Those Across the River

by Christopher Buehlman

“Would you come with me if you didn’t have a game?” “No sir, not today.” “Tomorrow?” “No sir, not tomorrow neither.”

“It’s worth it,” I said. “You don’t get a show like this every day. Pigs and flowers? Oh they’re Jesus Christing it up, all right, but this looks more like some pagan-rooted festival from the south of France. And like the man said, this might be the end of it.”

“Who’s stubborn, Orville Francis? No, I mean it. You’re going no matter what I say or do. If I hung myself on the front porch, you’d just leave out the kitchen door.” “Now you’re talking nonsense,” I said. “We have no rope.” She just sighed at that.

The boy smiled fully then. His teeth had been filed sharp.

He says he ain’t never seen nothin bad out there but snakes and ground-wasps.

I heard the knock coming from the front door downstairs and I knew it was bad news. Bad news knocks hard.

knew I was breaking covenant with Martin, but after the attack on my wife I was ready to betray any number of taxidermists to strike out at them.

Funny that flower-bedecked sacrificial pigs struck him as Christian, but only heathens made jack-o’-lanterns.

If there is anything worse than being attacked by a huge, supernatural wolf, it must be being attacked by a very powerful naked man who believes he’s a wolf.