' ' ' Two pipes were still burning under the balconies along the main road after the rest of the elders had gone to bed. These two had always stayed the longest, for as long as Marta could remember, and they always ended up the same way. "A red backpack," one said, as if the phrase needed to be said aloud for the night to pass peacefully. The other nodded. He didn't need to ask what it was about. He knew the story just as well, even though they never agreed on the details. Legend said that no one climbed the hills from the temple. The rocks stood almost vertical, smooth, without a handhold, as if someone had smoothed them specifically to prevent anyone from reaching the top. And yet, once they did. Someone was born in the village with abilities that no one else had replicated, neither before nor after. He reached the very top. He didn't come down. He jumped. All that remained of him was what fell with him, but not himself: a red backpack, lying at the foot, as if someone had left it there deliberately in plain sight. No one knew why. The elders had their own theories, each different, and none of them fit the rest. They tried other ways, too. The only route from the south, through the town itself, around, into the hills on the gentler side. Expeditions were carefully prepared, with supplies for a week, sometimes two. Some didn't return at all. Those who returned returned individually, not in the groups they had set out in, and they had no memory of what had happened to them since they disappeared from the sight of the others. "Ghosts," said the first, as he always did. "Or something that tells the ghosts to watch," replied the second. That was the only difference between them that Marta had managed to remember over the years. They didn't speak openly about the secret. Three people in the village knew it, and neither of the two pipes belonged to either of them. But anyone who sat on that threshold long enough knew that what happened in the hills and what the preacher guarded were not two separate things.

Working title: Hell's Comin' With Me. A man sits on a porch, rocking chair, revolver in hand. He shoots the town preacher as he runs out of the church. Doesn't deny it. The town doesn't hold a trial - they just throw him out, no name, no defense, one day and he's gone. Here's the part I'm still turning over: this town isn't the usual Wild West nest of outlaws and grifters. Nobody in it is evil. Not officially, not on paper. So when the exile starts walking and keeps waking up miles from where he fell asleep, with no memory of the road between, that's not just a spooky detail. Something is wrong with distance itself around him, and he's the last person who'd notice. Back in town, they need a new preacher. The winner didn't even want the job, ran as a joke with a friend, laughed when his name got called. Now he's got access to something the town has kept quiet for generations. He's in over his head and doesn't know it yet. I'm building the middle section right now, the stretch between the shooting and whatever the exile finds out there. Curious how other writers here handle a structure like this: reader knows the narrator is unreliable about his own memory, but the narrator doesn't know it about himself. Anyone dealt with that split before, and how did you keep the reader from getting frustrated instead of hooked?

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