Ghost Towns

Twenty Nine

Will set down the papers, many minutes later. The motion was slowed, almost unnaturally.

"I...I want to say that I can't believe it," Rye's oldest friend whispered, the darkness of true night casting his shocked face into shadow.

"It took me time to accept it too," Rye tried her best to sound comforting. It was a hard thing, reading incriminating evidence against a man who their entire town had loved.

"The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me," Will said. Rye rose from the Mayor's chair, and Will collapsed into it. He ran a palm over his face. "He has been different after the fire. Even a little bit before it, maybe. No one wanted to acknowledge that. But seeing this... I can't ignore it. The way he chose violence over and over. The way he made a spectacle of every death in the woods."

"Throwing fuel into an already destructive fire," Rye finished for him. "Hatred is a tricky thing. It was easy for him to inspire it because we looked up to him."

"Yeah." Will fell silent, then, slumped in the chair, his rifle slung over his lap, now. Every so often, he'd look at it with incredulity, as if wondering how he had acquired it in the first place.

"Will," Rye began, tentatively, "you should know that I came here to...get rid of Scarrow."

Will looked up, but to Rye's surprise, it wasn't apprehension on his face. Instead, she found resignation there, as if he had already come to the same conclusion on what had to be done.

"It's the only way we can avoid war, now." He said, simply. Whether he was trying to validate Rye's confession or convince himself of it, she was not sure.

Both of them turned to face the window as a sudden flare of light split the dimness outside the town hall.

"What was that?" Rye asked, worried suddenly about Alex.

Will did not have the chance to answer before the clamor of shouts reached them, a great noise that could not be picked into single voices. Barely even hesitating, the two of them ran from the Scarrow house, Will keeping pace with Rye so as not to leave her behind.

A crowd had gathered, and was growing larger even as Will and Rye approached. The town hall had a small podium in front of it, where the Mayor used to give speeches. It was all they needed in this small town. A auditorium would have been much too excessive. Now, under the moonlight, the podium was completely blocked from view. Will and Rye pushed their way through their neighbors, desperate to see the cause of the commotion.

Rye nearly tripped over a woman's hem, stumbling into a man in front of her. Will hauled her up before she could hit the ground, where she would have been trampled by dozens of shoes. She found herself in the very front of the crowd, pressed against the low barricade around the stage. Will was no where in sight, and no matter how Rye called for him, her voice was lost in the crowd.

Her focus shifted to the stage itself, and there she lost all thoughts of anything else.

Two men - a farmer and a mill owner - now wearing the rifles of the wolf guard, thumped up the steps onto the platform. They struggled against the force of the crowd pushing against them, but broke free once they crossed the barricade. Between them, they hauled a small figure, hair obscuring her face and expression. Lisa.

And that was when Rye recognized what the other object upon the stage was. Large, bulky, and imposing, it was made of wood. A tall wooden pole rose high above thew podium, a single beam coming off the top of it perpendicularly. And hanging from that, was a rope.

"Lisa!" Rye screamed, trying to get her friend's attention.

Scarrow had decided to execute his own daughter! Beyond fire and war, Rye could have never imagined that he could do something more heartless. And yet here she was, at the front row of Lisa Scarrow's hanging, unable to move for the weight of the people around her pushing inwards.