ASH WEDNESDAY

By Chet Williamson

Smashwords Edition Published at Smashwords by Macabre Ink & Chet Williamson
Copyright 2010 by Chet Williamson & Macabre Ink Digital Publications

Copy-edited, formatted, and checked for accuracy against the original paperback edition by David Dodd

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The plots of God are perfect.

The Universe is a Plot of God.

--Edgar Allan Poe, Eureka

PROLOGUE:

A Resident of Merridale

For the whole town, I suddenly realized, was something other than I so far saw it. The real activities and interests of the people were elsewhere and otherwise than appeared. Their true lives lay somewhere out of sight behind the scenes. Their busyness was but the outward semblance that masked their actual purposes. They bought and sold, and ate and drank, and walked about the streets, yet all the while the main stream of their existence lay somewhere beyond my ken, underground, in secret places.