In an alley in Rocheste, there lies a beggar
He has no name, no meaning, no worth. He is, for all intents and purposes, invisible to the decent folk of the town. In the depths of his unconscious mind he can hear the quiet footsteps. The sounds are strange. They’re not shoes. They make a soft slithering sound like the rasp of sand over cobblestones.
The invisible man stands in front of a ruined farmhouse. The fields that surround the house are brown and blighted. This is a dream. He knows it’s a dream. Somehow that doesn’t help.
“Why did you leave us, Father?” The voice comes from a little girl, about eight years old in a gingham dress. Behind her is a small boy in overalls, about the same age. The skin of her face has begun to flake away. Her eyes have dried up and flies crawl about them. Thick white maggots are squirming out of her nose.
He wants to respond to her, but all that comes to mind are lies. He could tell her that there had been no food, that he had only left to get help, but in the face of the dead girl’s stare, he cannot lie, even to a figment of his imagination. He had run. He had abandoned his children to starve.
“The rains would have come. Father if your faith had been strong enough, the rains would have come.” The lightning flashes again. For an instant he sees enormous black wings silhouetted against the sky. Then they are gone and there’s only the voice of his dead child. “Your faith was always weak.”