Still, though, Henry Barber stepped one and another steps forward, determined to see his job through to its grisly end. He un-slung his rifle from where it hung across his back and clutched it in a fist; in his other he held the looped rope, wound through with the stout chain of iron which he’d felt compelled to reinforce it with before setting out at dawn that day. The daggers hanging on either hip were heavy with the ghost-blood of countless men and women, but somehow offered little reassurance. Still, crouching low to the ground, a hunter’s gait, Henry Barber slinked his brave way into the stinking stygian mouth opened before him.
The queer thought arrived and nipped at his courage as he slipped into the blackness: he knew this blackness. He knew its taste, its kiss and bite and touch.
