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Craig Nybo

4

Chapter 11

Artemus and Kurt sat across from one another at a dilapidated reading table. The smell of hoarding and mold assaulted Kurt’s senses. With stacks of old newspapers and periodicals towering like labyrinth walls in almost every square foot of the place, it seemed Artemus’s shack could go up in flames at any moment. There were no electric lights, but Artemus could see adroitly in the near darkness.

Kurt tried not to show any exception to Artemus’s strange appearance. The old man walked hunched over, his body brooding, once powerful. Gray hair covered Artemus’s head and face in copious amounts. Artemus didn’t merely wear a beard; tendrils of salt and pepper whisker covered his entire face, only thinning around the eyes and temples.

“Danny was a good boy to begin with. I raised him like a pup. He ran wild and I let nature train him, the way a boy ought to be brung up,” Artemus said, folding his ancient hands on the table top. “But like so many other things in this God-forsaken world, he went bad. There was an evil in him; something that has existed in my family for generation upon generation; my boy had the curse.”

“What curse?” Kurt asked.

“A curse that steals the soul with the first tats of innocent

Concerning:

Artemus Slade

Kurt McCammus

Danny Slade