The Mingled Destinies of Crocodiles and Men by Eric Arvin

Author:Eric Arvin [Arvin, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy Romance
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2017-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

LEITH’S WALK home was a long, lonely one. Abandoned homes moaned as he passed them, loose window shutters smacked against rotten wood, and forgotten wind chimes begged for attention. The valley had never been alive, not as long as he had known it. Everyone talked of a time when life went skipping through the valley like a little girl with a basket full of kisses and chocolates. It was a ridiculous fairy tale. Leith had seen no proof of any skipping… ever. The sense of decay had been present from the very first scene of his very first memory. He imagined the old homes—houses known by the names of their owners: Lone, Parma, Toots, Cambermoore, Ambrose, Cordelia, Daventry, and so many others—stretching along the bends, being alive once upon a time when birds settled on their windowsills in the morning and whistled greetings. He was told laughter was once carried on the wings of those birds over the valley. But that had all ended. The valley lay forgotten. Shamefully, Leith admitted he wished he could forget it as well. He couldn’t understand why Aubrey didn’t feel the same.

The rain had soaked Leith to the bone by the time he reached the bottom of Black Hill. He was still too engrossed by what had happened at the Parmas to pay heed to most of his surroundings. Yet when one passed the chapel grounds, his attention was ever fretfully drawn to the structure, even if all he had known of the place was rumors. Leith noticed a figure shuffling through the rain toward the chapel grounds. At once startled and confused as to whether he was witnessing phantom or fantasy, he nearly took to running the other way. Peering with more intensity, he saw it was no trickster or even the Dark Preacher himself. Nor was it one of the roving phantoms of the valley. It was a simple man, a stranger dressed in ragged clothes seeking shelter from the rain. Leith hadn’t seen a traveler or vagabond by the river for quite some time. Even the college students stayed out of the valley now. The trail down College Hill had become overgrown and treacherous. Thus it took a few moments for the correct course of action to occur to him.

He raced through the rain, hollering to the man over the gentle storm. The man stood still, seemingly at a loss as he saw Leith running toward him.

“Sir!” Leith exclaimed under labored breaths as he came to a dead stop between the man and the chapel grounds. “The chapel is old and abandoned. It might collapse any day. It might not be wise to go in there.” He saw no reason to scare the traveler unnecessarily. He could hear the creeping of the hounds and the crawlers behind him in the mist, readying themselves, he felt sure, to claim another victim.

“But there’s light in the window,” the man answered. He was a darker-skinned man, older, but his eyes shone bright with promise, like a man who had found something in the middle of his life he hadn’t known he was looking for.

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