Chapter 1

Empty streets ‘neath prairie skies,

Moondark windows, coyote’s cries—

Tumbleweeds race to join their kin,

Chased about by high plains wind—

Lonely nighthawk soars above,

Whip-poor-will laments his love—

On the cusp of death and hate,

The village sleeps; the village waits…

Above the Kansas prairie, puffy gray-white clouds race northward as unstable weather haunts the plains, not unusual in the spring. There are other sounds here, besides just the incessant wind—the creak of a door unsecured, the rattle of dry paper blown up the street, the whisper of weeds rubbing against the sides of buildings long gone over to decay and abandoned.

              Other sounds are more ominous—a rifle’s report, a flute’s trilling, and…sometimes...a scream…

Debbie Clauson would always remember April first, 1994, because it was when the madness started: April Fools’ Day—a blustery spring day in Boulder, Colorado, with low, wraith-like clouds sailing overhead, interspersed by shafts of warm sunshine promising better things to come.

Debbie skipped down her stairs and out to the mailboxes in the cul-de-sac in front of the Aspen Apartments. She was expecting to hear from her editor, Nan Goldman, at New Age Press any day now; the anticipation of an acceptance always made the daily ritual of going to the mailbox an exiting, if brief, adventure.

From her apartment, Debbie had a great view of the mountains, and, in fifteen minutes, could be driving their curving roads to adventure and excitement. On this cool, crisp morning she inhaled the purest air on the continent and thought briefly about how lucky she was just to be here.

The small woman was dressed in her favorite garb: sweat pants and a matching top, Reeboks and white socks. She looked more like an aerobics instructor than a prize-winning novelist. Her blonde hair was carelessly tied back in a ponytail, its escaping strands tickling her makeup-free face.

She opened the gray, steel box with her key and found six small catalogues, some bills, a couple of circulars, but nothing with the distinctive New Age return address logo. Curbing her disappointment, she began to walk back up to her apartment while examining a letter from the law firm of Bailey, Britton and Barton. The return address was in Hays, Kansas.

As she looked over the envelope, a frown line appeared between her eyes and the corners of her generous mouth turned down, spoiling her clear-featured good looks. She had never lived in Kansas, and had only crossed it once, on her way to Boulder after the breakup of her marriage to Billy.

She had been running then, escaping Billy and disappointment and abuse. She remembered the state of Kansas as a vague blur of rain-swept terrain, dark clouds and lightning. It had rained all the way from Kansas City to the Colorado line, augmenting her tears; she had almost considered it symbolic when the sun came out as she entered Colorado. It was like a signal that the worst part of her life was over or the best part was just about to start.

And now a letter from some bunch of attorneys! Was this something Billy had gotten her into? Had her ex gotten himself in some kind of financial or tax trouble and managed make it seem to be her fault? He had always been good making things her fault, from his drunken car crashes to his occasional impotence.

Things had been better for Debbie after she’d stopped taking responsibility for Billy and started living her own life. She finally got fed up with Billy’s mouth and Billy’s fists. She ruefully thought back to those four years of torment, when she was married to a whiny, sniveling adolescent whose favorite name for her when he was upset was ‘cunt.’ The divorce had been final for almost a year and they’d had no kids. Billy was nothing but a big kid himself, she reflected: how could he ever be a daddy? As far as she knew, everything was settled and over with. It had been messy and expensive but she had no doubt she was better off.

Now she trudged back up the stairs in a mood rapidly turning sour, dreading the contents of the envelope. She was having a strong premonition that whatever news it harbored, it would not be good, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to deal with this. She had just gotten her finances in shape with the advance on her latest book and managed to buy a late model car—nothing fancy, a blue Ford Escort, just good transportation. Now this!

When she got back inside her third floor apartment she walked past the computer station with its messy work area where she created her novels, and went to the kitchen to put on the coffee pot. She was in the habit of staying up until all hours of the night typing and then sleeping late in the morning. It was eleven o’clock already and she hadn’t even had coffee.

While the West Bend chuckled and rumbled, talking to itself about freshly ground Columbian beans, Debbie sat down at the breakfast bar and carefully slit open the envelope. She felt almost as if she should be wearing latex gloves against the possibility it might contain something hurtful or deadly, some virus to contaminate her life.

Within the envelope was a single typewritten page with a professional letterhead from the firm of Bailey, Britton and Barton, Attorneys at Law. Her clear blue-gray eyes scanned the print, and she read:

“A record search in the matter of the estate of Joshua McKinley has produced information indicating that you are now Mr. McKinley’s last living relative.

In that there is considerable property in question, to wit: ‘the village of Joshua, Kansas, in its entirety, to include eighty acres of land located in Ellis County, Kansas, the airstrip associated with the town, all buildings and improvements contained within the eighty-acre plot and titles and deeds to the aforementioned property,’ it is our desire that you contact our firm as soon as possible about dispensation of this trust.”

Then, there was an 800 number, office hours, address of the firm, and a signature of one of the partners, a James V. Bailey. He had signed it merely, “Jim”.

Debbie slowly stood up, went to the coffee pot and poured herself a cup, the letter still clutched in one hand. As she leaned one small hip against the counter and sipped, she read it again. “…you are Mr. McKinley’s last living relative…village of Joshua…eighty acre plot…airstrip…”  She thought about the McKinley name. Her mother’s maiden name had been McKinley, but their contact with that family had been all but non-existent. She couldn’t even remember ever going to a family reunion or anything. She had certainly never heard of a Joshua McKinley, and, while it was true her parents were both dead, there must surely be someone else… Well, she thought, this should be easy enough. She’d just call the convenient “800” number and talk to these people and see what the hell this was all about.

She took her coffee to her computer station and carefully dialed in the number. There were a series of clicks, then the distant purr of a telephone.

“Bailey, Britton, and Barton, Attorneys at Law: how may I direct your call?” The voice was tremulous, nearly cracking, but still somehow hushed and professional.

“Jim Bailey, please.”

“May I ask who’s calling?” Debbie resisted the temptation to answer, “Yeah, you can ask but I’m not gonna tell ya.” and merely said, “This is Debbie Clauson, from Boulder.”

“Please hold…” And the voice was gone.

On the line there was only silence for a few seconds. Damn, don’t they even have Muzak out there? Debbie thought. Then there was a sound on the line and Debbie found herself listening intently. It had sounded almost like an exhalation, as if someone had been holding his breath and listening in. Surely not. But then…how many extensions were there at Bailey, Britton and Barton? She pressed the receiver harder into her ear and was startled when, abruptly, the line cleared with a click and a soft baritone voice said, “This is Jim Bailey.”

“Hi, Jim,” Debbie said, feeling relief and not even knowing why, “this is Debbie Clauson. You sent me a letter, reference the village of Joshua.”

“Oh, good. How soon can you come take a look at the property?”

“I…I guess any time. Is it really mine?”

“As far as we’ve been able to determine—and our search was pretty extensive—you are the last living relative of your great-grandfather, Joshua McKinley. In 1866 he deeded land for the creation of a town in his name, with the provision that if the town failed, the property would revert back to him or his heirs.”

“The last person still living in Joshua died last October, and most of the town’s machinery and equipment was sold to satisfy back taxes while we did a search for an heir. The town is yours, free and clear. All you have to do is come to Hays, sign some transfer papers, and decide what you want to do with the property.”

”Okay, well, I guess…tomorrow? Probably in the morning sometime?”

“Fine. I’ll look forward to meeting you, Ms. Clauson.”

After she hung up, Debbie sat and stared at her computer for a few minutes, trying to take it all in. On the monitor, the screensaver kicked on as she sat with her feet curled under her, the letter dangling forgotten in one hand, the fingers of the other hand absently winding a strand of hair around and around.

Sitting with her feet tucked under her and playing with her hair were both habits she’d had since she was a little girl, growing up in Ohio. Her dad used to see her this way and say, “Uh-oh, Deb’s gone for a while.”

Jim Bailey said the last person living there had died last October. So now, the place was technically what was often called a “ghost town”—still mostly intact but unoccupied. Her curiosity was burning inside her now, urging her to action, and at last she uncurled from her “thinking” position and grabbed the phone again. She speed-dialed her best friend, who lived in her same building, on the ground floor.

The phone rang twice, then Karen Fiant picked up. “Hello?”

“Karen!”

“Yeah? Debbie?”

“Yeah. Pack your shit, babe! We’re goin’ on a road trip!”

“Road trip! Road trip!” Karen had seen Animal House way too many times.

Debbie started laughing into the phone and Karen interrupted her long enough to ask, “Where we goin’, Little Debbie?”

“Into the wilds of Kansas!”

“Oooh! Better find my safari hat.”

“God, Little Debbie, this is so cool! You being an Heiress, I mean.”

Karen called her Little Debbie all the time, like the dessert cakes. Karen stood just about six feet tall and was built to match, with short, dark hair, striking blue eyes and high, almost Indian-looking cheekbones. Debbie called Karen “Fiant the Giant,” even though Karen’s name was really pronounced “Fee-aunt”.

“Yeah, sounds pretty neat, huh? Heiress, for God’s sake. Like I’m gonna be a millionaire.”

“Or a go-zillionaire, even.”

“Forrest Gump, right?” Karen was the movie buff in their little circle of friends and was always quoting lines and doing voices.

“Yup. Life is like a box a choklits…ya never know what yer gonna git.” Karen’s voice had just the right qualities to do a passable Tom Hanks impression.

“Stupid is as stupid does, mah momma always said.” Debbie shot back.

They both broke up into laughter, and Debbie thought about how much fun she and Karen had together. Theirs was a special relationship. Neither had ever had a sister, so perhaps that was why they had bonded so closely.

When they went out “clubbin’” and she wore a short skirt, Karen’s size, combined with her good looks, were known to make guys walk right into walls. They had met at college, shortly after Debbie came to Boulder and decided she needed some creative writing courses. Karen was on staff at the Boulder Herald as a contributing writer. She was manic and animated and usually kept her column about three weeks ahead. Debbie and Karen shared a love of writing and had worked together on projects for college. It hadn’t taken long for them to become fast friends.

They were headed down highway thirty-six to Denver, sipping Cappuccinos and having a good time. At Denver they would hook up with Interstate 70 and head east. They both needed to get away for a while, and an unexpected vacation was just the thing—especially one so loaded with intrigue and adventure.

The weather was in the process of clearing, and the freshening wind coming down the eastern slope of the Rockies seemed to herald the beginning of good things. Debbie would look back on this day in less than three weeks and wish she could get that feeling back.

Since they’d gotten such a late start, they stayed the night in Burlington, Colorado, the last town before the Kansas state line, in a motel right off the Interstate. They asked around and found a great steak house near the stockyards and made pigs of themselves, then stopped on the way back to their room and picked up a six-pack. Debbie, who seldom drank, drank her half that night as they sat in their motel room and watched an old monster movie in black and white on their beat-up plastic TV.

The movie was called “Them” and was about giant ants, the result of radioactivity from nuclear testing. It had been made in the fifties, and they spent most of their time making fun of the hokey special effects and the stiff, stilted acting. There was only one serious scene. The little girl, the lone survivor of an attack by the giant insects, heard something or smelled something that keyed her memory and set her off. She suddenly came out of her near-catatonic state and screamed, “Them! Them!” over and over; neither Debbie nor Karen had been able to find anything funny about the only piece of acting in the whole movie seeming inspired or even halfway real.

That night, between bouts of getting up to get rid of beer and listening to Karen’s high-powered snoring, Debbie dreamed about the little girl, wandering alone in the desert high country, hiding from something giant and murderous and screaming, “Them! Them!”

Chapter 2

Bumpy roads, abandoned tracks,

Fatal strokes, heart attacks-

Sheaves of wheat cut one by one,

‘Neath the scalding prairie sun-

Those now gone, all but forgotten,

Bones and ashes, flesh turned rotten-

Now they pause and all are smitten,

Who’s this new and saucy kitten?

The law offices of Bailey, Britton and Barton in Hays were not all that impressive. The town of Hays itself, however, was a lot more modern than Debbie had expected. As soon as they got off the Interstate, it became apparent some money was out here in the middle of rural Kansas. Just off the interchange they found themselves southbound on Vine street, the thirty-five block main drag. There was a Holiday Inn, a Days Inn and a WalMart, all within the first block. A shopping mall extended for another block on their left and car dealerships and fast food places abounded. Highway 183 ran right on out the other end of town into farm country, but Hays itself was bustling with activity.

Debbie needed gas anyway, and pulled in at Love’s Country Store, a chain gas-and-go operation common to the plains. With the letter in hand, she went in, asked directions, and pre-paid for her gas.

Twenty minutes later, they were in the old part of Hays, where the streets were still paved with brick and many original limestone buildings were in evidence.

     The law offices of Bailey, Britton and Barton were in a single-story building at Ninth and Fort, with large glass windows in front, curtained halfway up. As Debbie and Karen approached the front door they saw an old flyblown cardboard poster, advertising the previous year’s rodeo, leaning inside the glass.

The front door was thick with weathered paint and squeaked loudly when they pushed through. No need for a bell to announce visitors, Debbie thought, just as Karen whispered, “Damn, where’s my can of Three-in-One oil?”

They both giggled softly, then were greeted by a receptionist who had to be at least eighty years old. The woman bore her wrinkles and gray hair on her stooped shoulders as if they were the weight of the world and surveyed them over a classic pair of “Granny” glasses.

“May I help you?” Her voice indicated that there was no way these two young hussies could be here, in the inner sanctum of the Law, on any legitimate business. Surely they must be selling Girl Scout cookies.

“We need to see Jim Bailey.” Debbie said.

“What is this in regard to?” the crone asked, her eyebrows now climbing into her stern, done-in-a-bun hairdo, where a yellow number two pencil resided.

Debbie opened her purse and produced the letter. “It’s in regard to the village of Joshua. I got this letter…”

But the old woman had already fled toward the back offices. That was the only way Debbie could describe her sudden departure. It was as though Debbie had said, “Ah, yes, I have Beriberi and Typhus and wonder if you’ve been vaccinated…”

Karen looked at Debbie and Debbie looked at Karen, and both giggled again, although this time it was harder to hold it down to a respectable level. “Jesus,” Karen said, barely loud enough for Debbie to hear, “what a spooky old dame.”

The giggles erupted again. They both struggled to control themselves until a tall young gentleman in white shirt and tie came from the back, making them straighten up and become all business again.

Mr. James Bailey invited them into his modest office. As they sat and he rummaged around in a file cabinet, Debbie looked over the old tin ceiling of the building where an ancient black ceiling fan  lazily stirred the air.

Soon, Mr. Bailey turned from the file cabinet and laid a folder on his desk. “May I see some identification, Ms. Clauson? I need to be sure that you are who you say you are.”

Debbie dug her driver’s license out of her purse and, as he examined it, she examined him. He was about forty, she judged, thinning on top but smart enough to leave it alone and not try a comb-over. He was a few pounds overweight and looked soft. His hands were clean, the nails manicured but the finger tops hairy. He wore a pair of reading glasses and his cheeks were ruddy. She wondered if he drank.

“Well, this seems to be in order,” he said, and handed back her license, “and you were born Debra Ann Rogers? In Dayton, Ohio?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“And your mother was Elizabeth Dawson McKinley?”

“Yes…”

Debbie felt a slight shiver run down her back. Why was the old lady so spooked? She quickly shoved the question aside. Mr. Bailey was speaking again.

“I have here the deed to the property, which is laid out in what we call plats. Its boundaries are all explained in the nonsense language of the surveyors, you know, “chains” and “perches” and so on. There’s also an aerial photo and a survey map.” He produced these and both Debbie and Karen leaned forward to look.

“The town itself is roughly square and sits nine miles north of I-70. The airstrip extends from the town to the north on the east side of the property and is about a half mile long. It’s not surfaced, just a grass strip. It was deeded over in 1950, when some other relative took an interest in flying for a while. It became quite the thing for pilots to fly in for Sunday dinner, you know, at the old hotel.”

“No, I didn’t know.” Debbie murmured.

“The Schumacher.” He murmured, almost under his breath.

“I beg your pardon?” Debbie asked.

Pausing, Jim Bailey looked momentarily lost in thought, then gave an almost imperceptible nod and said, “That was the name of the hotel. It still stands. In fact, most of the old buildings are in relatively good shape. There’s a church, some stores and about eighteen houses, although some of them aren’t in very good shape, I’m afraid.”

“Very interesting,” Karen piped up, “but when can we see it?”

Mr. Bailey glanced at his watch and said, “Well, actually, we could run out there now, and when we’re finished, I could take you ladies to lunch.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Karen said.

Jim Bailey drove a white Cadillac. Why am I not surprised? Debbie thought as they piled in for the drive to Joshua. The car was big and smooth and smelled of leather inside. Jim drove sedately, in no hurry.

They pulled onto I-70, and he said, “Don’t be fooled by the way this area looks. There are a lot of millionaires in western Kansas. People just don’t realize how much some of these ranchers are worth because they’re just folks who act like everyone else.”

“What do they make their money from?” Karen asked.

“Oh, lots of things…but mainly cattle and oil.”

“Oil? There’s oil out here?”

“Oh, yeah. You’ll see a well pumping every once in a while, sometimes right in the middle of town or even somebody’s backyard.”

“Any oil wells in Joshua?” Karen was really interested now.

“Nope. Not a one. It’s been surveyed, too. They did some drillin’ back in the seventies, but all they ever got was salt water.”

After they had driven six miles west, he slowed and took exit 153. Debbie noticed the exit sign: the name ‘Joshua’ had been removed. She could see the almost ghostly image of the letters in darker green against the more faded, reflective paint.

“They took down the sign for the town?”

“Yeah. The town’s dead. Nobody goes there anymore, so why have the sign? No services for travelers anyway and it’s too far off the Interstate.”

Debbie felt the chill again and, as the open country rolled by, she asked, “The lady who met us, your receptionist? She seemed…upset at the mention of the name Joshua. Is there something we should know about this deal?”

“Not really. She’s just sensitive. Mrs. Riley had some relatives who lived in Joshua, but they’ve all passed on now.”

They continued in silence until Jim Bailey slowed the Cadillac for the turn off the county road. On the corner, a hand-painted sign pointed east and proclaimed the gravel road to be the way to Joshua. A huge black crow sat atop the sign, eying them, reluctant to fly. Next to the hand-painted sign was one that declared, “The First Presbyterian Church of Joshua Welcomes You.” Next to it was a faded old blue Rotary International sign, chewed up with bullet holes. Jim drove more slowly now as he negotiated the bumpy, potholed road. “The county doesn’t grade here much anymore. The road doesn’t get any traffic, so I guess they figure, why waste the fuel?”

They went about two miles before they finally spotted a water tower and a steeple rising above a hedgerow. Jim turned the Caddy south onto an even worse road, and Joshua came into sight.

The hedgerow ran right along the west end of the town; the main street, called predictably, “Main” ran east and west. As they bumped along next to the hedgerow, Karen asked, “What kind of trees are these? They look really gnarly.”

“Hedge.” Jim answered.

“Well, duh!” Debbie said, grinning at Karen.

“Actually, they’re called Osage Orange,” Jim elaborated, “The Indians used the Osage Orange to make their bows. You’ll still see fence posts made from it, too.”

“So they have, like oranges on ‘em?” Karen asked.

Jim laughed and said, “No, they have hedge apples.”

“Apples from an orange tree, cool.”

“Well, they’re not edible. Not by people, anyway. Cows and squirrels seem to like ‘em, though.”

“We saw some fence posts on the way out made outta rock.” Debbie said.

“Yeah, limestone,” Jim commented, “When the settlers first came here, there were so few trees, they made do with whatever they could get. Limestone posts and buildings are very common.”

 They pulled onto Main, which was actually blacktopped, and they could look all the way through the two blocks of town to the airstrip. The Schumacher Hotel was a three-story, clapboard affair in mid-block on the right. There was also a hardware store, a co-op store with gas pumps, a hair dresser’s, an old restaurant and a laundromat. At the east end of the street was the church.

Jim drove slowly through town. The more Debbie looked, the more she saw and liked about Joshua. From the moment they’d pulled into town, she’d felt like she belonged here; for the first time in her life she was really home. As they passed the church, she saw that the signboard in front showed the last date it had held services, in October, 1985. The Preacher’s sermon had been, “For God so loved the world…”

The water tower was a squat affair, made of wood held together with steel bands. It sat on the south edge of town, where a railroad spur had once been. Some old sections of track and ties were still visible, overgrown with weeds and prairie grasses.

In ten minutes they had toured the whole town, and Debbie asked, “So, where’s the marshal?”

Karen snorted, thinking about towns of the Wild West, but Debbie was serious. Jim answered, “There isn’t one. He passed away in October. He was the last resident.”

“I saw the car, back there in the garage at City Hall. That’s why I asked.”

“Yep. Yancey Parker was his name. Even after everyone else had passed on, he still marshaled out here, keeping the kids at bay and making sure the place was safe. By the way, the car goes with the town. They sold everything else—the tractor and all. It’s a 1990 Crown Victoria, not a bad car, really. You could strip all the enforcement stuff off it and drive it if ya want.”

“Or,” Karen said, “you could leave it as is and go around and terrorize the local kids at night.”

“Yeah. I wonder why the town’s in such good shape? You’d think the kids would be down here at night, tearing the place up and partying…since the marshal died, I mean.” Debbie said.

Jim remained silent and Karen looked at him from her seat in the front of the big car. “Any thoughts on that, Jim?” she prompted.

“Well, there’s no lights, for one thing. Electricity’s off. Makes it kinda spooky, y’know. Kids just seem to shy away from it for no particular reason.” He smiled at them brightly and said, “You ladies ready for lunch?”

“Yeah,” Debbie said, “we can come back and explore later.”

As they drove out of Joshua, Debbie thought about the old marshal, living here alone, still doing his job, even though there was no one else to serve or protect. How sad.

Lunch was nothing to write home about, but Hays did have a Pizza Hut and they went there. It took a lot of pizza to fill Karen up. She enjoyed the kind of metabolism that allows those fortunate few to eat anything they want and never gain a pound.

After they had eaten, they went back to Jim’s office and Debbie signed for her town. She signed papers for all of the plots and property, for the assessor’s office, and even an agreement that she wouldn’t tear down the water tower, which was one of only two wooden water towers in the state and so was being preserved as an historical monument. When they had finished, Jim had another client waiting. He handed Debbie a ring of keys and said, “Let me know if you have any problems.” They shook hands and she and Karen headed out.

“Well, shall we go have another look at my town?” Debbie grinned, getting into the Escort.

“Hell, yes. Let’s go and really check it out this time.”

The stocky man in the mirrored sunglasses followed the blue Escort with the Colorado plates at a discreet distance out of Hays. He had been standing at the magazine rack in Love’s Country Store when the little one came in for gas and asked directions to the attorney’s office.

Myron St. James, AKA Mike St. James, AKA Mike Lawrence, was a nosy sort—the kind of guy whose eyes and ears were always open  for a way to make a buck. He worked hard at his profession, which largely involved scamming people out of their money any way he could and avoiding labor at all costs. If it had ever been pointed out to him that he worked harder at his chosen vocation than he would have at a legitimate job, he would have laughed out loud. He considered what he did fun.

He hung back, driving the old black Jeep Cherokee west on I-70, keeping the Escort in sight. He had some time on his hands, but couldn’t follow for too long. He had an appointment in just a little while to sell an unsuspecting old widow some non-existent vinyl siding. He followed the Escort six miles north after it got off the interstate, but decided he was running too close on his time and turned around, heading back to Hays.

Debbie and Karen got back to Joshua about one in the afternoon. They spent the rest of the day strolling the two main streets, Main and Tribune, unlocking and checking out old buildings and amusing themselves with the quaint architecture and artifacts of the town. They found there had been living quarters above several of the stores and, when they went through these, Debbie found herself choosing which was the best. She decided the apartment above the old hardware was the soundest and would take the least amount of cleaning to make it livable.

When they got around to checking out the marshal’s car, they found it rigged out with red lights, siren and two-way radio, although the battery was dead. In one of the empty storefronts they found the archives and morgue of a newspaper, the Joshua Journal, and Karen made some jokes about how interesting reading about the ice cream socials of yesteryear could be.

They locked everything back up as they’d found it, and left about four-thirty to spend the night in Hays. As they pulled out of Joshua, Debbie kept looking back and thinking about the things she’d seen and all the places there must still be to explore. She thought of all the people who had lived there and about their lives. She found she couldn’t wait to get back. They left the next morning for Boulder; in less than a hundred miles, Debbie announced her decision to move to Joshua.

“You’ve gotta be joking,” Karen said, “You’d be bored outta your mind in ten days in that jerkwater little burg.”

“I don’t think so,” Debbie said, “and think what a great place it’ll be to write—no interruptions, no noise, utterly relaxing.”

“Utterly boring. Besides, I don’t like the place.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“I dunno. Gives me the creeps, is all…friggin’ ghost town. I can’t believe you’d wanna live there.”

“Well, believe it. I’m gonna do it. For the first time in my life I have a place that’s all mine. I own it and nobody can kick me off it and nobody can take it away.”

“Yeah, on the other hand, who the hell would want it besides ol’ weird Debbie?”

The orange U-haul van bumped slowly and carefully down the rutted road to Joshua. On a trailer being towed behind the van Debbie’s blue Escort bobbed along, concealed by a car cover.

Her heart was bumping along too, with anticipation of starting out anew in the town she actually owned. As she made the turn and started south along the hedgerow toward Main Street, she thought about the last two weeks.

She had settled her affairs, terminated her lease and cleaned her apartment—all in three days. Karen, incredulous that she was really going to move to Joshua, couldn’t understand Debbie’s sudden, manic desire to move to a cruddy old town out in the middle of nowhere. She tried talking sense into her, but it was like talking to a houseplant.

 Then she got angry. They had a pretty good fight about it, the first time either of them could remember ever getting pissed enough to actually shout at each other.

After Karen got over being upset with Debbie, she became resigned. Karen prided herself on never crying, but when Debbie left, her chin was trembling and her eyes were wet. She gave Debbie an almost hateful look and said, “Girlfriend, I have a bad feeling about this…like I’ll never see you alive again.”

“Karen,” Debbie had said, “you can come see me any time. You can call me every day. I’ll phone as soon as I get my phone lines in, and we’ll talk.”

When she pulled away, Karen stomped off into the apartment building like a pissed-off teenager.

Settling into her new home took Debbie several days. She arrived on a Saturday, which on reflection was not very good planning, and contacted the telephone and utility companies to get service set up. She was told the electricity, gas and phones would be hooked up on the next working day.

She thought about her situation and whether she should get a motel room for two nights or “rough it.” She contacted Jim Bailey and asked if he knew anyone who might help her move her large furniture items from the U-haul to her new digs; he said he knew a “nice young man” who would help. He’d send him out on Sunday.

Debbie went to the nearest WalMart and bought a Coleman lantern, a small camp stove, a sleeping bag, and some fuel.

Now, as she pulled up on Main street and parked parallel to the old, cracked curb and sidewalk, she couldn’t help feeling a rush of excitement. Tonight she would stay in her own town and tomorrow she would start working on making her surroundings livable.

Stepping down from the truck, she heard, in the distance, a strange, two-note trilling sound, almost a birdcall but not quite the same. It sounded like a flute or ocarina or a child’s first musical instrument, known as a “tonette”.

The sound continued for several seconds, stopped, then was repeated. She turned her head this way and that, trying to locate the source of the strange emanation. It seemed to float on the breeze, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. In the relative stillness of the town, broken only by the whisper of the wind, the sound had a lost, lonely aspect, its quiet, melancholy chant finally dying on the wind.

Debbie found herself standing perfectly still, enchanted and enthralled, but nursing a shiver that wanted to tap-dance on her spine. She shook herself and made a conscious effort to push the strangeness away. Probably just the wind whistling through a knothole in some fence or some other trick of acoustics, she thought. Better get used to it, old girl. If you’re gonna live out here alone, ya can’t be jumpin’ at every sound.

She dug out her car keys and busied herself taking off and folding the car cover and backing her Escort down off the trailer, while listening intently for the music. It was not repeated that night.

By eight P.M. she had moved a lot of her essentials out of the van and into the living area above the hardware. She had first thought of living in the hotel but, on examination, found it had been closed too long and the floors seemed unsafe. Besides, there were just too many rooms; in the colder months she would have had a huge bill to heat the place. The second floor over the old store suited her needs best; it was simple in design and also gave a commanding view of the main street of town—her town, she kept reminding herself.

The living quarters had only three rooms: a front room/bedroom, a kitchenette, separated from the front room by a wall, and a small bathroom tucked into the area just beside the stairway that led to the first floor. Perhaps one of the nicest features was that at some time in the past someone had added a small balcony to the front which projected out over the sidewalk. This was built of iron, the decking being made of expanded steel mesh, the whole thing suspended with iron rods angled up into the masonry and stout braces underneath bolted to the walls. There was a worn, dark green canvas awning overhead, which provided shade and a sliding glass door that allowed access. The drapes on the slider were nasty and water stained; these would need to be replaced before any real privacy could be enjoyed. But then it was her town and nobody else lived here—her town.

The ceiling in her new home had a certain charm, being made of the old tin panels commonly used fifty or sixty years before, and the roof seemed to be tight; at least she could see no water staining. Of course, the place would take a major cleaning. For tonight, though, all she needed was a clean spot for her sleeping bag. She fixed some supper on the small stove and read for a while by the light of the Coleman lantern. By nine o’clock her eyelids were slamming shut every ten seconds and she turned down the lamp and snuggled into her sleeping bag. It was less than ten minutes later when she heard the first coyote start up.