Darkness inside us: A book of short stories

The possessed

PROLOGUE     Georgia; 1864   A man and his daughter stepped out of the wagon that had driven them fifty miles, from the deserted town of Winchester Valley Arkansas. The place had been a scary place for the man and his daughter. When they first arrived, they thought demons had dwelt within the abandoned mines and sewers of the town. They encountered no one though, so they moved on, toward where the man and his daughter lived in Georgia. Now the man was a farmer; he owned a huge piece of land in the western borders, which was near to where he lived, as well as a huge, many acre cattle farm in Arizona far to the west, where his sons lived and took care of it. He was a fifty year old man, but he had the same sense of adventure as his sons at sixty since he loved going places, traveling around, and he was hardly ever home. His daughter, a bright pretty   

(one of the only girls to go to school in this time and actually enjoy it)  

girl about the age of seventeen. She was well mannered, pretty, and enjoyed the long ventures her father usually took her on. She lived on the farm with her mother and father and helped out much with it, as well as keeping up with her studied since she wanted to be doctor in the long, mythic big city that the man hadn't even been through. Sure he had heard tales of big cities, about buildings towering over the skyline, roads laden with finely white cement instead of rough patches of dirt, but he had not seen such monstrosities and ill mannered people who lived within these large, golden cities.   

The man was also a hunter. His buddies and him would go every weekend with his hunting rifle and would shoot at deer, kill one, and bring it home for dinner. His wife didn't approve, but he didn't care since his wife, sixty year old Sarah Wilward, was an old bag who didn't approve of anything this man did.   

The two horses rode into the town where the man grew up, and immediately there was the sounds of cannon fire. It was in the midst of the civil war, and surprisingly this town, a town named Fort Billbard, was one of the enemy strongholds, and the enemy had captured it over night. The man grabbed his rifle, aimed at one of the northern soldiers, and fired, the ball from the musket ripping through his throat, blood splashing onto the ground. His daughter, Susie, jumped off the horse and ran away screaming,. She could stand many a site, but one of things that she couldn't stand was fighting and blood. 

  The man raced toward the barn as there was an explosion that ripped through the barn from enemy cannon fire, causing bits of wood to fly through the air and smoke to fill the air with a putrid stench. The man flew back, landing on the ground wincing. He lifted up his rifle and fired, killing several more of the northern troops, leaving only a few left in which the left brigade killed and the siege of this town was over. Southern soldiers milled around gathering the bodies of the dead, while the man, rubbing his back, walked into the saloon which had not been touched by cannon fire, but bullets had done a number on it. He ordered up a whiskey and just sat there until the bar tender recognized him.

"Tim Blately is it sir?" asked the bartender

. "Is it really you?"

  "Yes it is. Sir," replied Tim.

  "What you doin' round these parts?" asked the bartender.

"I thought you was over there by that big city, or explorin or whatever."

  "I was. I decided to come home. See my family," Tim said.  

"Nice of ya Tim," the bartender said. He slid a glass over to Tim which contained icy fog on the glass, as well as a dirty colored liquid that anyone with two brain cells would know to be Whiskey.

Tim drunk it. "I heard you was round that nearby 'bandoned town. That true?"  

"Yes, I'm afraid it is."