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There are those we do not speak of. And there are those we do not think of. Because if we do, if we are foolish enough to let them into our minds for just a moment then we are lost.
Moisture collects on the stalks of the whispery grass, giant beads of opaque liquid oozing down the sharp contours of the weeds, gathering like mirrors. The night is still, the air hot with fever. Ajar windows are glossy with sweat and feathers of fabric poke from between the open spaces. They hang limply, without movement for there is nothing to stir them.
Doors too are ajar, flung wide open into caverns of oblivion where the darkness is so thick it erupts over the threshold and snarls as you pass by. They are not doors left open by choice. On the side a bike lays forgotten, the handles lost into a thicket of grass and beside it one shoe, a dirty trainer, left in a haste.
The street is long enough to be lost in the hunting night and you edge deeper into the mystery, blood cold but not yet icy with fear. Every house is the same; abandoned. On you right an empty plot of land rears up between two white washed clapboard frames, the upturned soil twists and slithers with trembling bodies, the stubby flesh contorting with slow, content movement.
Worms.
You push on, unnerved by the discovery of worms. But it is then you spy the void. The displaced darkness forced, repelled, from something which has stolen its space. It flickers, pale at first but rapidly growing. It could be ten meters away or thirty, the night is like soup in your eyes. An intense, burning heat washes across your skin, the hairs rise and singe, the gagging perfume of burning flesh filling your nose as you drink in the view.
It is chasing the night. Fire. It runs from house to house diving through the doors left obligingly open, smashing through windows not quite wide enough to walk through. It bombards the roofs and thunders onto the lawns. It laughs wildly, insanely, as it comes. And behind it something darker, faster but flailing and rapidly losing its battle with the flames.
A horse. The hooves rattle the gravel road as its mortified head throws lead in the charge, two more right behind and a forth, a body of charging horses their manes streaming and billowing and alight. Four of them! They become distinct figures in your view, the Pale horse; death's, and his companions. Sickness, the green horse, War, the red horse, Famine, the black horse and leading them, most triumphant of them all. The white horse. Conquest...
