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I had reason in light of recent events to reacquaint myself with the non-historical and mostly fictitious folklore concerning the many and varied apparitions and phantasms said to appear on the Devil's Massif. The Devil's Massif, a plateau of rock pushed up thousands of years ago by errant and awful tectonic forces, a backcountry, isolated and shrouded in perpetual fog, once covered with lush stands of importune trees, most of the legends were false. Only I, your humble interlocutor, know what happened with any accuracy and rectitude. Few who have scaled the cliffs return to tell tales. They describe a land like no other; speaking of birdsong and fragrant flowers, of silvery streams and blue ponds, of gentle critters and blue trout.

I was with Nick Torrance on that most dreadful day when he mounted the rim and wandered the high fields of clover and wildflower. Then she appeared. She wore roses from the edge of the fields around her neck and hair the color of straw flowing behind her like golden sunlight. I left them making love on a rose-colored bed. He stayed that day and many days thereafter. When he returned to the land down below, he found his house shattered, his marriage broken and his family gone; a modern day Heinrich left behind with no Lisabeth waiting. The abandoner abandoned.

I was two kilometers away when Nick blasted the Massif. First came the flash, then heat, flames, shockwaves and destruction. Nothing survived. For she who he seeks and cannot find has returned to her hidden cave in the nameless mountain. She steals innocence and love, returning an empty husk. Nick lays in his cell, disbelieved by all, his mind running among the trees, watching the wind in her hair and her gossamer gown floating on the breeze.

--Dave F.