Preface

Placed precariously on the side of a mountain range, the sun didn't shine quite right on the town, the clouds hung strangely, veering off in different directions, broken by the peak and halted by the mountain face. It never rained, never snowed, dry the entire year until the trees unceremoniously dropped all of their leaves seemingly overnight and a layer of bitter frost coated everything until the spring.

There was nothing there the townspeople had to offer. The trees in the forest were sparse and skinny with soft, delicate wood that splintered and shattered uselessly. The soil was rocky, barren, completely unfit to grow anything but more worthless trees and chunky-looking grass and weeds. The mountain itself beared no minerals worth mining, aside from the coal that had long since dried up, mines abandoned. Their economy was maintained by milk products, beef, and dumb luck. As a result, the population was incredibly small, less a town and more a single road flanked by small businesses, branching into smaller roads dotted rather infrequently by cookie-cutter farmhouses, unlit neighborhoods, and the occasional dirt clearing with a smattering of dingy cabins and trailer homes placed haphazardly about. The only human-made development that rivaled the sheer vastness of the woods and the pastures was the cemetery.

All the population had, besides their livestock, was prayer.

Every morning, the sun rose and managed to shine over the church steeple, casting a shadow directly down the center of the main road, extending all the way to the off-white, decaying town hall. It was a sign from God that they had a purpose there in that little mountain town, and unlike the mines, the people were not abandoned. He was watching over them. It was all that gave them a fraction of peace when the bills were due.

But one morning, one dark, overcast Sunday morning, they noticed, on the way to church, that the sun did not shine. The heavenly light was stifled by heavy stormclouds that loomed, electric and warning. That morning, God was not with them, the church feeling cold and hollow, the sermons read feebly and without conviction. And that morning when the mass had ended, the first cow was found dead in the pasture.