Back of the Envelope

The Rest of the story: If you missed the last chapter, it's here, or you can see the whole story on one page.

This chapter was hard to write. I'm not even sure why, exactly, it just didn't feel right once it was written. I finally resorted to my read-it-aloud-and-see-if-it-sounds-stupid technique, something I haven't done recently for anything I've written. Not too surprisingly, I think it helped at one point where things just didn't flow very well. See what you think.

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Chapter 10
Suspicions

Ryan took a step back, eyes locked on the familiar red irises in the unfamiliar eyes. What the Hell—? He only made it one step before the rope still tied around his waist snagged on the tree branch it was looped over. His key ring was still in his hand, the small flashlight still lit, and he lifted it towards Dominic’s face. The light washed over Emily’s brother, glinting off his pale hair and illuminating the dark spots under his eyes. Dominic blinked, raising a hand to shield them.

“Wow, that’s a bright LED, Ryan,” Dominic said. “But I think we need to figure out what happened to Red-eyes.”

Ryan kept his flashlight on Dominic for a few moments longer, staring at his eyes, but they didn’t look red now, just a pale brown no more unusual than Ryan’s own eye color. He clicked his flashlight off, wondering if it had been a trick of the light. Maybe, but he knew there was more to Red-Eyes than the big guy who had chased them. When he had died, the eyes had lost their red tinge. If that shadow-thing had left him then, it could have found a home somewhere else. In someone else’s body.

“C’mon, Ryan,” Emily said, heading towards the pit. She got on her hands and knees at the edge, poking her head over the side and pointing her flashlight into it. Ryan fumbled at the knots in the rope tied around him, finding it even more difficult to untie than to tie with his clumsy right hand, then hurried to follow her, placing himself between Dominic and Emily. He watched as she swung her flashlight over the sandy floor. It reflected from the pool, cast shadows behind the fallen bricks, and brought out specks of light among the sand. It did not show Red-eyes.

“Give me that,” Ryan said, kneeling by her side. When Emily handed him the flashlight, he swung it over the well’s bottom, then its walls, passing again and again across the spot when Red-eyes should have been. Damn it, where is he? “I… I don’t know what happened. He was down there a second ago. He was dead! How could he…?” Ryan shook his head, driving visions of a zombie Red-eyes out of his mind again. “Do you have the mirror?” he asked.

Emily sank back on her knees, digging into her purse. Dominic shined the flashlight onto it to help, while Ryan kept an eye on him. If he does anything suspicious… Ryan didn’t know what he would do in that case, but he’d think of something. “Here,” she said, pulling out the hand mirror.

Ryan took it, and after some effort juggling mirror and flashlight, and even then he didn’t trust his right hand’s grasp on the mirror, he managed to find the beam’s area of illumination in the mirror’s reflection. He scanned it across the well again, trying to move mirror and flashlight in concert, but he kept losing the beam in the mirror, so it took five minutes before he was satisfied that he had searched the pit as well as he could. Nothing but bricks and sand and water. “I don’t know how he vanished. He was down there and he was dead. I checked!”

“Well, um,” Dominic said, “you did just fall into a pit. Are you sure you didn’t, you know, bump your head on the way down?”

“I’m sure!” Ryan said, coming to his feet much too quickly as he rounded on Dominic. He tottered and for a moment thought he would go over the edge again, but he managed to catch his balance by grabbing the lapels of Dominic’s trenchcoat. Then he snatched his hands back as if burned. Was that just a hint of a smile he had seen on Dominic’s face? “I’m not crazy. I know what I saw, and it was as real as anything else on this insane trip!”

“Okay, okay,” Dominic said, raising his hands. “I’m not calling you crazy. It’s no harder to believe than anything else that’s happened. I just think that since we don’t have a body, maybe we shouldn’t assume it’s over just yet.”

“Yeah, you’re right about that,” Ryan said. “Especially not with that—” He stopped, realizing that he hadn’t told either of them about the shadow-thing he had seen before. Maybe he should. It was on the tip of his tongue to do so, but he had seen Dominic’s eyes turn red just a moment ago. And he had seen that mocking smile. Maybe he’d tell Emily when they were alone, but he didn’t want to let Dominic know what he knew or thought he knew. “Well, if we don’t want his zombie to show up while we’re standing over this pit talking about it, we should go. Emily, did you want me to drive?”

“Ryan, I’m not going to ask you to drive after you just fell down a well! I’ll drive. You just relax, okay?” she said.

“If you insist,” he said, standing up and brushing his knees off. He was about to hand her flashlight and mirror back when he found himself caught in another hug.

“I’m glad you’re all right, Ryan,” she said, kissing his cheek.

He was glad she couldn’t see how red he was turning in the darkness, but he hugged her back. “Thanks,” he said awkwardly, at a loss for what else to say.

Once she had let go, Dominic clapped him on the shoulder and Ryan flinched. All he said was “I’m glad you’re okay too, but don’t expect a kiss from me.”

“Thank God for small favors,” Ryan said.



Ryan scratched at the cut on his right arm, worried about how much it was bothering him. What the Hell was wrong with it? It was just a scratch, but the prickling was disturbing. Most of the time it felt like the pins and needles that occurred when one’s limbs came back to life after falling asleep, but every now and then it became stronger, less like needles than bee stings, hundreds of them all along his arm. And on top of that, his hand had begun to feel weak and numb, so he could barely manage to make a fist. He wanted to ask a doctor about it, but he wasn’t certain modern medicine could do much. He was starting to believe that the scratch had been poisoned by the shadow-thing, and he doubted any hospital had an antivenin for that. He’d be panicking over it, if he weren’t more worried by the possibility that the shadow-thing had taken up residence in Dominic. Maybe if he could figure out a way to deal with that, he would also be rid of the poison.

He settled back in his seat, glad that Emily was driving. Dominic was snoring in the backseat again. The smooth rumble of the car was lulling, and a car’s vents were blowing warm air in his face. He wished that he could fall asleep himself, and get some relief from his aching head and burning eyes, but he felt an itch between his shoulder blades every time he thought about Dominic behind him. Was he really asleep? If Ryan nodded off, would he try something? Ryan kept finding himself looking over his shoulder at Dominic, who had his hands stuck in the pockets of his trenchcoat, his mouth gaping open and his head tilted back onto the seat’s headrest, so that Ryan had a great view of his nostrils. He certainly looked harmless that way, without even his sunglasses; although with his eyes closed, Ryan couldn’t see the irises. The sunglasses hadn’t bothered him at first, as Dominic’s explanation had made sense, but they were beginning to now. If his irises really were red sometimes, the glasses hid that pretty effectively. And in that dream, Red-eyes had been wearing sunglasses too. And a trenchcoat, although at least Dominic’s wasn’t black. Maybe he’d been under the shadow-thing’s influence even before Ryan met him.

He should bring it up with Emily. He would have to, if he could figure out how to begin. “Emily, I think your brother is possessed” just didn’t broach the subject delicately, and he had no idea how to do better. He needed to try a different tack, and there were things he wanted to know anyway.

“Emily, why was your brother in Atlanta?”

“Huh?” she said, glancing at him. “I thought I told you. He went to college there and he was visiting friends, I think.”

“But doesn’t it seem strange that he was there just when we arrived?”

“Sure, but Dom has the gift of punctuality.”

“Which means?”

“Dom explained it to me once, but I’m still not sure whether he was joking or not. You see, the Bible contains these lists of spiritual gifts, things like prophecy, or teaching, or generosity. It’s how God helps his people to do his will. However, the lists the Bible gives aren’t really exhaustive, at least Dom doesn’t think so, so there are other gifts which aren’t listed. Most Christians think that spiritual gifts are all about the stuff that they’re good at, so if they’re good at teaching, they figure they must have the gift of teaching, and if they’re good at administering, they have the gift of administration, or whatever. Dom thinks that’s part of the tendency to water down the gifts, to treat them like they’re nothing more than skills that can be learned—”

“Emily, could you please get to the point?” Ryan said, letting some of his impatience seep through.

“I’m trying, Ryan, but there’s a lot to explain. So anyway, Dom says the point of spiritual gifts is that they’re not just skills, but supernatural empowering by God. They’re things that people just can’t do on their own. He thinks a lot of Christians make the mistake of thinking that God can only use them for what they’re good at, rather than making them good at the things he wants to use them for. So when Dom was wondering what gift he might have, he considered what sorts of things he did which he just knew he couldn’t have done on his own, and he realized that he was always on time.”

“That’s it? He’s always on time? How’s that supernatural?”

“Not just on time to things he tries to be at, Ryan. What he means is that he always shows up when he’s needed, even when he doesn’t mean or expect to be there. He’s just there whether he wants to be or not. Things like showing up in Atlanta just when we needed him.”

“Really?” Ryan asked. He had thought Emily’s view of things was bizarre, but now it looked like Dominic was just as bad. “It just sounds like he’s lucky or something.”

“No, no. A gift isn’t luck; it doesn’t make your life easier. It makes it harder, usually. When you have a gift, it means that you’re supposed to do things with it, and you don’t always do what you should do, or it’s not even clear what you should do. Sometimes you just fumble around trying, and sometimes you—” She paused a moment. Her voice was strained, as if she were holding back tears. “Sometimes you know exactly what you should do, but it’s hard. You hesitate, even turn your back on it, because it’s just easier that way. You forget… that the gift isn’t for your sake, it’s given to you so you can share it with others.”

Ryan cleared his throat. “Are we still talking about Dominic?”

She blinked a couple of times. “I guess we both have personal experience failing to use our gifts properly.”

Ryan just looked at the floor. This was emotional for her, maybe personal in some way he didn’t understand. That didn’t stop the cynical part of him from mocking it. Her whole family thinks they’re chosen by God or something. Her with her visions, and Dominic with his… punctuality, of all things! How do you even know that you’re always there when you’re needed? If you weren’t there, you wouldn’t know that you’d be able to help. He forced those thoughts back into the snide part of his mind, not wanting to hurt her with his unwanted rationality. Besides, he had other questions for right now. “Okay, so he showed up there because he was supposed to. Have you, um, noticed him acting odd lately?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Just… have you?”

“Well, no odder than either of us. I’ve only known you for a day, though, so I guess I don’t know what would be odd for you.”

“But Dominic’s acting like he always does?”

“I guess. I mean, he’s never been in this situation before, so I don’t know what ‘usual’ is when he’s helping us run from a psychotic mutant demon.”

Ryan sighed. He wasn’t getting anywhere. He had to tell her, but he didn’t want to tell her right now, where Dominic might overhear. If the shadow-thing was in him, Ryan didn’t want it to find out that he suspected Dominic, and if it wasn’t, no reason to make Emily’s brother think he was paranoid. He probably was paranoid, at that, but that didn’t make him wrong. Ryan looked out the window, watching the mile markers go by. There wasn’t much traffic, and they had finally left behind the last of the rain. It should be an easy drive from here. A sign showed the distance to Columbia as only 47 miles. “Less than an hour,” he whispered, hoping that nothing would happen before they got there. Or after.

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This chapter is 2,291 words long, bringing the total length of the novella to 32,632 words.

The Rest of the Story: If you want to read the story from the beginning, you can see the whole story on one page. If you just want to see the previous chapter, it's here.

This was a hard chapter to write. I'll talk a little about why it was after you read it.

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Chapter 9
The Pit

The water continued to drip, as regular and relentless as a clock. As each shining drop struck the shallow pool below, Ryan could hear a distinct tink. The ripples it sent out shattered the bright image of the moon into dancing motes which drew together just in time for the next drop. Closing his eyes, it really did sound like a clock, tinking away the seconds, the minutes, the hours. How much time had passed? It felt like an eternity had gone by, and another would come as he sat there watching the drops fall. Surely gallons, rivers, whole oceans of water had dripped down by now. But why had the pool gotten no deeper? Had so much time passed that the first drop had already evaporated, born aloft by the heat the moonbeam imparted, only to condense on the cold stone high above and fall again as one more tink? Was the entire water cycle in miniature here in this tomb?

It was a tomb by definition, a resting place of the dead. He hoped it was only temporary, but moment by moment, Ryan grew more certain that this would be a tomb for a long, long time. A resting place for two bodies rather than one. Ryan looked at the body lying near him, and he would have scooted himself further back if he could have pushed himself through the wall pressing against his shoulder blades. This tomb had no more space than any other burial plot, and between the body and the pool, which covered an eighth of the damp and sandy floor, there was nowhere left for Ryan to go. The body lay splayed on the ground, limbs and head at angles you might see in a rag doll, but never in a human being. The trenchcoat stretched over his shoulders like dark wings. Blood and other fluids dripped from the cracked skull.

Ryan shivered and wished he wasn’t so afraid. Yeah, it’s creepy, but he’s dead. Red-eyes is nothing more than a pile of muscle and bone now. The huge man took up most of the free space on the sandy ground, but his mass was empty now. Ryan should not have been intimidated by it still, but he couldn’t bring himself to get any nearer than he had to.

He’s dead, but is it? Was the shadow-thing inside of Red-eyes gone too, or had Red-eyes’ death freed it, like in the dream? That was just a dream! There’s no truth in dreams!

Only there was. He knew now that the shadow-thing was real. When it was just the thing he’d seen for a moment while half-asleep, he’d convinced himself that it was a dream, but dreams did not step off of a wall and become a solid, living psychotic mutant demon. He wanted to believe that he had imagined that too, but he could no longer convince himself.

At least he didn’t see the shadow-thing. The moon was directly overhead for the moment, giving him just enough light to see all those things he really wished he couldn’t. He had dropped his flashlight when Red-eyes attacked, so the moon was the only light he had down here. Well, almost. He clicked on his watch’s light, one of those Indigo lights where the whole face lit up, but there was nothing to see. The face was cracked, the display blank and the hands stopped. He hadn’t even felt when that had happened, but the knuckles on his left hand were scraped and he could feel a bruise forming against the back of the watch. Now all the damn thing did was light up, and it wasn’t even sufficient to read by, much less search for a way out. Well, at least his left arm didn’t hurt as much as his right. The pins and needles he had felt while Red-eyes was draining the heat out of him hadn’t completely gone away, although it wasn’t quite as bad. It still felt heavy and uncooperative, and he was beginning to worry about it.

Ryan looked around again, but he couldn’t find a way out any more easily than before. He thought this pit was a well, probably partially filled and thankfully dry. It was about ten feet in diameter, with an uneven sandy floor covered with scattered bricks which must have tumbled from the walls. The bricks were smooth, cut stones, not the red bricks of modern construction, and the walls stretched up about twenty feet. He was just as stuck as he would have been if it were a hundred feet deep. Here and there a gaping hole was left in the wall by a missing brick, which might have made it possible to climb if they weren’t too sparse to get him more than a few feet up before there were no more within reach. Having found no way to get up on his own, Ryan had tried calling out, but no one had come. He wasn’t that far behind the gas station, but maybe his voice was directed in the wrong direction by the shape of the well.

He hoped that someone would find him eventually, but he wasn’t feeling lucky enough to expect it to be Emily or Dominic. Instead he was certain that some total stranger would find him in this hole with a dead body, and he wasn’t looking forward to trying to explain that. At least the dead body wasn’t his. He had expected to be crushed by Red-eyes, but instead he had landed on top, and while every inch of his body felt bruised, he hadn’t been seriously hurt. He remembered the shock of the landing and everything exploding in brightness. It had been an effort just to draw breath. That’s when he had realized that he was lying on top of Red-eyes, and he had scrambled away from him, until he found he couldn’t go any further. Then he had shut his eyes and waited to die. It took a few minutes before he had the courage to open them again and look at the unmoving body. Was Red-eyes unconscious? No, the eyes had been open, but they were empty and lifeless. In fact, they weren’t even red anymore, having faded to a dull, ordinary brown. He saw then that the back of Red-eyes’ head was caved in by one of the bricks which had been lying on the ground. Ryan had checked for a pulse, just to be certain. Afterwards, he had spent the next few minutes washing his hands in the shallow pool, trying to remove the feel of that flaccid skin. His hands were now wrinkled and clammy, but he could still feel the cold, empty flesh on his fingertips.

He still couldn’t believe that Red-eyes could die that easily. He should be immortal, or at least like a villain in one of those horror movies, the ones that never stayed dead. But they also didn’t leave a body, and Ryan was staring at it right now. But it was such a stupid, anti-climactic way to die that Ryan couldn’t bring himself to believe it was really over. He wanted to, but he couldn’t quite convince himself that it was. He still expected Red-eyes to sit up, dripping blood and brains from the hole in his skull, and crawl towards him, his twisted limbs dragging his broken body across the ground. Did the shadow-thing even need a living body? Where was it?

“How long has it been?” he asked the darkness. “It has to have been at least an hour.” Only, shouldn’t the moon have moved farther? He thought it had moved some. Or had it been directly overhead, like now? I remember looking at his—its—eyes, but how could I have done that if there wasn’t enough light to see? The moon hadn’t been overhead when he fell. He was pretty sure of that because it had been casting shadows on the wall. But it must have been the source of light when he had realized that Red-eyes was dead, so… Was I unconscious for a while? But why? I didn’t hit my head, did I? God, maybe I have a concussion. That’s just what I need! His head didn’t hurt any worse than the rest of him, and he couldn’t find any bumps. If he had been unconscious, maybe hours had passed. Where were Emily and Dominic? Had they looked for him? Of course they had, but if he was out cold, they could have called his name again and again and he wouldn’t have responded. So what would they have done?

“They would have gone on without me,” Ryan said quietly. “Maybe they figured I just decided to run. Hitch a ride with a stranger or call a cab and just head home and let them fend for themselves. It’s not like the idea hasn’t occurred to me.” Ryan leaned his head back to rest on the cold bricks behind him. “Of course that’s what they did. Maybe they looked for a bit but they’ve given up by now. They’re probably already home.”

Ryan sighed. Why should he be surprised? He’d only known Emily for twenty-four hours, and Dominic for a fraction of that, so of course they had no great attachment to him. As for all Emily’s talk about visions and the will of God and destined marriage, well, he’d never believed it, and maybe his efforts to convince her not to had worked. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and swallowed hard. I’m stuck in a hole with a dead body and my “friends” have abandoned me, but I’m not going to cry like a little kid! He had been a crybaby as a kid, but he had hated that about himself and worked very hard to change it. He hadn’t cried in years. His highly developed cynicism was a byproduct of that effort. The world’s hard and everybody in it only cares for himself, but I’ve known that for years. And if there really is a God, he doesn’t care either, else he’d do something about it.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” he said aloud. “Either we don’t mean anything to you at all, or you have a really sick sense of humor. It’s not like I ever cared much about other people before, and I never put myself on the line for anyone until now. But in the last twenty-four hours I’ve risked my life how many times? All for some girl I barely know and who is interested in me just because she thinks you told her to be. And that’s crazier than anything else that’s happened, ’cause why should you care about who loves me? And now, now—we won, didn’t we? We beat it. I beat it, even if it was mostly by accident. And now that it’s over, I’m stuck in this hole. She and her brother have left me. Even if somebody does find me—and I guess they probably will—they’ll want to know why I’m down here with a dead body. What am I supposed to say? That he’s really a demon who chased me from Boston? I didn’t do anything wrong, but it’s all just too crazy for anybody to believe. So is it going to be prison bars or a padded room? ’Cause they’re not just going to let me go!”

He stopped, panting. He’d been shouting towards the end. Well, if I wasn’t damned before, that did it. What do I think I’m doing, yelling at God? He’s not listening to that. Emily had thought he listened. She even believed that he cared. Damn, the thought that she’d abandoned him hurt worse than anything else, even the prickling in his right arm, and that had just gotten worse all of a sudden. What the Hell is wrong with my arm? “All right, if you care, prove it!” he yelled, as if volume could make his voice pierce the veil between God and man. “Help me!”

“Ryan?”

His heart leapt to his throat. That wasn’t God’s voice, it was Emily’s, which was so much better. She was up there! “Emily! I’m down here!”

“Down where? I don’t see any—”

“Be careful!” he yelled to her, suddenly envisioning her falling over the edge. “There’s a pit.”

“Okay, I found it.” A flashlight played over the mouth of the well. A moment later, she was at the mouth—too close to the edge for Ryan’s comfort—looking down. “I can’t make out what’s down there. What happened?”

“Red-eyes.”

“He threw you down there?”

“No, we both fell.”

“He’s down there? Now?” He could hear the sudden panic in her voice. Fear of Red-eyes, or fear for Ryan?

“Yeah, but he’s dead.”

“Dead? Are you sure? Because I don’t think a demon can die, although--”

“If he wasn’t, I’d be dead. So yes, I’m sure. Can you help me out? Do you have any rope?”

“I’ll get Dom. We’ll find some rope or whatever. Wait right there.”

“Where would I go?” he yelled back, but she was already gone. She had come back for him. The relief he felt washed over him like a warm bath. His muscles relaxed as he rested his head against his knees. He tried to keep from tearing up, wiping his eyes on the fabric of his jeans, but that just got the grit into his eyes, making the tearing worse. At least I can blame it on something in my eyes now.

“I still think you have a sick sense of humor, but thanks.”



Emily was back in just a few minutes, this time with Dominic in tow. They had brought rope with them, and Dominic looped one end over a branch and lowered it to Ryan. The line didn’t look thick enough to hold his weight, but he tied it around himself as securely as he could: he’d never been very good at tying knots. Once he had secured himself, Dominic and Emily pulled him up, while he scrambled against the well’s wall to lend them what help he could, which wasn’t much. The progress was slow and jerky, and once his rescuers nearly dropped him, but it only took a minute or two to reach the top, with Emily helping him up while Dominic kept a firm grip on the rope. Once Ryan had his hands and knees planted on solid ground, Emily wrapped her arms around him and squeezed hard enough to make all his bruises ache.

“Thank God you’re okay!” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, wondering whether he should try to return the hug, but he was just in too awkward of a position to do so. “And thank you for getting me out.”

“What is this thing?” Dominic asked, gazing into the hole. He had finally taken his sunglasses off, probably figuring that dark and blurry was better than pitch black.

“It used to be a well, I think,” Ryan said, standing up now that Emily had let go. He fought with the knots he had tied in the rope around him as he stepped back from the well, having had his curiosity fulfilled. “How long was I down there? It seemed like forever.”

“Dude, you were only gone half an hour.”

“Half an hour? Are you sure? And did you just call me dude?”

“Sorry,” Dominic said. “I guess I’ve been in California too long. And it may have been a bit longer, since we didn’t realize you were missing at first, but I’m sure it’s less than an hour. ” Dominic drew out a long flashlight from his trenchcoat pocket and sent the light into the well, probing it.

Emily followed Ryan away from the well. “We should call the police and tell them about the body.”

“What?!” Ryan said. “Are you kidding? What are we going to tell them?”

“The truth, of course. We don’t have anything to lie about. Unless… You didn’t kill him, did you?”

“No! Of course not! He grabbed me, I tried to escape, and we both fell. He broke his skull on a rock at the bottom.”

“You see? We’ll just tell them that.”

“Okay, maybe it’s just me, but I think telling the police is a bad idea. Even if they decide it was an accident or self-defense, they’ll be asking questions. They’ll want to know if we ever saw him before. And what do we say then?”

“That he was trying to kill us in Boston, too. I don’t see what the big deal is.”

Dominic said, “Hey, guys?”

“Well, I do.” Ryan said. “They’ll want to know why we didn’t go to the police. Why no one else saw when he attacked us at the mall. How he got to Atlanta without flying. If we try to explain his unnoticeability, they’ll think we’re crazy.”

“Em? Ryan?” Dominic tried again.

“Well, we can’t just leave his body there.” Emily said. “Someone will find him eventually, and if they figure out that you were in the hole with him, then won’t that look even more suspicious? Besides, it’s the right thing to do.”

“Why would they connect me with this?” Ryan said, although Emily had reminded him about something. He glanced about, and fortunately his LED light was still on, so he had no trouble spotting his key chain. He took a few steps and scooped it up. “I doubt there’ll be any fingerprints if it rains again, and even if there’s that and DNA evidence too, it’s not like I’m in any database. As for doing the right thing, I’m not so sure what the right thing is when it comes to dead psychotic mutant dem—”

“Hey!” This time Dominic yelled, and Ryan winced, worrying that the noise would bring people running. If someone found them here with the body, all his arguments with Emily were moot.

Once both Emily and Ryan turned to him, Dominic gestured to the hole with his flashlight. He had his sunglasses on again for some reason, but he took them off. “Maybe it’s too dark and my eyesight’s too bad to see anything, but I’m pretty sure I’d see a dead body if it were down there.”

“What? But Ryan said… Ryan, are you sure Red-eyes’ body was down there?” Ryan wasn’t listening to either of them. Instead he was just looking at Dominic. At this angle, the moonlight illuminated his face well enough that Ryan could see his eyes clearly. The irises were red.

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This chapter is 3,088 words long, bringing the total length of this novella in progress to 30,341.

I've said for over a month now that I was about to change the course of the story, and now you see that I have. I won't speak much more about the new course, except that you can see some foreshadowing of it way back in Chapter 4. At the time, though, I didn't know it was foreshadowing. I'm still making this story up as I go along, and while I know it's now going to be a much different story, I don't know how it will play out. I hope I'm up to writing it.