Grave Creek

Chapter One: Dust and Silence

Cal Bishop rode down the main street of Grave Creek with dust curling like smoke around his boots.

The reins lay loose in his calloused hand; his horse plodded forward, ears flicking nervously, each hoof thudding hollow against the packed dirt. The dust rose thick enough to taste—a dry, bitter tang clinging to his teeth and the back of his throat.

It settled in the creases of his coat, his hat, his skin, until he wore the town like a second, heavier hide.

The hot, sighing wind twisted through the abandoned buildings, rattling warped shutters and whistling a thin, tuneless song through broken windowpanes.

Wooden signs, cracked and faded by years of sun, clattered weakly against rusted chains. The Cat’s Teeth Saloon. Grave Creek Mercantile. Barber & Baths — Closed Permanently.

Not a soul in sight. Only the dust shifting. Only the heavy silence pressing against Cal’s ribs.

Something glinted in the dirt near the school steps.

Half-buried, small enough to fit his palm, a child’s tin whistle gleamed dully in the broken light. Its surface was worn smooth by time and hands now lost to memory.

Boys don’t run from towns already abandoned. They get swallowed by them.

Ahead, past the rotting skeletons of the town, thin smoke drifted up from the old mining camp.

Wrong.

Wrong in the way a snake smells wrong before you see it.

Cal kept riding.

This is the opening chapter of Grave Creek.