to him.” The dummy indicated, with its entire body, toward the Vash holding it. The Vash’s reptilian lips hadn’t moved. “But Malcolm doesn’t really talk. And I must say, I think it is very rude that you spoke to him, but completely ignored me!”

“Oh,” Sister Temperance managed, staring at the doll. She felt herself starting to sweat a bit around the forehead. Her training had not covered the conversion of dolls. “I’m…I’m sorry. I thought, that is…well, I’m sorry. The Mercy of Angels is for all, is it not?” She composed herself and, looking directly into the doll’s wooden eyes, she smiled. “I am Sister Temperance. And you are?”

“They call me Mick,” the doll said. “Mick and Malcolm, that’s us!”

The Vash looked over at the doll, who looked back at him, gave an exaggerated sigh, and turned back to Sister Temperance. “Malcolm and Mick, according to some.”

“Oh, I see,” Sister Temperance said, unsure of how to proceed. Perhaps if she could get the doll talking about faith, she could get Malcolm to open up a bit. She decided to ask Mick what he thought about the Angels. “So, what do you-”

“Do for a living?” Mick interrupted happily. “Why, we’re entertainers, of course! We’ve been everywhere, and played for everyone! We’ve played Verkell and Dayko, Dry Wells, and seven hells, and we’re still going strong!” Malcolm lowered his head and looked away even further at this. The doll seemed to notice. “Well, maybe ‘strong’ isn’t quite accurate. Actually, we’ve been out of work for a while now, and World’s End is about the only place that hasn’t drummed us out of town.”

“I believe that you will find contentment if you just put your fai-”

“Best foot forward?” Mick interrupted again. “I agree! That’s why I keep saying it should be ‘Mick and Malcolm!’ I’m the one they come to see, after all.”

Malcolm turned back to the doll, and the two seemed to have a silent argument between themselves. A lengthy one. Finally, Sister Temperance realized that neither Malcolm nor the doll had any interest in continuing the conversation with her at the present. She took a deep breath, said a silent prayer, and continued on. Blaster Kapp was talking to – or rather ‘at’ – the centaur woman, so Sister Temperance took the seat directly in front of the twins to whom she had given up her seat earlier. They were sitting motionlessly and silently, their arms gently folded in their laps. Sister Temperance turned around and knelt on the seat to look in their direction. After nearly a minute, they finally raised their heads, at precisely the same moment, to look at her.

The priestess smiled at them. “Hello. I’m Sister Temperance.” She glanced at the twin on the left. “What is your name?”

The two robed women seemed to consider for a long moment, then said in unison, “Hush-Hush.”

“I see…” Sister Temperance said, then glanced over to the other twin. “And your name?”

A look of confusion crossed both twins’ faces. “We have just told you.”

The remainder of Sister Temperance’s brief conversation with the twins was no better, nor any less confusing for the priestess. Eventually, she decided to move on, noting somewhat dejectedly that her list of the passengers she would need to revisit was as long as the list she had visited. But, she quickly reminded herself, forbearance was a virtue, and part of forbearance was patience. “Charity, chastity, temperance, forbearance, humility, honesty, obedience,” she whispered to herself as she continued her search for somebody to save.

Forty-five more minutes passed, and the priestess had made little progress. She had learned that the one-eared fox called himself Duke, although that was the one and only word she managed to get from him. The other fox, the one with the bent tail, and was a bit more friendly than the others, but still seemed to be guarded in his conversation, especially when Sister Temperance asked him what had brought him aboard. The conversation ended soon after that question. The woman with the pointed ears, after several attempts at conversation by the priestess, finally introduced herself as Fara Thorial, who said she was only interested in getting out of Jakkard. When Sister Temperance tried to dissuade her, on religious grounds, from any attempt at suicide, Fara asked her to leave her alone.

Sister Temperance wanted to help the woman, but she did not want another black eye, and so decided to comply with the strange woman’s wishes for the time being.

There were only two passengers left besides Blaster Kapp that Sister Temperance had not yet spoken to, the centaur woman and the man who was tightly gripping his suitcase to his chest. Because she was closer, and because the man kept making a point to look away from her every time she looked in his direction, Sister Temperance decided to speak to the centaur. As she approached, she noticed that the other woman was staring down at something in her hand. From her angle, Sister Temperance could not see it clearly, but it looked like a single slip of paper. As she drew closer, the centaur slipped it into her bag hanging from her waist.

“Hello. I’m Sister Temperance.”

“I’m Cerah,” the centaur said quietly, then paused. “Look, let me save you some time. If you’re thinking about trying to save my soul or whatever you people do, you’re tracking the wrong trail. I’ve done too many things I ain’t proud of to be worth the effort.”

“If you aren’t proud of them, then you are more than worth saving,” Sister Temperance said solemnly. “Believe me, Cerah, I was just like you once, and-”

“I doubt that,” Cerah said, an edge entering her voice. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“More than you think, maybe,” the priestess replied. When Cerah tossed her head away, Sister Temperance put her hands up in front of her. “Okay, okay, so I don’t know your circumstances, or what brought you here, or what these things you’ve done are. But I know what it’s like to hate so much about yourself and your life that you think there’s no turning around. But there is always a way back to the Light. There is always a way home.”

“There ain’t no home,” Cerah muttered under her breath.

“With the Angels, there is always a home. Just let them guide you, and-”

“Excuse me, everyone!” Wrex’s voice cut through the passenger car. “Sorry to interrupt, but I have two announcements. Firstly, one of the passengers, and I am not at liberty to reveal who, has requested a stop. At the Crossroads.”

Sister Temperance’s heart sank at those words. She whirled around to look at the twisted minotaur, but his face was unreadable.

“We will reach the Crossroads in about two hours. The train will stop there, and allow anyone who wishes to do so to…conduct their business.”

Sister Temperance felt herself grow pale.

“The Crossroads can be dangerous,” Wrex warned. “Sometimes the Nightsalkers are around, and sometimes they bother the train. I advise that you protect yourself, if you can. As for the second announcement,” as he spoke, Wrex slid the door behind him open, “dinner is served!”

As most of the passengers began to file forward toward the dining car in front of them, Sister Temperance found herself frozen in place. She knew about the Crossroads and the deals that were made there. Everyone in Jakkard knew the stories. But who among them could have requested such a stop? Who could have made such a foolish, damning decision? Once again, she could feel the cool drops of sweat forming on her brow. Once again, just like on that train into Verkell, she felt herself trapped, and helpless, with only the mercy of angels to guard her. She closed her eyes, bowed her head, and prayed.

There was a soul that needed saving on the Night Train to World’s End, and Sister Temperance prayed that she would be strong enough to save it.

The passenger car emptied quickly, and one by one, Kaverick watched the other passengers disappear through the door to the dining car. The babbling Nog woman pushed her way through first, followed by the bandit braggart. The bent-tailed fox followed, and then the vash, and the centaur woman. The pointed-eared woman and the arrogant fox came next, and the twin humans brought up the rear.

Kaverick studied each of them in turn, trying to puzzle out which one had been sent to find him. The centaur and the fox were the obvious choices. The Ridders were nearly always centaurs, which made Kaverick suspect her the most. But Ridders almost always worked in a posse, and this one – Cerah, if he had overheard correctly – was very much alone on the Night Train. But the fox in his fancy gray suitcoat would need to be watched. They all would.

There was only one passenger Kaverick could eliminate from his suspicion, and it had taken hours to decide even that. The holy woman, Sister Temperance, had at first been one of his prime suspects, because she seemed determined to get to know everything about everybody. But the dedication with which she preached to the others was no act. Kaverick had spent his life dodging lawmen and bounty hunters, and while he frequently saw the shadows of lies in others’ truths, he knew how to spot a lie. Her words, while irritating, were not lies. At least not to her.

Once all of the others had left the passenger car, Kaverick allowed himself a moment of weakness and closed his eyes. He could not remember when last he had done so. He had been running for so long, ever since he had first stolen his prize. He didn’t even know what it was. He just knew it was valuable, and the right person would pay well for it, well enough for Kaverick to disappear for good, and in comfort. It was locked up tightly in his valise, and he wasn’t about to take it out until he found a buyer. And there was bound to be a buyer holed up in World’s End.

He just needed to get there, alive enough to sell it. Kaverick had been in the game for a long time. He knew from the protection the item had had that it was worth some serious coin. Unfortunately, he also knew that anything worth that kind of money was worth coming after. He didn’t know who rightfully owned it, but whoever it was, they had pull. And pull meant hunters. Kaverick knew that someone was on his trail. The ticket seller in Vice Gulch had let that slip. It had been his last mistake. But whoever was hunting him had gotten to Vice Gulch first, which meant that they were probably already here.

With a start, Kaverick realized he was making a crucial mistake. As he was studying everyone else to figure out what was off about them, his hunter must logically be doing the same. As he was looking for any behavior that would tip their hand, anything unusual, they would be looking for the same. And everyone but Kaverick himself had headed into the dining car. If he wanted to avoid suspicion, he would need to join them, as much as he balked at the idea. Worse yet, as he looked around the now-empty car, he saw that all of the others had left their valises here in the car. If Kaverick came in, clutching his bag to his chest, he would essentially be advertising his guilt to his hunter.

With great mental effort, Kaverick tucked his RATC approved valise under his seat, steeled himself, and walked into the dining car to join the others.

Sister Temperance’s eyes were closed as she proceeded to say grace for the odd assembly. It was one of the more difficult recitations of prayers she had given in quite some time. While the repetition of the words was rote to her by now, she never allowed their meaning to be so. Prayers to the Angels meant the world to her, so she put everything of herself into every one of them. But the distractions of the day were proving difficult for her.

For one thing, the sound of the other passengers already digging into their meals was a bit off-putting for her. Back at the cloister in Verkell, when grace was spoken over the meals, the other sisters waited until their completion before they started eating. Here, though, there was no such patience. Granted, patience was not one of the seven virtues, though it still something Sister Temperance felt should be practiced. The others about the Night Train to World’s End did not seem to agree.

A bigger distraction, though, was the sister’s own thoughts. Somebody aboard this train, somebody in this very dining car, was looking to sell their very soul in just a few short hours. And that meant that there was a soul here that needed to be saved. Saving souls fell under the providence of the angels and their servants. It fell, here on this train, to Sister Temperance herself.

When she finished the prayers and opened her eyes again, the rest of the passengers were halfway through their meal, and it seemed as though the choicest portion of her own meal had been snagged by somebody else. She sighed and sat down, picking at her food as she looked around the table. The Nog woman, Langi Thrash, was still babbling incoherently non-stop, and the others were ignoring her expertly. The only person who even occasionally seemed to regard her was Mick, the Vash’s ventriloquist doll. The Nog, in turn, ignored the doll.

Conversation kicked off as the others were finishing eating. It started with the braggart bandit, Blaster Kapp, who was sitting next to the odd-eared woman who had, albeit reluctantly, introduced herself as Fara Thorial.

“So, you some kind of half-fox, half-human, or what?” Kapp’s voice was loud, and lacked any sort of sensitivity or social conscience.

The dark-haired woman rolled her eyes and turned her head to glare at the man. “No,” she said simply.

Langi Thrash said something incoherent, and Mick nodded his head. “They make a good point,” the dummy said. “Those are some strange ears you’ve got there.”

Fara turned her head to stare at Malcolm. “Do you have a point?”

Malcolm didn’t move, but the doll shook its head. “Don’t yell at him,” Mick said. “I was the one who said it.”

“She’s no fox,” Duke said suddenly, which were the only words he had spoken on the trip so far apart from his own name.

“I never claimed to be,” Fara said, annoyed.

“Alright then, so what is the deal?” Blaster asked. “It’s just weird, you know?”

Sister Temperance noticed that the twins seemed to twitch, just slightly, at Kapp’s comment, but neither one said anything. Thorial shook her head. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the other fox, the one with the crooked tail. “I’ve seen my fair share of weird in the Wastes, and from the looks of the rest of these folks, I’d say I’m not the only one.” The fox pointed at the man at the end of the table, the last one to enter the dining car. Sister Temperance had not caught his name yet. “You look like you’ve seen some things, for instance.”

The man glared at the fox, then seemed to relax and give a little laugh. “I suppose so,” he said. “But still, I’m curious about the pointy-eared woman, too.”

“Her name is Fara,” Sister Temperance said softly.

“I don’t need your protection, Sister,” the woman said. “You really want to know my story? I don’t think you can handle it.”

“I can handle anything you can throw, lady,” Blaster Kapp said. “I’ve ridden up and down these wastes for as long as they’ve been opened. I rode with Yurda Ohv back when he was just getting started, helped him make a name for himself. I rode with old Wings for a couple seasons down south. Even did a stint in Red Jackie’s gang hittin’ some of the trains. So anything you’ve got to say ain’t nothing I haven’t seen.”

Fara Thorial turned in her seat and stared at him squarely. “I’m what the people of this world call a ‘Star Person.’ Now what do you think about that?”

Kapp shrugged. “I have no idea what that is.”

“Me, neither,” the crooked-tailed fox agreed.

Duke simply shrugged, and the robed twins remained as motionless as ever, although Sister Temperance did seem to think they were directing their attention mostly toward Blaster Kapp. Finally, with a sigh, the centaur woman Cerah spoke.

“It’s a rattler term, I think. Something about people from beyond the sky, or some other nonsense like that.”

“Exactly,” Fara said. “I’m not from this world.”

Everybody around the table was silent for a long moment, except of course for Langi Thrash’s inane babbling. Finally, Mick looked straight at Fara. “I think you’re crazy, you know that?”

Fara looked from the dummy to the vash and back again. Finally, she just shook her head and looked toward Sister Temperance. “And this is why I cannot wait to escape from this insufferable world of yours.”

“Speaking of which,” Sister Temperance said, seeing an opening. “I…I wanted to talk to all of you…” There was a general groan from the rest of the passengers, but Sister Temperance was resolute. “Listen, I know at least one of you asked the conductor to…stop…at the Crossroads. I am asking you to please reconsider. You don’t know what you’re doing. Whatever you might gain from a deal there pales in comparison to what you are gambling away.”

The crooked-tail fox smirked just slightly. “Some gambles are worth it, you know.”

Sister Temperance refocused on him. “May I ask your name, sir?”

The fox shrugged. “Most people just call me Crooktail, on account of, well, you get it.”

“Well, Crooktail, please believe me when I say that nothing is worth risking your eternal soul. If you will just listen for a few minutes, I’m sure…”

Crooktail held up his paws. “Look, lady, I’m not the one who asked for a stop. Sell your sermon to someone else.”

“Then why are you here?” Mick asked.

Crooktail looked around the table and hesitated, then smiled. “Anyone want to play cards?”

Kaverick stayed in the dining car, listening to the idiotic chatter of the others as he tried to puzzle out who was hunting for him. The dinner had not done much to eliminate his suspects. The pointed-eared woman, Fara, was clearly insane, and so it likely wasn’t her, unless it was an act. Unlike the Nog woman, her madness did not seem to devolve into the irrational; in fact, apart from her delusion that she was not from the world, she seemed perfectly logical. If anything, that made Kaverick more suspicious of Langi Thrash. If one of them were putting on an act, it seemed more likely it was the Nog.

The others were all still possible, though. The centaur had proven knowledgeable, at least of Rattler lore. And Ridders, who were most often centaurs, spent a lot of time out in the wastes, giving them plenty of time to deal with and learn from the snakes. But then there were the two foxes. The quiet one was always watching, and the crooked-tail one seemed a bit too interested in the other passengers, but so did Blaster Kapp. And the vash never spoke, except through his creepy doll. What was he hiding that he wouldn’t open his own mouth?

Kaverick’s musings were interrupted when he walked back into the passenger car and saw something that made his heart drop into his stomach. Or rather, he saw nothing. His valise was missing. It took every drop of self-control to not scream out in fear and desperation. The others were walking in with him, so he tried to remain calm and as nonchalant as possible as he looked around the car. All of the other valises were missing, as well. Forcing himself to move slowly, he took the seat he originally had near the back and waited.

It only took a few moments for one of the other passengers to call out to Wrex, the ticket collector. The voice had come from the vash, Malcolm, or more accurately, from his doll Mick. Wrex appeared from the car behind them, moving so silently despite his hoofs that Kaverick jumped as the minotaur passed him. Wrex approached the vash and his dummy and asked what they needed.

“Uh, where is my case? I live in there, you know!”

If Wrex found anything strange about the fact that he was being addressed by a ventriloquist dummy, he gave no outward sign of it. “Regulations, I’m afraid. All bags and suitcases need to be in the luggage car when we roll into World’s End.”

“Then why didn’t you take them from us when we boarded?” Crooktail asked, jumping into the conversation.

The sickly-thin minotaur turned his body toward the new speaker. “It has been noticed over the years on this – and most, now that I think of it – rail lines that most passengers…resist…having their bags relocated. It was therefore made regulations to do it while the passengers are eating.”

Nobody said much after that, and Wrex moved off to the front of the car and disappeared back into the dining car. Almost an hour passed with little conversation, apart from the obnoxious priestess, who was going around talking with everyone. She seemed desperate to figure out who would be getting out at the Crossroads. Kaverick couldn’t care less. Let anyone make any deals they wanted. He only cared about two things: who was his hunter and where was his prize? He needed to get his valise back, but he couldn’t afford to seem too insistent about it. That would tip off his hunter instantly.

Eventually, he felt the train begin to slow. They must be pulling into the stop near the Crossroads. Still mumbling to herself, Langi Thrash stood up from her seat near the front and made her way down the aisle toward the back. Kaverick watched her approach him with a suspicious eye, but she moved past him without a glance in his direction. Sister Temperance, on the other hand, watched the Nog woman go with an expression that bordered on horror, and as the train came to a stop, the sister stood and bolted after the Langi Thrash.

A few moments later, Wrex returned from the forward car. “The train is stopped,” he announced. “If you have business outside the train, now is the time for you to disembark and enact it. Just follow this road that direction,” he pointed to his left, “and walk until you reach the crossroads. The train will remain here for precisely one hour. If you are not back by then, the train company assumes that you will not be returning at all.”

For a long moment, nobody moved except to look around at one another. Then, finally, the centaur woman sighed, adjusted her weight, and moved to head toward the front door. Kaverick watched her go as he suppressed a small smirk. At least he could write her off of his list of suspects. Unless, of course, she were going to make a deal to find him, but he considered it unlikely. Still, he had bigger issues. He needed to get his valise back.

A few minutes after Cerah left the passenger car, Sister Temperance walked back in, shaking her head. She took a moment to adjust the sling on her arm as she was standing next to Kaverick, and then looked around the passenger car, noticing that the centaur was gone.

“Hey, where did Cerah go?”

Kaverick couldn’t help but chuckle. “Looks like she was your dealmaker. You thought it was the Nog, huh?”

Sister Temperance’s eyes went wide. “Oh, Angels! I need to find her!”

“It wasn’t the Nog, then, huh?”

Temperance started running for the front of the car after Cerah. As she ran, she yelled back at him. “No, she was just throwing bags off the train!”

Kaverick’s eyes widened and he shot to his feet instantly. In the same moment, though, so did Crooktail. As their eyes locked with one another, Kaverick realized his mistake. So, it was Crooktail all along. Now Kaverick had two problems. He needed to recover his valise, and he needed to rid himself forever of his hunter. Without a word, he darted back into the luggage car. If Crooktail followed, it would be the last thing the fox ever did.

Sister Temperance had been in darkness before. Most of her life had been lived in darkness, until she had been saved by the light of the angels. When she had stowed away on that train into Verkell, hidden inside that stinking, itchy, miserable sack of mail, she had been shrouded in darkness the entire time. Yes, she had known plenty of darkness in her life, but none had frightened her the way this darkness did.

Almost the moment she stepped off the Night Train to World’s End, the darkness seemed to wrap around her like a cloak. There was so little light that she could barely see the road, which itself was little more than a path in the dirt. Sister Temperance was no tracker, and if Cerah had left any tracks, she could not see them in this light. But if her intention was to make a deal, she must be heading for the Crossroads, and that meant following this road until it intersected.

Temperance’s heart was beating faster than she could ever remember it beating in the past. There was, no doubt, a part of her that feared for her life. She was in a strange place, with nobody to help her, and the ticket collector had made a point to mention that the nightstalkers troubled the area. At times, she thought she could almost hear them, in the distance, or perhaps just beyond her vision, but that did not matter. There was a soul to save.

And that was what truly frightened Sister Temperance. She liked to believe that her sermons outside the dens of sin in Verkell had perhaps saved at least one otherwise hopeless person. But while her faith was unshakable, she was not blind. She saw how they treated her. She had been beaten up more than once, and her current state, the arm in a sling and the still-healing black eye, showed the result of her latest attempt. But as much as those bar-and-brothel-bound souls needed saving, here was one that was nearly gone completely. Sister Temperance could not let her down. She could not let down the angels.

Sister Temperance was running, and she almost ran head-long into the centaur as the other woman was walking much more slowly down the path. Temperance skidded to a stop, while Cerah just tossed her head to the side, not even truly looking at the priestess as she spoke.

“I know what you’re going to say, so just save it. I’ve made up my mind.”

“But…” Sister Temperance began as she struggled to catch her breath. “But, just wait a minute. If you’ve made up your mind, then there’s no harm in talking about it, right?”

Cerah hung her head a bit. “If I delay, I might lose my nerve.”

“Then maybe you didn’t want to do this in the first place,” Temperance said hopefully.

The centaur turned around then, and Sister Temperance saw that she still had the single piece of paper in her hand. The light from the moon was barely there, but as Cerah squared up to her, Temperance could finally see that it was an ordinary playing card.

“You don’t know a damn thing about me, Sister. Don’t pretend that you do. I just…I just want it to all go away. Every mistake I’ve made, everything I’ve done, everything I haven’t…I just want to forget it all.”

“Forget what?” Sister Temperance said. “Tell me about it. You’re right, I don’t know anything about you. But I’d like to. Please, tell me. Maybe I can help you.”

“You can’t.”

“I can try.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But if you just…”

“These memories are painful, don’t you get it!” Cerah yelled. “So painful that I’m willing to make a deal at the Crossroads just to get rid of them! Why can’t you understand this?”

“If you are going to lose the memories anyway, then what is there to lose by talking about it? At worst, you relive something painful. At best?” Sister Temperance took a deep breath. “At best, maybe we can save your soul.”

Cerah looked away, and then looked back in the direction of the train. “We don’t exactly have a lot of time.”

Sister Temperance looked up at the much taller centaur. “Then I guess you should get started.”

Cerah stared at the priestess for a long moment, then shook her head. “Fine. I’ll tell you. Then you leave me alone. Deal?”

“Tell me.”

It still took Cerah a few moments to collect herself. “I don’t know where to start. I’ve never told this stuff to anyone. I’m worthless. I…I married too young, and the man I married was a miserable sack of…sorry, Sister. He was a terrible man. I thought he was handsome. I thought he was strong. I thought…I thought he would change, that I would change him. But things never got better. They only got worse. So much worse.”

“That sounds like the problem with him, not you. You’re not worthless just because of that.”

“It’s not because of that. It’s because…I…we…had a daughter. She was such a good little girl. I had never been so happy.” Tears were beginning to well in Cerah’s eyes. “After she got past a certain age, my husband, he, he started to…hurt her. And I…I did nothing. I didn’t stop him. I didn’t…I didn’t want it to be me.”

“That’s still not a reason to-“

“I abandoned her!” Cerah screamed suddenly. Then she took a deep breath and looked away. “One night, I just couldn’t take it anymore. So I left. I just up and left. And I left her behind. I left her with him.” She looked back at Sister Temperance, her tear-filled eyes set with determination. “I just want to forget, Sister. I just want to forget what I’ve done. I want to forget what I did to my poor little Scarlet.”

The baggage car was dimly lit by a single oil lamp hanging by the near door, and so when Kaverick first entered it, all he could see was a short distance around himself. The car was filled nearly to the top with massive crates, boxes, and sacks. What any of those contained was, of course, anyone’s guess, and Kaverick had neither the interest nor the time to investigate. He knew, from the way he had jumped to his feet, that Crooktail would be following him in any moment, and Kaverick also had Langi Thrash to deal with. He narrowed his eyes, drew the gun he had been concealing at his back, and started moving through the cluttered baggage car.

He was expecting to hear the insane ramblings, but he could hear nothing. The further he moved from the door, the more the car became a labyrinth of shadow, and the more a disturbing thought occurred to him. The hunter might have been Langi Thrash all along. He had suspected her of faking her madness, and it had been her who threw the bags off the train. And who would have more reason to do that than someone who was looking for something that was likely to be in one of the passenger valises.

Of course, with Crooktail’s reaction, he clearly suspected something. Maybe that was the plan all along. Maybe Thrash threw the bags off the train, while Crooktail stayed behind to watch for everybody else’s reaction. As Kaverick moved through the increasingly dark baggage car, he kept his ears open for the door behind him. If it opened, he would turn and fire. He couldn’t let anybody follow him. But Langi could be waiting in a shadow, just holding out for the opportunity to jump.

Neither of the things Kaverick was expecting happened. The door behind him stayed closed, and Langi Thrash never appeared. At the end of the car, though, Kaverick found an open window and a door in the side of the car, which was just slightly ajar. He spared one quick glance back at the door to the passenger car, then kicked the side door open and jumped down to the ground below.

A gust of cold, night breeze caught Kaverick in the face the moment his feet hit the ground. As his eyes were adjusting to the moonlight, his ears detected a troubling sound in the distance. It was an unnatural sound, a sort of scrapping in the dirt and dust that seemed – although it could have been his imagination – to be getting closer. Kaverick’s first thought was an acridian, but acridian movements were, at least somewhat, rhythmic and regular. This was something else. And in the Wastes, “something else” was always something to avoid.

When his eyes finally adjusted, he saw the Nog woman. She was on her knees, her back toward him. He raised his gun toward her and moved to circle so that he could see what she was doing. As he did, he saw that on the ground in front of her was a case, one of the RATC approved valises so popular among train travelers. The valise was open. Kaverick’s voice caught in his throat. He could not see into the valise from where he was, but he realized with a start that the Nog woman was not speaking. She hadn’t shut up the entire trip, but now, as she stared down at the case, she was silent.

Finally, Kaverick spoke, putting a cold edge into his voice. “Stand up, and turn around, or I will shoot you in the back.”

The nog woman stiffened, and, very slowly, moved to comply. She straightened up and turned around, but her eyes were unfocused, and she had a big, goofy smile on her donkey-like face. Then she started to talk, again in the same ceaseless string of nonsense she had been using all trip.

“Stop that crap,” Kaverick said. “You’re not fooling anyone. I know what you came here for, and you are not getting it.”

Suddenly, Kaverick heard a shuffling sound behind him. He spun around and saw Crooktail there, no more than a dozen paces behind him. Crooktail held out his arms; his paws were empty.

“Hey, just calm down, alright?”

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re here for, either!”

Crooktail shook his head. “I just want my valise. That’s it. You don’t have to kill anyone tonight. Let the Nog go. She’s clearly out of her head. And all I want is my case.”

“Your case? Baloth droppings. You’re after my case. You and the Nog are in this together, aren’t you? Aren’t you!?!”

“I’ve never seen her before tonight.” Crooktail said. “Honestly, I’m just like you. I’m trying to get where I’m going without anyone taking what’s mine. What do you say, huh? Put your gun away, we’ll find your case, we’ll find my case, and we’ll get that crazy Nog back inside, and then we can all head to World’s End, where we’ll all find our own little holes to crawl into, eh?”

Kaverick stared at Crooktail for a long while, contemplating. He was just about to respond when, from behind him, Langi Thrash shrieked. Kaverick whipped back around and fired, shooting the screaming woman straight through the heart. She was standing where she had been, and there was nothing apparent that had caused her outburst. Kaverick spun back around instantly, expecting Crooktail to be charging him or at least drawing a gun, but the fox simply stood there, his vulpine mouth hanging open in shock.

“You…you killed her.”

Kaverick narrowed his eyes. “Don’t worry. You’ll join her.”

He lifted the gun and pointed it straight at Crooktail’s heart. A wicked smile crossed his lips, and then a second gunshot rang out through the dark, Jakkard night.

Sister Temperance stood stunned as Cerah let herself cry. After a few long minutes, the centaur finally reached up with her left hand to dry her left eye, and then with her right to dry the other. Temperance noticed that she switched the playing card in her hand to do so. The priestess’s brow furrowed slightly, curious.

“Can I ask you about that card?”

“Huh?” Cerah said, then looked down. “Oh, this? I took this from my husband when I left.” She hesitated, then handed the card to the other woman. Sister Temperance looked at the card closely, barely able to make it out in the mostly obstructed moonlight. It was the Eight of Hooves. “It represents my daughter and me,” Cerah said. “Four hooves each, you know? Eight total? I couldn’t bring myself to take her with me. I couldn’t look at her after what I’d let happen to her. But I thought, maybe, if I kept the card, we could somehow be together.”

She reached out and took the card back, and Temperance let her have it. Neither one said a word, and eventually Cerah turned back and took another step toward the Crossroads in the distance. Then Sister Temperance felt a strength growing within her, as if the angels themselves were preparing to speak through her. When she spoke, it was with the same conviction and passion with which she spoke her sermons outside of those Verkell bars.

“You don’t want to forget.”

Cerah stopped and cocked her head back at the other woman. “What?”

Sister Temperance looked up, her confidence growing. “You don’t want to forget your daughter. If you did, you wouldn’t have kept that card. If you did, you wouldn’t have taken it back from me just now. You’re lying to yourself. You came out here, hoping to make a deal at the Crossroads, a deal to forget, but that’s not what you truly want, or you would have thrown that card away long ago.”

“I don’t have time for this.”

“Yes, you do. You have all the time in the world, because you’re not going to go through with this.”

“Excuse me?”

“Listen to me,” Sister Temperance pleaded. “What happens if you forget about everything? What happens if you forget about your husband, and your daughter? What happens if you meet him again? You will fall into the same trap you did when you didn’t know any better. And worse, what if you ever meet your daughter again?”

“Well, then, I wouldn’t know the difference, would I?”

“Maybe not, but she will.”

At this, Cerah froze. For another long moment, she stood there, presumably thinking. Finally, in a voice that barely qualified as a whisper, she spoke. “I can never make things right for her.”

“Maybe not,” Sister Temperance said. “But you can’t even try if you don’t remember that there’s something to set right. And if you go through with a bargain at the Crossroads, you can never set things right for yourself, either.”

The next moment seemed to freeze in the cold night air, hanging there like frost as both women stood and both women thought. Finally, Cerah brought one hand up to her forehead and seemed to wipe off sweat, then ran the same hand through her long, dark hair, grabbing and removing her hat as she did. Then she turned around. She nodded slowly at Temperance and then, softly, said, “let’s get back to the train.”

At that precise moment, they heard a soul-piercing shriek, so close that it made Sister Temperance shiver. A moment later, she swore she saw something move in the darkness just beyond her vision, but as she tried to focus on it, it vanished. Another inhuman shriek from the darkness made her spin around, but again, there was nothing there when she looked. Sister Temperance had just saved a soul, but it was beginning to feel as though she had failed to save a life.

The shrieks started coming more frequently, and the quick movements in the darkness coming in equally shorter intervals. Cerah tucked the Eight of Hooves into her belt and drew her two pistols, but even the inexperienced Temperance could see how much the centaur’s hands were shaking. Both the centaur and the human were turning in circles, trying to swivel their heads to see every direction at once, but it always seemed like something was already there when they looked, and just vanishing.

Then Sister Temperance turned around to see the horrid, jagged, terrifying face of a nightstalker just inches from her own face. She froze, too terrified to even scream, as the horrifying thing just grinned wickedly at her. Unable to move, she ran through the words of her favorite prayer to the angels in her head, hoping beyond hope that they would hear and answer. Behind her, Cerah lifted one of her pistols toward the creature, but it pulled back and disappeared before she could shoot.

The screams and shrieks all around them intensified and became a single, unintelligible cacophony. It grew louder and louder until Sister Temperance could no longer stand it. She tried to cover her ears, but with her right arm in the sling, she could not manage. Cerah was covering her own, holding her pistols at the same time. Temperance tried to lean her head to the side, to cover her ear with her shoulder, but it was a losing battle.

And then, suddenly, there was silence. Sister Temperance at first thought that she had been killed, as she could not see or hear anything, until she realized that she had her eyes clenched tight. She forced herself to open them, and saw a very strange sight. She and Cerah were surrounded in a pale, glowing circle, inside of which there were any number of symbols that she had never seen before. Sister Temperance turned to Cerah to ask if she was alright, but no sound came out as she did.

Then, with a startling suddenness, the pale light of the circle seemed to collect in on itself, and then extended skyward, forming a wall of light. This wall shimmered for an instant, and then shot outward, flying in the direction of the Crossroads. Sister Temperance and Cerah looked at one another, bewildered, before their thoughts were interrupted by two voices, speaking in unison.

“Pardon the interruption, but you seemed to require aid.”

The priestess turned back toward the direction of the train where she saw Hush-Hush, the robed twins who had been on the train with them.

Sister Temperance stared at them for a moment, aghast. “Did…did you do that just now?”

The twins nodded in perfect unison. “We have scared them off for now. However, we recommend returning to the train with relative haste. The nightstalkers will not stay away for long.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Cerah said, starting off toward the train and motioning Sister Temperance to follow. They had barely taken three steps before a thunderous sound rolled through the night, followed shortly by a second one. They all looked at each other. Everyone in Jakkard knew the sound of a gunshot when they heard one, and two had just come from the train.

Kaverick, with his gun held tightly in his hand, lay dead on the ground just beyond the Night Train to World’s End. As Sister Temperance, Cerah, and Hush-Hush arrived back on the scene, they found him lying near one of the RATC approved valises that Langi Thrash had thrown out the window of the baggage card. Not far from her, Langi herself was strewn across the cold Jakkard ground. Crooktail was in the process of closing up his own valise, which was lying near the dead Nog’s feet.

Sister Temperance surveyed the gruesome scene, then looked to the crooked-tailed fox. “Was this your doing?”

Crooktail looked up at her, but before he could answer, another voice rang out, as boisterous and bombastic as ever.

“No, I’m afraid that was me.” The voice belonged to Benjamin “Blaster” Kapp, who emerged from a shadow between the train cars with a pistol in his hands. “Well, to be honest, the crazy old Nog was offed by this fellow,” he kicked the body of Kaverick with his boot. “But the hole through his head is very much my handiwork.”

“But…why?” Temperance pressed.

Kapp chuckled to himself as he slipped his pistol back into his side holster. He reached down to where Kaverick’s body rested and picked up the valise there. “Mr. Kaverick here stole something he shouldn’t have. My employer was quite emphatic that it be returned, and that…” he paused, as if thinking of the words, “proper payment be extracted for the insult and inconvenience.”

“But, he was a living person!” Sister Temperance said. “He could have been saved!”

Blaster Kapp stood up and tipped his hat to the sister. “You may work for the angels, and that is all well and good. But my employer has even less interest in salvation than yours seem to.”

“You are no bandit,” Hush-Hush said in unison.

Kapp looked over at the twins and smiled. “Indeed not, although it often pays to claim so. I am, perhaps, worse than any bandit.”

“So who do you work for?” Cerah asked.

The man smiled again, held up the valise, and answered. “The RATC, of course. And somebody,” he kicked the corpse a second time, “made the mistake of stealing from the boss.”

He turned and walked away, heading back toward the passenger car. The others there, Sister Temperance, Cerah, Hush-Hush, and Crooktail, all looked at one another in confusion, before deciding almost as one to gather up the rest of the bags, toss them back into the baggage car, and return to the train.

Once everybody – or everybody living, at least – had returned to the passenger car, the train groaned to a start once again, and the journey continued onward. Nobody said anything until Wrex stepped back into the car.

“Well, we should be arriving at World’s End before morning. And only two passengers dead so far!” The twisted minotaur chuckled pleasantly to himself as he turned to leave. “All in all, a good trip for us!”

The passengers glanced around at each other, but they all seemed to decide that there was nothing left to say. After all, it was just another voyage on the Night Train to World’s End.

This piece. Oh, boy, this piece. What a ride this piece has been.

So, this piece has been in the works for nearly seven years. NEARLY. SEVEN. YEARS. Orcish dropped a comment in some random thread a very long time ago that he sort of wished people would want to write stories about Hush-Hush, and I mentioned casually that I had a vague idea of a story about them. I don't remember which thread that was in or exactly when that happened, because I haven't been able to find that original thread by the way I'm looking for it, but I imagine it was some time mid-to-late 2015. What I do know for sure is that I originally sent Orcish the "pitch" for this story as a possible collab in a PM dated Feb 2, 2016.

Now, at the time, Orcish was mired waist-deep in his complex story "Enough Rope to Hang By," and considering that was set on my plane of Thorneau, Orcish was using me as a sounding board for the entire story, sending it to me piece by piece as he was working. But Orcish wasn't having an easy time with that story, mostly because he didn't like what Dearest Perrine did to him when she started taking up residence in his mind. So there were other things he wanted to be working on at the time, and so I thought a collab with a sort of crazy ensemble crew would do well for him. So, I pitched him the idea, he liked it, and we started batting more specific ideas around.

My original plan only featured Kaverick trying to figure out who was trying to kill him, and the rest of the story was going to be sort of a mystery. Most of the cast that appears in this final version were in the plan: Duke, the one-eared fox; Hush-Hush, the twin hushers; Langi Thrash, the incoherent Nog; Cerah, the centaur woman; Benjamin "Blaster" Kapp, the "bandit" braggart; Malcolm, the Vash Ventriloquist; Fara Thorial, the elf planeswalker stuck on Jakkard; and Wrex, the twisted minotaur abomination. All of them were there.

It was Orcish who asked if the train would have room for, as he described her, "a missionary from the Order of Angelic Mercy, with a not-yet-healed black eye and a funny-sounding name." The character that would become Sister Temperance had been rattling around in his mind for a while before then, and he was looking for motivation to get her on the page, so to speak. I said, "Of course!" and Orcish wrote "No Good Deed" and posted it on Feb. 28, 2016, so he was pretty keen on her. At this point, we hit on the idea of doing the split story, where we would switch back and forth between Kaverick and Sister Temperance. That necessitated something for Temperance to be looking for, and that is when we decided that one of the passengers was looking to make a bargain at the crossroads, and she would want to stop them.

I do not remember at what point I decided Cerah would be Scar's mother. It was not right away, and in fact, Scar was not created until Feb 11, a good week after I sent Orcish the idea for the story with Cerah in it. But at some point, I decided on the connection, and thought she would have the Eight of Hooves, which I included in "Scar's." "Scar's" came out on April 9 of 2016, so it had to be before that that I made that call.

Now, during this time, both Orcish and I tried to write this story, and we both failed. Something about the story just wasn't working, and neither of us could quite put our finger on what the problem was. We would come back to it from time to time, because we both believed in the overall idea for the story, but we never got much further than one or two pages.

Later in 2016, Orcish decided to create Crooktail in "Fox's Run" and opted to suggest that he was on his way to World's End at the end of that story. This took an already complicated story, one that we were already having a hard time figuring out, and added another layer of complexity. I think Orcish was trying to give us an out, hoping that Crooktail might have been the solution to our problem. Eventually it did, but not initially. Initially, it sort of punted the ball out of our field, so to speak. As the months and years wore on, we would talk about the story from time to time, but it never got written.

As of June 8 of this year, Orcish has been gone from these boards for over two years. That was sort of the benchmark I was waiting for to determine that the various collabs he and I had been working on or discussing were "up for grabs," so to speak. I felt it would be disrespectful to take over those stories, just to have him come back and want to do them. But two full years seemed like a closure point to me, so I decided that the door is now open for me to finish off those pieces that I've been thinking about in one way or another for years. And with this story having some horror-ish elements, I thought this was a fine place to start.

I am very happy to be done with this story. It has been rolling around in my brain in one way or another for far too long. There are other stories in there that are older, but they're mostly ones that I have relegated to the "not going to happen" pile. This story, I've always wanted to make happen, and it is one of the few stories I have attempted that I've ever really felt "defeated" by. This story has changed a lot from the original idea, and I sort of wish I had managed to crank up the "creepy" a bit more than I did, but I like the story, and I'm glad it is finally out there.