Annie awoke with a start. She kicked the blanket off of herself and shot out of bed, then promptly tripped over a chair and tumbled down onto the carpet. It was a faded green and surprisingly plush, although her chafed and sore cheek disagreed with the assessment.
After a moment of lying in a heap to lament the motel’s choice of chair placement, Annie gingerly picked herself off the ground and replaced the chair. Then she gave it a soft kick to make herself feel better. Dignity returned and nightmare-based adrenaline receding, Annie carefully picked her way through the dark and over to the bathroom.
She didn’t turn on the light, that might involve looking in the mirror, just ran the sink and splashed some water onto her face. As she watched the water stream into the drain the thought of returning to sleep wasn’t terribly appealing. Instead she stopped the water, donned her boots and duster, and stepped out into the hallway.
Unsurprisingly, it was also dark.
Placing a hand along the wall, she meandered down the hallway, taking care not to stumble or clomp her boots too loudly against the hardwood for fear of waking the other tenants. Only once she was out of the motel and onto the street did she allow herself a sigh, puffing out a cloud of fog into the desert night air.
“Dammit.”
The side effects of consuming magic seemed random to Annie. Some days it was nausea, others it was a sort of manic adrenaline high. Tonight it was nightmares and migraines. Lucky her.
The quiet was helping. The whole town was asleep now, not a single light illuminated the empty streets except the moon. The Stranger’s only company tonight would the stars and the dust kicked up beneath her feet as she walked. At least they didn’t need much in the way of conversation. Annie preferred a quiet stroll.
She pulled her duster close against the wind and looked up. Millpoint’s pride and joy loomed above her, its sails stretched across their turbines that cut across the moon as they spun in a lazy circle. It was a calming sight and Annie found herself breathing in time to the turning mill.
[The “Thud, thud, clunk!” is a callback to Annie checking out the windmill during the daytime.]
A creaking “Thud… Thud… Clunk!” broke the silence. The windmill’s exterior door lurched open with its rusty squeals of protest and an exasperated Sheriff Jed emerged from inside. He heaved on a small hand truck to pull it over the last steps and out into the street with a clatter that made Annie wince. The cart was loaded with what looked like a large metal cylinder adorned with a series of blinking lights and a short black hose capped with some sort of metal attachment poking out of the top.
The Sheriff looked around anxiously and Annie slipped into the shadows. She watched him maneuver the hand truck onto the road and begin to wheel it away, heading further into town and… hum to himself?
The Stranger’s weirdness gauge was at full capacity. She wasn’t going to get back to sleep anyway, might as well see what Sheriff Dickhead was up to. She started after him, keeping to the pockets of darkness within the alleys and behind buildings where she could stay hidden.
[Every so often Jed would stop and take another look around and she would have to duck behind a wall to avoid his gaze] His route through town was bizarre, [Show, don’t tell!]
After a few minutes of walking the main road he suddenly took a sharp turn left, lunging into an alleyway. As much as one can lunge with a hand truck anyway. Then the brim of his 10-gallon hat then poked back around the corner and Annie had just enough time to duck behind the wooden post of a porch before his head whipped around to stare goggle-eyed back the way he came. Then, with a nod, he disappeared down the alley once more.
She let out a small grunt of irritation and peered out from her hiding place, then followed after him a bit more wary than before. Jed may have been a buffoon, but he was a paranoid buffoon. Luckily he wasn’t difficult to tail, the squeak of his ancient hand truck echoed down the alley like a trail of creaky breadcrumb leading her on. He stuck to the alleys and side streets, darting this way and that seemingly at random. It was beginning to make Annie’s head spin.
He finally stopped somewhere at the edge of town. An open space behind what Annie was pretty sure was [Doctor’s Name]’s clinic that was pressed up against the sharply sloping stone wall that made up the exterior of the ravine. A scruffy stretch of overgrown bushes lined the stone and was beginning to creep out towards the clinic unhampered. The doctor rarely bothered to trim bushes he wouldn’t see.
Sheriff Jed leaned against his hand truck, smoking a cigarette and watching the bushes intently. Then, at some unseen signal, he flicked it to the dirt and ground it under his heel.
Annie was about to step out to confront the Sheriff when the bushes began to shake. Then they lifted right off the ground!
