The Stuff of Dreams by Hideyuki Kikuchi

. . or to you, Sheriff? And what’ll happen to all of us?”
    “Nothing’s gonna happen,” the sheriff said firmly. At one time, the villagers had been able to hear those words and sleep peacefully through dark nights rife with fluttering demons. When a trio of wanted men came down the main street, the sheriff told the frightened populace the very same thing before he coolly went off to deal with the matter.
    The lawman drove his spurs into his mount’s flanks. There was the sound of horse and rider thundering across the earth, and then Nan was once again left behind.
    .
    It took him less than five minutes to find D—there was only one road that connected back to town. About a third of the way from the hospital to that junction, D was out in the middle of the road. A sense of incongruity filled the sheriff’s heart. D had stopped. And he was facing the lawman . Having halted his horse for a moment, the sheriff then closed the remaining distance with one burst of speed. At first, he thought this might’ve been some sort of setup, but he quickly thought better of the idea. He was convinced this Hunter would never resort to anything so crude. Scattering pebbles everywhere, the sheriff pulled up alongside the Hunter. The other man made no attempt to look at Krutz, but had his eyes trained straight ahead.
    “I take it you weren’t waiting around for me, now, were you?” said the sheriff.
    “How did you come here?” D asked.
    “What?”
    “Rode straight from the hospital for about five minutes, didn’t you?”
    “Sure did,” Sheriff Krutz replied, feeling somewhat bewildered. There was nothing unusual about their surroundings or the way the Hunter was acting. His voice had been ordinary when he asked the question, too. Only he was pointed in the opposite direction.
    “Then this is where normalcy ends, I guess.”
    “What are you talking about? Didn’t forget anything back in town, now, did you?” Although the last question had a pressure behind it meant to dissuade D from breaking their agreement, the Hunter didn’t seem to notice in the least.
    “I went straight,” D said.
    While Sheriff Krutz thought it was obvious the Hunter meant he’d come straight back from the main road, a heartbeat later another impossibility crossed the lawman’s mind, making him squint suspiciously. He can’t mean to tell me he’s been riding straight on since he left the hospital, could he?
    Before the sheriff could get the question out of his mouth, D had turned his mount around. The Hunter rode off without even asking the lawman to come along. It was only natural that the sheriff went right after him. Side by side, the two of them continued down the road.
    “This is a peaceful village,” Sheriff Krutz said. “Always has been—since long before I was born. It’s not the sort of place for those with the scent of blood all over ’em.”
    “What did you want to be when you grew up?”
    At that unexpected question, the sheriff turned toward D in spite of himself. By the look of him, he was a young man, no more than twenty. Being a man of the law, Krutz was accustomed to a certain level of formality, but for some reason this question didn’t bother him. “This,” the sheriff said, pointing to the badge on his chest.
    “Did you ever tell Sybille that?”
    “Why would you ask that?”
    “You had the makings of a sheriff. That’s probably what Sybille wanted for you. Your dream was her dream, too, wasn’t it?”
    “We never even talked about it. I was supposed to run the general store.”
    D didn’t say anything.
    “But forget about me. I want to know why you—” Realizing in the blink of an eye that he’d ridden ahead of D, Sheriff Krutz hastily pulled back on his reins.
    “See if you can go on,” D said.
    “What?”
    “Go straight ahead. I’m going to wait a minute.”
    About fifty feet ahead of them the road twisted to the right. Beyond that it was swallowed by the densely packed greenery of the woods.