Fiction: The Old Man of the Mountain pt. 2

This is going up a little early today. I have things to do this evening, but I wanted to get this up before I left the house. As before, this story is not proofread.

The Old Man of the Mountain, pt. II

It took John a while to return to slumber after that. His sudden jolt into the waking world had passed unnoticed by his parents, both of whom slept a few feet away on their own bed. He lay there for a while listening to his father’s rhythmic snoring. Eventually though he did return to sleep, which was blessedly dreamless.

He woke in the morning when his parents stirred. He went through his morning duties without comment. He ate his breakfast in silence. If his parents noticed, they must have ascribed it to sulking.

John just kept thinking about the dream. In his mind’s eye all he could see was Tyler’s face cast in stone. What had it meant? Was something bad going to happen? Was he simply frightened by the old man?

John continued to obsess over the dream as he walked towards the schoolhouse. The morning air was cool, and bits of mist still curled around the trees. The image of the fog-filled woods from his dream sprang back to mind, and it made him feel uneasy.

The path to the school was empty, and John trudged along it without enthusiasm. He kicked stones and branches as he went, trying to keep his mind off of his nightmare. It was quiet, but he took some solace in the fact that the sounds of the forest were all around him. This was after all quite familiar territory.

He spied a formless lump by the side of the road. On closer inspection it appeared to be a bag of some kind, little more than a simple sack with a shoulder strap. As he bent down to examine it, he realized it was the bag that Tyler carried to school. He had a sudden moment of panic as he remembered the dream.

The panic was magnified a moment later by a scream from behind him. He snatched up a sick from the ground and whirled, raising it to strike.

“Raaagh!” hollerd Tyler, hands raised in mock-threat. He leaped towards John one more time from from the tree he had been hiding behind, the doubled over laughing.

“You should see the look on your face!” he said, through guffaws. “You look like you’re about to cry!’

John felt his face warm has be flushed with embarrassment. The prank was, he had to admit, probably pretty funny if you weren’t the one thinking his friend was in trouble.

“Jerk,” he said.

“Oh come on!” said Tyler. “It was funny! What’s wrong with you?”

John shook his head.

“Nothing,” he said/ “Let’s get to school.”

Tyler shook his head in reply.

“Uh uh,” he said. “We’re not going to school today?”

“Come on,” said John. “We’re going to get in trouble. Let’s go!”

“No,” said Tyler. “We’re playing hooky. I’ve got a better idea.”

John felt a ball of dread form in his stomach. Something, he knew, was about to go very, very wrong.

“What’s your idea?” he asked. He already knew he wasn’t going to like the answer.

“I just saw the Old Man again, going that way,” said Tyler. He pointed off into the woods in the direction of a nearby creek.

“Ty,” said John, “We’re not following him. We got lucky our parents didn’t find out we saw him yesterday.”

Tyler took on a sly grin, and he shook his head again, slowly.

“We’re not going to follow him,” he said.

The dread in John’s stomach grew heavier.

“What are we going to do then?” he asked, despite his better judgement.

“We,” said Tyler, “Are going to go see what all the fuss is about. We’re going to go find the old man’s camp.”

John’s jaw dropped open in disbelief.

“Are you crazy?!” he asked. “Nobody finds the Old Man’s camp! Anyone who does never comes back!”

Tyler’s grin didn’t fade/

“I have,” he said, “And I did. Our property is right along his markers, and I’ve been past them plenty of times.”

John just continued to stare at his friend in disbelief.

An awkward silence descended between the two as John continued to stare. Tyler was the first to break it.

“Come on,” he said. “We can do this! The Old Man never hurts anyone that doesn’t deserve it, and we’re just going to look. We won’t touch anything.”

“No,” said John, stamping his foot. “No way. This is crazy. You’re trying to get both of us in trouble. Or hurt. Or killed.”

“Fine,” said Tyler. His smile was gone, and a scowl had replaced it. “You go off to school then.”

He pushed past John to retrieve his bag from the ground. He looped the strap over his shoulder and started walking off, back down the trail towards his parent’s house.

“I,” he said, “am going to check out the camp. You can take your lily-livered butt to school like some coward.”

John watched his friend go, paralyzed with disbelief and indecision. There was no way he could stop Tyler on his own. The dread was gone now, replaced by panic. His friend was now walking off to his doom, and there wasn’t anything he could do to stop him.

Tyler disappeared around a bend in the trail, and John snapped out of his paralysis. He ran towards the school. If he was fast enough he might be able to tell his teacher, Together they might be able to catch Tyler before he crossed over into the Old Man’s territory.

He stopped after only a few steps. He and Tyler were still a fair distance from the school, and still very close to Tyler’s parents’ property. There was no way that John could get a teacher and catch Tyler before he passed the line of standing stones. Once he passed that, no one would chase after him. No adult would risk crossing into the Old Man’s lands and angering him.

They would come up with excuses for why they wouldn’t, of course. They’d say that Tyler was in no danger and they would punish him when he came home. Or they’d say that the Old Man would punish him for them and then bring him home. Whatever they said they were all afraid of the Old Man, and once Tyler crossed the boundary there was nothing that the adults would do until Tyler either returned or had gone missing for a few days.

Tyler was walking off maybe to his doom, and there was no way that John could let him go alone. John said a few words that would have gotten his backside tanned if his mother had been in earshot. Then he dashed off after his friend.

Tyler, for his part, was simply strolling down the path. His pace was so leisurely that John had no difficulty catching up with him. He turned to face John as he approached, walking backwards in the direction of his parents’ farm.

“I knew you had guts” he said, grinning widely.

John shook his head. “This is stupid,” he said. “You’re going to get us both in trouble”

They walked for some time. When they had stopped, they had gone clear across Tyler’s parents’ property (taking care to stay out of sight of the parents). They stopped at the fence line, where the split rails of the fence ran parallel to a line of oblong stones set end-on into the ground. Each stone came up to the boys’ eye level. Each had the Old Man’s symbol carved into it to leave no doubt who the property beyond they boundary they marked belonged to.

John put a hand on his friend’s shoulder as Tyler was climbing through the fence.

“Wait,” said John. “How are we going to find our way back? You’ve never found the camp, right?
Tyler patted the bag. Inside something clinked against something else.

“I brought a hatchet to mark the trees,” he replied. “And lunch. Well, MY lunch anyway, YOU are on your own”

John scowled. One of Tyler’s family’s goats had gotten a whiff of the apple that John normally brought to school with him. The beast had gnawed a hole in his bag to get at it. The apple, along with the bread he had been sent along to school with for a midday meal, had been swiftly consumed by the goat and a nearby group of opportunistic sheep.

“Fine,” he said, pouting.

Tyler laughed, keeping quiet to avoid drawing attention.

“Don’t sulk,” he said. “I’m only kidding. You can have some of mine when we stop to rest. Let’s get going.”

Unable to stall any further, John clambered between the rails of the fence. Tyler waltzed through the marked boundary as though it were of no consequence. John stopped just short. He regarded the nearest standing stone with uncertainty, hesitant to risk crossing into the unknown.

“Come on!” Tyler hissed. “You’re not a coward, are you?” John flushed with embarrassment again, and pushed himself through the boundary.


John wasn’t sure what he expected to feel when he passed between the two nearest stones. He did expect to feel something. Instead he felt nothing. The boundary itself was simply a thing, no more dangerous than any other stone wall. Less dangerous because there was no physical barrier.

With the mental obstacle of the boundary line conquered, some of his hesitation was gone. He took a few quick steps and drew alongside his friend. Together the began the ascent up the mountain.

The mountain itself wasn’t all that imposing. It rose out of a relatively flat surrounding area. It’s slopes were forested, and gradual enough so that it could be climbed on foot. It was steep enough that logging on it would be difficult at best.

The top of the mountain was bald, grey stone. It was the same color of the Old Man himself. One of the legends surrounding him was that he was born from the mountain itself. It was as reliable a legend as any other people told about the Old Man.

It took John and Tyler less than an hour of crashing through the woods before they began to notice the trees growing smaller and smaller. Finally the forest fell away altogether, with a few stunted pines marking the end of the tree line.

As they went Tyler had cut chunks of bark off of a tree every few dozen feet. The wood underneath was soft and in the dimness of the forest appeared to be a bright white, easy to see against the moss-covered trunks of the trees. John stood at the tree line now and looked back into the woods behind him. A reassuring trail of white dots could be seen trailing off back the way they had come.

“What now?” he asked. The mid-morning sun was high and the sky was nearly cloudless. It would be hot soon and the bare rocks wouldn’t provide much shelter from the summer sun.

Tyler shrugged. “Now we look for the camp.”

He pointed to the top of the mountain.

“I say we go all the way to the top and see what we can spot from there.”

It took another hour or so of determined effort to get to the very top of the mountain. By that time the sun was beating down, bright and hot. When he finally got to the apex of their climb however, John didn’t care.

The lands surrounding the mountain spread out around them. John could see for what must have been dozens, or even hundreds of miles. From there he could see places he had never been. He could see places he was sure that his parents had never been. There were ponds, and roads, and fields, and forests, all laid out around him. On the far horizon to the east he could see a glittering line that might have been the sea.

It was an awesome sight, but he was snapped out of his reverie by Tyler’s hand on his shoulder.

“Look!’ Tyler said, pointing down the reverse slope. “Down there!”

A short distance down the mountain, just over the tree line, was what had to be the Old Man’s camp. There was a small log structure, barely a shed, with a moss roof. There was a firepit, and some sort of copper contraption next to it.

Just below the tree line there was a clearing.with a number of bushes in it arrayed as though it were some sort of orchard. Odd stone shapes were partly hidden among them. From this distance neither boy could make out what they were.

“Come on,” said Tyler, “Let’s get going.”

They decended down to the camp. John stopped to examine the copper contraption more closely. Tyler continued past him, heading towards the orchard.

The contraption smelled or turpentine. It was made entirely from copper, and at the bottom it was blackened in a manner that suggested it was heated over the fire. The bottom part was composed of some sort of vessel, like a pot but closed. It had a conical top, with a second, smaller cone jutting out to one side. that was open at the tapered end.

The open end of the smaller cone hung over what looked like an earthen ware pot. A closer look revealed that the pot wasn’t made of clay at all. Instead it was a bowl carved from a solid stone.

“Wow!” came Tyler’s voice from the vicinity from the orchard. John abandoned his examination of the metal contraption to look for his friend. It took only a moment to spot him, as Tyler was jumping up and down, waving both hands to attract John’s attention.

“Come here!” shouted Tyler. “You’ve got to come see this!”

Tyler was standing next to one of the odd stone shapes. John carefully picked his way down the slope towards his friend. The object was partly concealed by one of the high bushes. When John got close enough to make out what it was, he stopped dead in his tracks. His face lost all color.

Tyler stood grinning next to what appeared to be a large stone statue. The statue’s face was contorted in an expression of agony. Its features were entirely lifelike, which was unnerving enough, but that wasn’t the worst of it. John had seen statues before, on trips to larger towns with his parents. He had never, ever seen a statue with teeth, hair, and fingernails.

Fiction: The Old Man of the Mountain pt. 1

I’ve decided to split “The Old Man of the Mountain” into multiple parts. There are two reasons for this: First I want it to be here in more easily digestible chunks so that people aren’t forced to read it all at once. I feel like I should have divided “Check” this way, because at over 3500 words it’s a bit to take in all at once.

The second reason is that this story isn’t finished. As I have it plotted out now this story is likely to come in at around 8000 words, or around 3 or 4 installments on the blog. Since I did write today, and I have repeatedly said I would post every day, I’m going to post what I have done, and then follow it up tomorrow and Sunday (and however many other days it takes) until the story is complete.

If you’re willing to take this story in in chunks, read on. If not, you can wait for a few days until the story is finished and read it all at once. Thanks for your time.

Since i haven’t made it clear until now:

Comments and criticism are welcomed on anything I post here. This blog is in part an effort to make me a better writer, and I can’t do that without input. Also, if you enjoy this or anything else I’ve posted please feel free to share with others. This blog is public and open to all to read.

One more side note: This story is not proof-read. I plan to do so once the story is finished in it’s entirety.

The Old Man of the Mountain

John sprang up from behind the log, leveling his pistol at Tyler. He thrust if forward, shouting “Bang!” at the top of his lungs.

“Got you!” he crowed. “You’re one dead bandit!”

Tyler solemnly shook hid head. “Did not,” he said. “You missed. Got to reload now!”

As he said it he dove forward, touching the blunt wooden “blade” (really a stick) of his play-sword against his friend’s chest.

“Now YOU’RE the dead one!”

John’s face colored, and his face bunched up in childish rage

“Cheater!” he accused, poking the stick that was currently doing service as a pistol back at his friend. “I shot you, and you know it!”

“Did not!” Tyler shouted, matching John’s own anger with his own. “You missed and I stabbed you! I won!”

The two had finished what chored their parents had assigned them earlier in the day. Both had orders to come home as soon as their relative livestock were tended to, but both ignored the instruction. They had slipped off into their favorite spot in the forest instead to play a game of Bandit and Sheriff.

“You cheated and I’m not playing anymore!” John exclaimed, angrily tossing the stick to the ground.

“I did not cheat!” replied Tyler, all but screaming. “I...”

Both boys heard a stick snap underneath some one’s foot somewhere in the trees. Both clamped their mouths shut. It could be bullies, come to torment them, It could be an animal, which could be dangerous. Worse yet, it could be their parents, come to deliver them more work.

Both boys hid behind the log, poking their heads up just over it to peer off into the woods. A short time later there was the chemical stink of turpentine. A bit after that a man wearing tattered clothed of simple sack cloth wandered though the clearing without taking notice of them.

The man’s skin was a mottled grey and splotchy. Patches of obvious fungus grew on him. He was completely bald, his smooth head glistening in what little light there was to be had this deep into the forest. It was the Old Man of the Mountain.

No one was sure where the Old Man of the Mountain had come from, or even if he had a name.. For as long as our village had been there he had been there. Some said that he was one of the original colonists. Some said that there were a whole race of others like him living deep in the forest where even the most intrepid trappers wouldn’t go. Some said he was really a demon cast out of both heaven and hell, condemned to stay on earth forever.

His background was an absolute mystery. Some wondered at him. Some feared him. Nearly everyone stayed away from him. John and Tyler were told not to even go near him. No one interfered with him. Not more than once, anyhow. It was difficult to justify trifling with a man made of living stone.

A few did try things, of course. Rumors persisted of a fabulous treasure that the Old Man had at his encampment in the hills. From time to time some foolhardy bully or adventurer would hare off into the woods. Few were ever seen again. Those that were invariably left the village without comment as soon as their injuries healed.

Despite this, the Old Man wasn’t much of a menace. He would come to town about once a month, bearing an over-sized back he carried goods to market with. No one knew the plants and herbs of the woods like the Old Man, and more than one family had been saved by the poultices and medicines he traded to the general store in return for some implement or another he needed. What he used them for was anyone’s guess.

After he passed out of sight, Tyler slid to the ground, sitting with his back against the log.

“The Old Man!” he said. “That was the Old Man!”

‘Yeah,” said John. “We should go home.”

Tyler looked into his friend’s face. “Why?” he asked.

“We’re going to get into trouble,” said John. “We should get out of here before our parents find out. We’re not even supposed to be in sight of him.”

Tyler’s confused expression turned into one of disbelief.

“Are you kidding?” he asked,  “He’s not dangerous. He’s just some weird old man.”

“He is TOO dangerous,” said John. “My dad says so. Bill told me so too. He says the Old Man brought a bear in to the trading post once. The Old Man killed the thing with his bare hands!”

Tyler continued to regard his friend with skepticism for a moment, and then snickered at John’s unintentional pun.

“Bear hands?” he asked, laughing. It took John a moment to realize what was so funny, and then they both dissolved into peals of laughter. After that the incident was forgotten. They played until the shadows of evening started to make the forest even darker around them, and then each headed for home.


John arrived to a stern lecture from his mother on the virtues of having a strong work ethic. He listened, solemnly agreed with everything she said. He moaned and whined about the punishment she meted out (he would get none of the cobbler that was sitting on top of the stove) and then promptly forgot all it. He was still wrapped up what he;d seen earlier in the day.

At dinner he kept mostly to himself. He just kept thinking about seeing the old man earlier in the day. Where had he been going? Where had he come from? John knew that the clearing that he and Tyler thought of as their own private place was nowhere near the Old Man’s territory. Everyone knew where that was. No one went inside the boundaries marked by standing stones if they could help it.

He must have been too quiet, because his father noticed.

“Something wrong John?” he asked,.

John quickly stuffed the carrot he’d been toying with for the last few minutes into his mouth before answering.

“No!” he said, maybe a little too quickly.

His father gave him a suspicious look. John panicked. His father, like most fathers, seemed to have the ability to look right through him and see whatever fib he was about to say.

“What is it? You didn’t get into trouble at the schoolhouse again, did you? Am I going to hear from Mrs. Stark that you’ve been making trouble again?”

“No,” John replied. He shook his head, popping a piece of potato into his mouth to avoid having to speak again for a moment.

“You’d best not be lying to your father,” said his mother. She had joined his father in peering into John’s eyes, looking for some sort of untruth.

Truth be told, John’s behavior had been far from exemplary at the schoolhouse. His antics (joined and amplified by Tyler of course) had been enough to get him the odd scolding from the schoolmarm, but hadn’t been bad enough he expected a word from her to his parents.


“Honestly!” he said, “I’m not in trouble as school. I was just thinking is all.”

“Thinking about what?” his father asked, It was a question John dreaded to answer, but should have expected.

He had to think fast. He frantically cast his thoughts back through his day, looking for any experience other than the Old Man’s appearance that was notable enough to bring up.

“Foxes,” he said,. finally settling on a memory. “I saw one earlier in the woods, and i thought he might go for our chickens. Also, Bill told me their skins are worth good money now.”

“You want to go fox hunting?” asked his father, raising in eyebrow in a look that indicated he didn’t entirely believe his son.

“Well, no, I mean, sort of,” said John,  “but I know you don’t want me go alone. I was thinking maybe you could take me.”

His father shook his head. “I can’t spare the time right now John. You know that. Besides, that fox is long gone by now. It’s past the season for him to still be in his hole.”

John nodded and poked a bit at the remains of his meal. Ordinarily he’d have been disappointed at his father refusing to take him on a hunt. Right now he was just relieved that it seemed he’d gotten away with his fib.

His parents went on to more adult conversations. John went back to poking at the items that were left on his plate. Finally he managed to polish off the rest of the meal. He tried to wheedle his way into a piece of the cobbler his mother had banned him from, but his punishment stuck. Finally he went off to bed.

His dreams found him back in the clearing. Everything was eerily quiet. It was a dream, but somehow very, very real. There was no wind rushing through the trees. There were no bird calls from the surrounding woods. A thick fog obscured everything beyond the trees that ringed the clearing. John could feel his heart race as he grew more and more nervous.

There was the snap of a branch from behind him, and John whirled, to see a stone form loping through the clearing. The figure took no notice of him as it walked up and sat on the log, it’s weight causing the wood underneath where it sat to splinter and crack. He put his face in his hands John watched the man for a moment, but kept his distance.

As he had entered the clearing the face of the form seemed blurry. Now as he sat with his hands covering his face there was something very familiar about him. Despite himself John took a step towards the stone man. Then he took another. He found himself drawing closer and closer to the man. As he did so the man’s features grew sharper and more defined.

Finally the man sat up. His hands fell away from his face. John called out in horror, startling himself out of sleep. As he returned to consciousness all the details of the dream faded from memory save one; the face of the Stone man was the face his his friend, Tyler.

Writing frustration

Apologies for the lateness of the posting. I don’t really even have much of an excuse for it. I’d love to say things were so busy that I didn’t get to a posting, but it’s just not true.

I’m not being intentionally lazy. I’ve been trying to work on the same short story now or 3 days straight and it just won’t work the way I want it to. I’m considering scrapping it altogether and working on something else so it doesn’t make me crazy. I think I’ll give it one more day and hope for the best.

This sort of thing is probably the hardest part of writing every day. I have something to write, but it isn’t enough to just throw words at the page. Random sentences might be fun, but I’m doing this at least in part because I would like some day to get paid to write. There needs to be at least a modicum of care taken to ensure the product is readable.

Times like these I wonder if it’s all just a pipe dream. I’m a reasonably good writer in that I can put together a fairly comprehensible sentence, but I’m not entirely sure I’m putting anything on the page that people want to read.

Everything I put down on  to the page (or at least the screen) right now just seems to annoy me. I don’t have writer’s block, exactly. I know what I want to present, but for some reason I seem to be having trouble expressing it in a way that I feel to be entertaining.

So, apologies. I realize that this is now the second time I have complained about not being able to get the story down. I’ll try not to do it again.

The care and feeding of tech support users

I really like technology. For those that know even a little about me this is hardly surprising. I have a blog, a Twitter, a Facebook page, Google Plus, I do a podcast...

Let’s just say I really like technology.

I understand why some people don’t though. There are certain technologies that just aren’t that easy for some people to “get”. I don’t really ever expect my father, for instance, to get a Twitter account. I know people who refuse to use Facebook. I have one friend that pretty much removed herself from the web entirely.

Technology users like me don’t make it easy either. We tend to think of some things as “easy” because they were created by people like us. Some of the things we do by rote or habit are things that make little sense to others.

Sometimes things are created by people with no actual concept of a user interface. On more than one occasion I have been saddled with some technological marvel that can create wonders...so long as you know exactly how to do it. These sort of experiences make learning new things difficult and downright frustrating.

It’s at times when people are having problems like these that those who provide support for them need to be at their best. As a tech support professional if someone comes to me asking for a solution it is important that I be patient, and let them learn at their own pace.

Being condescending simply makes them angry. An angry user is a user that isn’t pay full attention. The less of a user’s attention you have, the longer you’re going to be there fixing an issue.

I’m as guilty as anyone else for forgetting this from time to time. If I’m having a bad night, I might forget to be at my most polite when dealing with a confused user. I try not to be a dick about things, but sometimes you’re just not on your game. Being impatient always makes things worse.

I try to keep this sort of thing in mind when I’m having my own technical difficulties. Because of the podcast I’m now doing with some friends I have been forced to learn to work with several new technologies lately, including sound editing software, XML interfaces, and even the mysteries of iTunes (which I loathe).

Everyone needs time to learn. Each person can only learn at their own pace, and no faster. Trying to rush this learning is just going to make both parties annoyed and it’s going to take longer for everyone involved. If someone asks you for help, try to be as gracious as you can.

Unless they’ve asked the same thing repeatedly. Then they’re just wasting your time.