Hangman-Chapter 2

Chapter 2-

"You didn't really mean it

When you said you could handle it,

Did you?

Every time you do

It ends like that again,

Doesn't it?"

---

Gallow's eyes snapped open, his breathing quick and heavy in the dark. His eyes adjusted to the light as he peered down at the foot of his bed, watching his chest heave in and out. He put one hand to his pounding heart, slowly steadying his labored breath. Within minutes he had calmed himself, picking his hand up off his chest to gaze at the symbol on its back.

"Some sigil you are..." he mumbled tiredly to himself. His head tipped back to knock against the headboard and he stared into the blackness above him. Gallow never really liked looking up into the dark, so he placed his hand over his eyes so as to obscure it with a darkness of his own. He wiped the sweat off of his forehead.

"Gee," he thought, "I should go get some water, I must be dehydrated by now."

With great difficulty, he rose to his feet from the bed. The hallway outside was pitch black, and he clumsily stumbled down the steps to the bar of the saloon.

"Oh," he realized, "I don't actually know where the water is. Does the old man even sell water here?"

What followed was a great knocking around of chairs and tables as the young man struggled to find any kind of beverage he could get his hands on.

"What the hell is going on here?!" cut a voice from the steps. "I'll deal with one troublemaker today, but I'll be damned if I meet two." This threat was followed up with the clacking of a shotgun pump ringing through the dusty moonlight.

---

The candle light illuminated the old man's face as he poured a glass of water from the rightmost barrel of the tavern. He wore an amiable expression, one less work-worn as those of the local farmers, but his gray beard and mustache betrayed the years he'd spent running his business.

"If you ever want something, please just come ask me, sonny. Waking me up for water is better than waking me up to a potential robbery."

"Sorry, pops, my old man used to smack me if I woke him up in the night," Gallow chuckled, immediately grasping at his ribcage in pain. The white bandages around his midsection were warmly lit as well.

"I guess I'm just thirsty as hell from this injury," he explained before taking a sip of the drink.

"Everybody seems to want the water around here," the saloon owner said with a hint of cynicism.

"Oh yeah, is there some kinda spring in this town?" Gallow asked with a newfound curiosity.

With a sigh, the bartender began: "There was an old story about a magic Spring which would never deplete, and where fairies and spirits would appear. Every now and then we get some fool in town asking about where he could find it, none of them have ever been so violent about it before, though."

"I've never heard that story, is it so popular?"

"Indeed, most children hear it growing up around here," the man explained.

"Well, figures, I'm not from these parts," he lamented.

"Thought so, your accent doesn't sound like a Southerner's."

"I'm South Eastern, actually."

The man's eyes perk up. "You don't say?"

"Born and raised," the young man gleamed.

"We don't get too many people moving West, most people go North, where the grass is greener I suppose."

They both leaned back and watched the candle flicker in the dark, its oil now considerably cheaper after the discovery of a cache off the coast. In the long silence, thoughts swirl and ruminate, germinating in the mind.

"Do you think a place like that could exist?" said Gallow, breaking the silence.

"What, the East?" responded Gabriel, sarcastically.

"No, the Spring."

"I know I've never seen it."

A second of silence equal in value to the previous minutes-worth followed.

"Alrighty..." Gallow took another small sip of his drink.

"Hey," he added, "did I ever ask you your name?"

"Gabriel," the elderly man said succinctly.

"Nice to make your acquaintance, Mr. Gabriel," he said, sipping once more.

Gabriel studied him for a moment, interestedly. "Hey, are you trying to drag out that glass?"

A confused look came across Gallow's face. "No? Why do you ask?"

"Most people just gulp down water when they're thirsty."

"If you sip it slowly you absorb more of it into your system," Gallow explained.

"Wow, where'd you learn that?" inquired Gabriel.

"A couple things they teach you in the army."

"The army?!" the owner exclaimed.

"Oh, yeah, maybe it didn't look like it from my clothing. Yeah, I was army."

"Are you some kind of deserter, kid?" he asked with a sudden graveness in his tone.

Instead of averting his gaze, Gallow peered keenly into the older man's eyes, as if challenging him.

"I shouldn't have been there in the first place," he said coldly.

"Look here, if you're some kinda deserter, I don't care how many villains you shoot out here, the military is gonna come out here lookin' for you and we're all gonna be in big trouble!" Gabriel scolded.

"Trust me, the army didn't want me either."

"Those military bastards go around razing towns for harboring deserters like you, and we're the only ones who actually have to worry about foreigners comin' in to pillage us! Those bastards just get fat because it's peacetime in the nation, they don't care whether or not they wage war on their own citizens!"

The old man ranted for some time while Gallow watched in amusement. Eventually, the only water left in his glass was a thin broken ring at the bottom.

"Well, I've got to go turn in, I really need my rest."

The old man paused his righteous fury to look about the room.

"I suppose it is pretty late," he lamented as the young man got up from his seat and headed to the stairwell.

---

That night Gallow's dreams were filled with a sense of dread for the coming days. Repeatedly he saw visions of burning homes and his own charred body hanging onto the edge of the Earth. As the first rays of light washed through his window, he awoke, having been trained to pull himself out of the realm of sleep at the crack of dawn. With tired eyes he looked at the sun rising over the horizon, recalling his wicked dreams.

Holding the back of his right hand up to his eyes, he examined the engraving left on it.

"Some sigil you are..."