The rancid smell of sulfur filled the air as Luis tossed another crooked limb onto the fire. He could feel the weight of the pistol deep in his pocket as if it were a hidden hoard of sin. When he moved he heard the clink of bullets against its scratched metal, for he had unloaded the weapon when he realized what place he was in. Glancing around at the ring of faces that surrounded the fire, he wondered if any of the others had realized the true nature of this forest. He suspected that they had not because none of them had run screaming into the dark in an effort to escape the place.

He slept that night with his head against a tarred telephone pole that stabbed into the night sky like a knife searching a breast for the heart. Every vibration; moan of wind, subterranean rustle of burrowing things, cries of night birds and the squeal of prey; all fed into him and entered Ishmael’s dreams where he lay sleeping by the fire. But most of all it was the murmurings and deliriums and dreams of the silent one who hung between two dead thieves on a pole strung with rusted wire, wire which ran across the miles to where Ishmael lay.
He awoke to a leaden dawn and a dead fire, his hair stuck to the pole so tightly that he left a piece of bloody scalp hanging there when he wrenched himself free. Not a single dream was remembered, though they all remained within him.