The Stalkers and Other Thoughts

Aside for the skraelings, he told me about what sounded like stilt-legged things. I can't remember the name he told me for them. Skinners or Stalkers or something. The Stalkers seemed to be a particularly bad experience for him.



When he told me about them, we were sitting together near the furnace vent- he seemed to particularly love the warmth and would huddle up to the vents whenever he could, holding his hands over them. There was nothing that made him happier, except eating whatever I had left for an afternoon snack.

He seemed to take a kind of sadistic joy in me walking in and finding the last of my cookies or chips eaten. I would know it was him when he started cackling from somewhere with his mouth full.

 I remember the Stalkers story very well, or at least the circumstances very well. I had a snow day that day, and I was enjoying the free time by catching up with some video games and Candlemass. It had begun to snow in big, puffy white flakes, the really picturesque kind, when he started to tell me the story.

He was kind of gazing off into the middle distance, and he looked rather melancholy "You know it was about in weather like this that I first saw the Stalkers." As Candlemass told me, it had already started to snow when he had begun his patrol that late afternoon. It had been near Christmas-tide, he'd said, though that didn't particularly matter for someone like himself.

 That winter was cold, so he'd taken care in bundling himself up in a thick cloak. His rope had been twined around his belt for safe-keeping since during this season, it was common for the Punishers to practice some form of forgiveness.

 He'd come to the edge of the village, where the walls ended and farmer's fields began, and that had been when he'd seen the Stalker. It had begun to snow, making it impossible to see very far beyond oneself. It was the type of weather that would typically make an ordinary person nervous. Candlemass was no ordinary person, but he knew when he was seeing something.

 In the open part of a barren field, two lights, green and phosphorescent hovering about twenty feet in the air. It took him quite a while to realize they were eyes, attached to a tall-shouldered, round-faced creature which was staring at Candlemass as intently as he was staring at it. Long, dark hair dripped down its face, frozen. It was completely still, and Candlemass actually felt fear.

 It was on him in an instant, he said, pointed legs pinning him to the ground, almost going right through him, it's jaw gnashing inches from him.

 It was only through quick thinking that he was able to get away; he tangled it with the rope from his belt and fled further into the forest.

 He could hear the thing running after him, and as he ran, he said the bodies of a farming family on the edge of the village swam into sight. Hung from the trees. Disemboweled. Their arms and legs broken and twined into the branches. The Stalker was quickly gaining on him. He knew it would be on him in an instant because of it's much longer legs, and so he directed them to a pond full of gasses and ichor nearby.

 When he reached the pond, he found the thing had completely disappeared, though. He had been standing, looking around for it as he tried to catch his breath he didn't even hear it sneaking up behind him. It was more out of instinct than anything else that Candlemass immolated the pool, he said. The Stalker hadn't been able to avoid getting caught in the wall of flame, he said, and it crumpled on the spot. But he had suffered significant damage from the attack, and he spent a long time in convalescence. Afterwards, he had never been quite the same.

 Random thought: Another thing that always surprised me about Candlemass. I always thought he was some sort of ghost or something, but he could eat and sleep just fine. I've definitely found him napping before.

 Oh, another thing I forgot to mention. Candlemass was always extremely partial to the color yellow. He told me, very proud, that the watch he was in wore yellow cloaks, and a darker, dune-ish color in the winter. He said they were incredibly visible, but not very suceptible to attacks.

 In any case, as I was reaching my fifteenth birthday, the allure of being a Punisher in training was beginning to wear off, and I was starting to get creeped out again. Once again, I don't remember this in particular, but my mom has told me she had found me huddled in the basement, in complete darkness, because I was on orders by the watch to train myself.