The heat had Randall’s skin boiling even before he opened his eyes. When he did crack them open, what he saw was not encouraging.

  The desert was vast and flat and empty. Dry bones scattered and crunched with every step Randall took across the cracked land. He was just standing there, in the middle of the endless expanse of cracked earth, and had been for some time judging by the ache in his feet. He had something heavy on his back, a bundle tied with coarse cords. He could feel them biting into his shoulders, wearing him down. He couldn’t remember what was in that bundle, or why he seemed to be dragging it across the endless desert, but he had the vague notion that it was very important.

  His feet hurt, his shoulders hurt but most of all the heat hurt, like the sun had taken a personal interest in making him miserable. Not that he could see anything resembling a sun in that featureless yellow sky.

  The world around him was a blank expanse of featureless dead earth, filled with nothing but dust and bones. He raised a hand over his eyes and strained to see into the distance. He imagined that far off on the horizon he saw the strange outlines of massive structures of black stone and unnatural jutting angles but he couldn’t make out any details through the dust hanging thick and heavy in the air, stinging his eyes.

  He dropped his hand and tried to blink away the dust though it did no good.

  “Where the hell am I?” he muttered aloud.

  “Dry places,” came an answer, a rasping voice speaking though a throat so dry even the words hurt. Even in the oppressive heat, Randall’s blood rad cold in his veins as something crunched through the bones behind him.

  Randall cautiously shifted to look in the direction of the sound, knowing and fearing what he would see.

  She stood there, sure enough, all blackened bones and charred flesh, smoke smoldering in vacant sockets, wearing the tattered remnants of the nightgown she died and burned in. Randall felt sick, he took a frightened step back away from the skeletal figure.

  The vacant eye sockets watched him and something like an ugly sneer quivered at the corners of lips burned nearly away.

  “Dry, dry places,” it hissed.

  “Poll?” he asked.

  “Ranny, Ranny, Ranny, Ranny,” said the thing, hissing the words in a sing-song mockery.

  Then, with an animalistic howl, the thing ran at him, gaping mouth gnashing in guttural fury.

  Randall turned and fled, bolting over the empty ground, seeing piles of bones clattering to either side of him while the horrible screaming thing stayed close behind, grasping at him with bony fingers and gaining on him by the moment. His place was too slow to escape, the weight on his back dragged against him terrible, draining him with every step.

  Randall knew he could not outrun it and the thought of what those fleshless hands would do to him if they caught hold of him was too horrible to contemplate. Randall decided to take the initiative. In a move he hoped was unexpected, Randall cut sharply to the left dove to the ground, snatching a thick bone from a pile near him. Thus armed, Randall rolled onto his back just as the skeletal figure pounced at him with a wild shriek. Randall intercepted the creature’s attack with a raised boot, catching it in the stomach and driving it back with a forceful push that ground his heel against the bones rattling beneath the tattered nightgown.

  His kick sent the thing toppling backward into the dust. Randall scrambled to his feet, racing to recover and attack before it did. It was pushing itself up out of the dirt, snarling in bestial rage, when Randall’s bone club crushed against its head.

  The thing’s skull dented where the blow landed and black blood sprayed over the sun-cracked earth. It collapsed onto the hard ground, quivering and jerking in violent spasms. Randall gripped his makeshift club and stepped toward the twitching body, ready to deliver another blow.

  “Ranny!” screamed the thing. The notes of that cry echoed far across the great expanse, they burned in Randall’s ears. He stopped short. The bone fell from his trembling hand

  “Ranny!” it screamed again.

  Randall felt his legs give out. He crashed into the dust beside the body, head hung low.

  “This isn’t hell,” he said, “This can’t be hell. Poll wouldn’t be in hell.”

  “Dry places,” screeched the thing, “The Devil gnaws on bones....”

  “Shut up!” said Randall, “Poll wouldn’t be in hell. So either this ain’t Hell or you ain’t Poll.”

  “You saw… you watched them… burn me…”

  “Yeah, I did. It was the last time I saw you. I wish to God it wasn’t.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Randall lifted his head and tried to look at the thing through the tears welling in his eyes making the world go blurry.

  “I wish I could remember you, Poll, from before the plague. A picture, a letter, even a piece of paper with your name on it. Anything would help. But I can’t. Everything you ever touched was burned up in that fire. Sometimes it's like you never existed at all. You’re nothing but a memory and I every time I try to remember you I see you like this. Burning or rotting. I would give anything to remember you whole, and healthy, and happy. I just can’t.”

  Randall sniffed and wiped at his eyes.

  “It's not just that you died, Poll. It's that you disappeared. Completely. Gone up in smoke, scattered to the high-plains winds. When I die, no one will even remember you lived. It's not fair. That disease did more than kill you, it stole even your memory away. You deserved better.”

  Randall crawled closer to the body. It had become very still now,

  “You were more than how you died,” said Randall, weeping freely, “I wish I could remember.”

  With what seemed like a great effort the blacked skull twisted on its mangled spine and something beyond the yawning voids of those empty sockets peered up at him; something almost human it seemed to Randall though he couldn’t say why.

  The body was still repulsive, but Randall forced himself to swallow down his fear of it. He reached out and clasped hold of that skeletal hand in his own.

  “I miss you, Poll,” he said.

  “You… have… a body… on your back,” said Poll.

  It took Randall a moment to understand what she was referring to. During his tearful confession, he’d all but forgotten the weight on his shoulders that had previously caused him such discomfort. He remembered, suddenly, what that burden was.

  “That’s Billy,” he said, “He had a sister, too. I’m going to make sure she can come visit him.”

  “No…”

  “I am,” Randall protested, “Billy won’t disappear. Not if I can help it.”

  “But.. the chains..”

  “What chains?”

  Before Randall could even finish his question, an incredible lurch yanked him off his feet. He hit the ground hard, felt the world spinning from the impact. He didn’t have time to orient himself before the cords bit into the bruised flesh of his shoulders and his bundle, with poor Billy inside, dragged him physically backward through the dust.

  When he’d been dragged a few yards, Randall came to a stop. He took a few deep breaths and tried to push himself back up onto his feet. He was about halfway through this effort, when the cords went taut again and he was dragged several more yards over the dry ground by the burden on his back. This time, when he came to a stop, Randall moved faster and with purpose, worming his right arm about the tangle of cord that held him fast against the bundle. Just as he got his arm free, the bundle yanked again and Randall was again dragged along the ground at growing speed.

  With his right arm free, Randall could at least move. He rolled onto his stomach as he dragged along, looking to see what had gotten such a hold of him. When he saw, he understood Poll’s warning.

  He could see his burden clearly at last, an oblong shape wrapped tight in brown cloth and pierced by a massive hook of black iron that pierced it like bait on a fishhook, accented by wet spots of purplish fluid spread out gradually from the point of puncture. A long iron-linked chain pulled taut against the hook, pulling both it and Randall along the ground. Far up the chain Randall could see a massive being, towering high over the empty landscape, wreathed in a billowing robe of sickly yellow.

  From beneath those golden tatters worked a pair of withered, pale hands, dragging the chain, yard by yard, ever closer to the feet of that devil of the dry places.

  Randall came to a stop for a brief moment as one massive arm reached the climax of its pull and the other reached ahead to take hold of the chain at a further point. Just like a fisherman pulling a boat into dock, the Devil pulled poor Billy in with his cruel hook and Randall was dragged right along.

  Randall had had enough of it.

  Before the Devil closed his gnarled fist around the chain, Randall slipped his left arm out of the cords and took hold of the chain himself with both of his feeble human hands.

  “No!” he screamed, “You can’t have him!”

  The Devil pulled Randall off his feet and again Randall was dragged face-first across the barren earth. This time, as soon as the dragging stopped, Randall scrambled to his feet. He planted his feet in the crumbling soil and heaved with all his insignificant might on the Devil’s chain.

  The chained jangled and twisted in the Devil’s hands. He began to pull again and Randall threw all his weight against it, desperately digging his heels against the pull of the chain.

  He didn’t stop it, not really. The impossible strength of that robed figure, that force of unholy nature, dragged him as easily at his full effort as it had before. For all his effort, Randall could not slow the pull even a foot. Not even an inch. But somewhere, in that expenditure of futile effort against the inevitable, the Lord of the Dry Places noticed him.

  The chain fell limp in the Devil’s hands. Out of the inky void beneath the yellow hood, a featureless black no eye could pierce, something stirred and Randall knew it was watching him, evaluating.

  Randall squared his shoulders and watched it back. He was not so foolish to think he could beat the Devil, but he was damn tired of being afraid of him all the same.

  “You can’t have this one, you bastard!” screamed Randall, “His name was Billy. He lived. He mattered. He will rest, dammit.”

  If an expression so human as a shrug could be applied to so inhuman a thing as a devil, Randall was sure that’s what he saw the shoulders beneath that yellow robe do. The Devil took up the chain in both hands and began to pull back with all his unimaginable force. Randall saw the loose chain uncoiling at a frightening pace. He tightened his drip, tensed his muscles, prepared for the wrenching pain to erupt in his shoulder sockets.

  All at once, he felt hands over his. Real skin, a feeling so soft and gentle that it seemed like an alien substance, so long it seemed since he had felt anything but the coarse, the burning, and the painful. These hands, so small and pale, clasped the chain beside his and held tight.

  Beside Randall, a young woman appeared, barely more than a child, her auburn hair glittering under the bright sky. She held the chain with her beautifully childish features set in a grim line of firm resolve. Randall looked at her and couldn’t keep his mouth from falling open.

  “Poll?” he said.

  The ghost of a smile flickered over Pollyanna Geets’ lips, but she kept her eyes fixed on the Devil in the Yellow Robe, pulling with all his inhuman fury. The slack in the chain disappeared fast and two small figures steeled their nerves and, shoulder to shoulder, held on tight.

  They screamed, the Devil roared, and with a crack like thunder, the chain snapped tight.