Horsehead Jack

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

So good, so good, so good.

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

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SPEAKER_1 (0:20)

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Alexander Saxton (0:45)

Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig today.

Anthony Botelho (0:50)

Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami.

Alexander Saxton (0:53)

They all keep the blame on me.

Anthony Botelho (0:55)

Tom Cruise is.

Alexander Saxton (0:56)

Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us out.

Anthony Botelho (1:00)

From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

SPEAKER_1 (1:02)

What would happen if I stopped doing it?

Anthony Botelho (1:04)

You starve, you freeze to death, that's what.

Alexander Saxton (1:06)

With great power comes great deniability.

SPEAKER_1 (1:09)

I'm not the first deni.

Anthony Botelho (1:11)

Digger, see the dream online.

Alexander Saxton (1:12)

Now playing only in theaters.

Anthony Botelho (1:13)

Record R, under 17, out of middle without parent.

Alexander Saxton (1:23)

The incredible words they sing are not the results of massive terror.

Anthony Botelho (1:33)

You may wish to adjust the dial. You are currently tuned in to The Wrong Station.

Alice would always remember that night, always until the end of her life, when, sitting alone in darkened silence and the dried folds of her body, the thought would awaken within her the memory of fear and the spark of something greater and more mysterious than fear.

It had been her idea. October, the silver maples aflame as they rose on either side of the old mill-town in its deep valley, with shadows underneath them blue and dark. They had gone out to the old mill where they were forbidden, Alice and Kitty and Thomasin and her little brother Paul. Kitty had been afraid of the place, but Alice had long been drawn by the white ruins, waiting. She had imposed her will.

The mill itself was a wreck of limestone crumbling into running water. They found the old campsite of an indigent, reeking of last season's spore and liquor. They found the rusted hulk of the mill-wheel ticking on its side in the current. They found a strange, tumbled pillar whose head was a horse's head. They sat on a flat section of fallen wall in the river and ate sandwiches.

Then the storm came in. In Crookes Hollow you never saw weather approaching. The high valley walls were monolithic. You'd been sun all day and suddenly the clouds would be upon you, like fierce riders appearing from the step outside your city walls. Between one moment and the next the afternoon grew dark. Then dark as night. Then the smell of ozone gave way to the hard wall of water. It ran for shelter and huddled beneath an overhang of fire-gutted roof.

Paul, at ten years old, was an outdoorsman already. He had a fire-striker and a piece of flint, and they gathered up feathery driftwood from under the overhang and built a small fire. For a while, they were almost jolly, but the rain kept on and on, and their fire died down low. Somewhere in that time, dark afternoon gave way to night. When the rain stopped, all the autumn woods on either side were filled with dripping water, rustling leaves. Thomason looked up. Did you hear that? They looked at one another. I didn't hear anything.

Thomason stood. He was fair-haired and tall, with a plain, serious face. She and Paul came from a poorer house than Kitty or Alice, but still decent. Very decent folk. There's someone out there.

They all stared, and as Alice's eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw...

She wasn't sure.

A dark outline of a boulder on the river, or...

No. A hunched figure of a man on that flat piece of wall where they'd eaten in the sun. Yes. Yes, it was a man. Immense and muscled, bent forward with his head between his arms.

And now her eyes adjusted. Beyond the fire's glow, he unfooled it himself and stood, his outline all wrong. He stepped down from the wall and came easily across the water. Foam churned around his calves, and Thomason called out in a shaky voice, Sir, who are you? Please leave us alone.