The Creeping, Hungry Sands

Consumption

The blazing sun rises over the Tule desert, in the southern reaches of Nevada. It is a lonely place, where the wind whispers tales of the long-forgotten past. An ever-shifting landscape of sand whipped by scorching winds, it makes one wonder how anyone ever thought to call it home. It is a hostile stretch of empty land. Empty, but not entirely uninhabited.
    The town of Scottsburg, Nevada was founded in 1852 by German immigrants seeking fortune alongside the gold miners in the American west. Like many ghost towns, it was there one day and gone the next. Nothing but empty husks of buildings and sand slowly eating away at the dry wood as was shuffled along by the wind. The only thing unusual about this town, though, was the sheer amount of sand. It was piled up inside buildings, engulfing entire fences; sand seemed to be everywhere. In most towns, the sand only really piled up in small mounds on the windward sides of buildings during dust storms, but Scottsburg had an abnormal amount of sand. Anybody passing through wouldn’t even stop, just shadows and echoes of voices floating by on the wind. The sands were unknown to outsiders, spoken about only in hushed whispers in nearby villages. The villagers told their children of the sands, rumors of ghosts and goblins among the dunes who would seek out and eat lazy or unruly children. Truth be told, nobody outside Nevada really knew about the ghost town, until the Langston brothers came along on their way to California, where they sought their fortunes along with countless others at the height of the gold rush.
    It was that sheer amount of sand that drew the shock and confusion of the Langston boys. Joseph, the eldest, led the pack on the way in, his three brothers trailing behind him on their horses. Upon seeing no signs of life in the town, the youngest brother, Samuel, wanted to move on. He said the way the shadows flickered against the sand dunes made him nervous, but the other three brothers just laughed, saying he was too skittish for a miner’s life. It was too late in the day for the boys to leave town, so they found the cleanest building and tied the horses to the post outside. Adam laid out his bedroll for a quick nap, Calvin started a fire to rustle up dinner, and Joey took Sam with him to go explore the abandoned town before dinner. As they made their way down the main street, Samuel spoke.
    “I don’t like this, Joey. Something’s not right. I mean, I know this place is empty, but it still feels like there’s something here. I keep seeing these shapes out of the corner of my eye, but when I turn and look it’s gone. It almost feels like something’s watching us. It’s just not right,” he mumbled. 
    “Unless sand has eyes, Sammy, nobody’s watching us. You’re just being paranoid. Besides, you’ve got your big brother Joey here to take care of things,” Joseph replied with a laugh, ruffling Sam’s golden curls. Sam had heard the phrase “Joey will take care of it” more times in his life than he could count. The Langston brothers had grown up in a pretty tough place, with an abusive alcoholic father and a neglectful mother, Joey assumed the mantle of man of the house at a very young age. He took the beatings from his father, shielding his brothers until he got old enough to fight back. At the age of 15, Joey had taken an old shovel from the tool shed, and once his father had passed out, he did what needed done, burying him miles off from the ranch in an unmarked grave. He told Julia, their mother, that their father had simply left in the middle of the night. She had lost much of her sanity from the rampant abuse by that point, so keeping the lie straight with all four boys wasn’t much of a challenge. Eventually, though, Julia completely stopped taking care of her sons. Joey was responsible for keeping all of them fed, keeping them in clean clothes, cleaning the house, tending to the ranch, and making sure all of his brothers stayed safe. At twenty-two, he was managing the household all on his own until Julia died, when they sold their ranch in Kansas to head west with the miners. Calvin, the second eldest, was much less nurturing than his elder brother when it came to tending to the younger boys. He was what most would call “the strong silent type.” After Julia died, Calvin didn’t speak a word, but then again he didn’t talk much before that either. Most said it was the shock of losing his mother, but others thought it was just that he was stupid. You’d occasionally get a grunt or a click of the tongue, but words eluded him. He played a more passive role in raising his brothers, only engaging them when they came to him needing something. He was taller than Joseph by nearly five inches, even though he was two years younger, and had a darker complexion and hair than his blonde-haired, blue-eyed brothers. Many of their neighbors suspected that he was an illegitimate child of the Langston patriarch, but nothing was ever confirmed, and as far as he was concerned, Calvin considered himself a Langston. Despite his wordlessness, he was quite close with his brothers, acting as second in command when Joseph was busy or out of the house. Adam, as the middle child, was more the rebellious type. He had a quick temper and sharp tongue, and his brothers quickly learned to keep him placated. He was resentful of his mother for abandoning them, and hated his father for obvious reasons. He regularly picked on Samuel, the youngest brother to vent his rage, despite protests from Joseph. Adam got into fights with his eldest brother over his ill treatment of Samuel on a near daily basis, and one fight in particular solidified Adam’s respect for Joseph as leader of the pack. Adam, at eight years old, had already developed a temper, and never hesitated to physically attack five year old Samuel for even the most minor infractions. Samuel had broken the hilt off of Adam’s wooden toy sword, and Adam was just started licking him for it, when Joseph came out of the toolshed. At sixteen, Joseph had no problem hauling Adam off of Samuel, who was huddled up in a ball in the dust against the toolshed wall. Joseph dragged Adam off Samuel, pinning him to the toolshed wall and shaking him to get his attention. 
    “Adam, look at Samuel. Look at him! He’s just a baby and you’re whaling on him like a grown man. What the hell’s wrong with you?” Joseph shouted in his face, making sure he felt the force of his words. “You’ve got no right to do that, you know. If you’ve got a problem with your kid brother, you bring it to me, and I’ll handle it. Next time I catch you doing it I’ll take a strap to you and tell Pa what you did. Understand?” Adam nodded wordlessly, kneeling down next to Samuel, who was still shaking, helping him stand and brushing the dust off his pants. He looked at Joseph with teary eyes, shaking his head and turning away so he couldn’t see him crying. That fight scared him straight, and Adam stopped fighting with his brothers. Samuel was more like a son to Joseph than a brother, with the age difference and how protective he had to be of him. Joseph was twelve when Samuel was born, and he always had a soft spot for him. He kept him under his wing from the moment he could walk, teaching him everything he knew. Samuel was a shy, studious boy, preferring to stay in the shade of a tree with a book than wrestle in the dust with his brothers. He knew everything about local trees and plants, knew how to do math better than all his brothers combined, and was invaluable when it came to reading stars for navigation. Joseph kept saying he should go to college instead of being a ranch hand, but Sam insisted he wanted to be an outdoorsman. He had always wanted to be just like his big brother, and Joseph knew this, so he kept himself in check in the name of being a good example for Sam. 
    The two brothers searched the sand-filled buildings for any usable supplies or tools, finding nothing but scattered bones. 
    “Whaddaya think happened here, Joey?” Sam whispered, nudging a small skull with the toe of his boot.
    “I’m not sure. Indians, probably. Or maybe a drought or a dust storm. That would explain the sand everywhere.”
    Sam clicked his tongue in acknowledgement, still unconvinced. Casting a wary glance over his shoulder as they exited the building, the two boys made their way back to camp, empty-handed. 
    “Cal, Adam, is dinner ready yet?” Joey called, rounding the corner into the dilapidated house where they had made camp for the night. They found the house empty. It could have been that the two other brothers had stepped out back for a smoke, had it not been for the two piles of bones atop a small sand dune. Sam checked out back, finding nothing but four more piles of bones where they had tied the horses. 
    “Joey, where’d they go? They were just here; where are they?!” Samuel said in a panicked tone, tears springing into his eyes.
    “Sammy, calm down. I’m sure they’re around here someplace. I don’t know what happened to the horses, but we’ll figure it out. Stay here while I go look for them,” said Joey, trying to keep his voice level for Sam’s sake.
    “No! You can’t leave me here alone, what if whatever got Adam and Cal comes back?” Sam stumbled over to Joey, flinging his arms around his brother and sobbing into his shoulder.
    “Sammy, you’ll be fine. Go get your rifle and stay put. Holler if you see something, and I’ll be right back. If I’m not back in five minutes, take the gear and try to find help. I love you.” Joey said, striding off, shouting Cal and Adam’s names and attempting to shove down the panic rising in his chest. 
    Sam did as Joey asked, shouldering his pack and gripping his rifle to stop his hands from shaking. He chewed his lip to stop himself from hyperventilating, and listened for any sign that Joey had found Cal and Adam, but his brother’s shouts only faded to a whisper, carried back by the wind. He stared at the sand, watching the wind stir the grains at his feet. It was only when the wind stopped that he realized the sand was shifting on its own.
    “Joey! Joey, the sand! It’s the sand!” Sam screamed at the top of his lungs, sprinting in the direction he had seen Joey start his search. He rounded a corner just in time to see Joey’s hands disappear as he was engulfed in a shifting sand dune. 
    What the Langston boys didn’t know was that the sand wasn’t just sand. See, these tiny mites, sort of like dust mites, assumed extinct, had made a reappearance in the Tule desert. These mites are carnivores, eating exclusively meat, and they’ve got a taste for humans. They live in swarms of up to seven trillion, and they carry grains of sand on their backs as camouflage in their desert habitat. When they bite, they inject a mild numbing agent into the skin, like ticks. This numbing agent makes it so that their prey can’t feel the mites take turns ripping chunks of flesh off them. Even sleeping prey won’t wake as the swarm reduces them to bone in a matter of minutes. 
    Sam lunged forward in a desperate attempt to grab his brother’s hand and free him from the dune, but as his hand closed around nothing but bone, he realized all he did was give the swarm a second helping. He tried in vain to brush off the sand advancing up his arm, crying and screaming in utter horror. Just as the dune engulfed him, advancing at the edges of his vision, he saw a weathered, crooked sign plunged into the earth by the edge of the road, with words scrawled across its twisted surface, reading: Beware the Creeping, Hungry Sands.