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CHAPTER TWO

When the town of Suttercraft came into view, I could see
that it was in the process of being fed upon. Trees rose like
stalks of towering fungus erupting from its spoiling flesh,
and green waves of hungry woods had eaten away most
of its roads and parking lots. Houses and businesses were
hollow and broken. This place was merely a rotting trunk,
and the people inhabiting it were no more than tomb-worms.
I quickly determined that the place would pose little threat
to me—it was already dead.
The city was not at all unknown to me. I’d heard of its
penchant for producing strange black coffins from the
churned earth of its planting fields, basements, and other
deep places. I was also aware of the dreadful bodies that
were removed from those coffins, looking much larger and
fiercer in death than they ever had in life. However, beneath
all the chatter about caskets and corpses, there lurked an even
more fantastic tale—according to certain dreamers, the souls
of the deceased citizens of Suttercraft were systematically
reborn into those inhuman husks, and once returned to life,
they rose to take their place within some vast and wicked
enterprise beneath the earth. Such stories, if at all true, give
me hope that one day, dreams won’t be forced to hide behind
sleep, but might find their way upon the earth to do the good
work of abolishing this Deadworld.
I made my way through crooked streets, pinch-tight
alleyways and sluggish fog, all of which lent the city an odd

20 | Mark Anzalone