The Rider - Volume 25 2nd to Last Chapter

Last Night…my friend and I left stumbled out of a bar a little before 10pm. Just outside at the intersection of West 3^rd Street and 6^th Avenue there were two policemen on horseback amongst many yellow taxis. My belief is that they were there to direct traffic; for flashing from the south side of 6^th Avenue was a fire engine, and an ambulance trying to weave there way through the maze of never-ending cars and people. I looked back to the policemen on horse back and noticed that one of the officers was having trouble turning his horse around. He was pulling the horse south, but the horse stood fast facing north.

Then a surreal and odd feeling came over me I saw that this horse was focused on something a little north up on 6^th Ave. I followed the direction of the horse’s stare, but could not pinpoint through the people and cars what it was seeing. My eyes scanned back from the north side of the intersection, across the noticeably frozen yellow sea of taxis, and back to the horse’s eye. This animal’s once brown and dossal eye now looked a shade of red. Around the animals strange changed eye grew this morphing shade of black, that transformed its’ brown hairs into black hair like dye changing water. Less than a moment later the brown haired animal looked a deep smooth black, with only the gray and silver reins differing from its’ new black coat. Drawn back by the change I looked to the policeman who was riding the horse, but as I traced along the saddle of the animal and upward, I didn’t find the officer, instead I found what could only be referred to as a dark Rider. This menacing figure from out of no-ware, almost merged with the black horse dressed in a cloak darker than any night or any sleep.

Confused and shocked by what I perceived as trickery, I looked hurriedly about for my friend from the bar. But to my surprise spinning around I saw that nothing was moving, none of: the cars, the people, or even the mixed trash and leaves on the streets. Everything had just stopped, somehow the motion of the earth and time had cease to progress. All senses were tense now; as I looked to where I had first notice the something had changed. The horses eye, which now was a molting firey red, punched out from its’ new sleek black features. The horses’ eye was still fixed on what it had seen before, northward up the Avenue. I hesitated for a moment, my mind trapped, fixated on this, now, beast. Then a pungent smell, for which one finds only inside old cemeteries and fireplaces…the smell of sulfur. The sent lead me in the direction the horse was previously looking. Things looked different now, the objects, the people, and the cars, pealed away like old paint, revealing what I couldn’t see earlier. In the frozen torn canvas of my few, just feet from the white lines of the cross walk, was body of a man in a blue hat and blue jacket. His body lay seemly immobile because of it’s twisted, deformed, shape. I know not how the body came to rest there, but the body laid at the feet of another individual, a man wearing similar clothes of a blue hat and blue jacket. This family, friend, or foe just stared at the lifeless disfigured individual lying before him

All at once in the corner of my eye I saw movement. I saw the horse where it was before, and realized it had lost its Rider. Without ever seeing such motion, the Riders walked quicker and more fluid than an ice-sickle falling; the kind of motion that cuts through air itself. The Rider approached the standing blue jacketed man, moving cars and people like paper cut outs. Once the Rider was in front of the blue jacketed man he stood for a moment. The Rider then removed an old farm tool made of a wooded stick and long blade, out from under his cloak. The blue jacketed man peered up at the tall standing Rider and then stepped back as he saw his own reflection in the blade of the farm tool. The Rider in one swift movement, drew the back blade, like the cocking hammer on a gun, and…swung. A piecing wind echoed from the swing, which met its target, deep in the man’s chest. The Rider then lifted the man from off his feet and slammed him on the body that lay on the ground. The force was so great that the man simply liquefied into redness. This redness glided and formed to the layout of the body on the ground.

And then Rider looked down at the corps and over to me. I blinked in fear and time resumed to normal again; the jolted change made the Rider disappear by blending into the nights’ shadows. I shook my head, ran to my oblivious friend; pulled her to the side, out of the way of the newly motioned people. Grabbing her head and turning it towards the lifeless corps, I spoke, “do you see that?” She replied softly and scared “yes.” And then I spoke, “that man doesn’t exist anymore”. I felt the wind splash me in the face and thought I could see the Rider forming out of the shadows. I grabbed my friend and drug her down into the subway.

My heart beating to fast, I know we took the subway home, not speaking of what I’d said or seen. I left her at her place and arrived at mine. Sat down on my bed and tried to tell my significant other what I had seen, but before I could I had to run to the bathroom and loose all I had eaten. I slupt back to my room and just spoke of the body I had seen and nothing more. We went to bed, lights off, curled myself into my love, wanting to be protected. Once I closed my eyes they rained all the emotions out of me. All night the visions tortured me and so I arose to write what’s above. I tell this tale to calm me and to say I have seen this ghostly Rider before. I’ve smelled him on animal bones in the woods, heard him in my grandmothers’ voice when last time we spoke, and see him riding in the shadows of sickly hospital rooms. The Rider is out there, not just watching for your family, friends, or foe, but out there coming for you.