The water tower looms, as all water towers do. It does all of the things that water towers are supposed to do; it winks in the setting sun, it slowly rusts. It groans in ponderous, metallic agony.

You like that? Made that up myself, so I did.

Buy some of the more suggestable townsfolk a beer and they will tell you all sorts of things about the tower. They’ll wax about how the creatures first crawled into the shadowy cylinder on a dry, moonless, desert night back in the sixties. They’ll talk, if you let them, about an unsatiable appetite for moisture, for dankness in the arid northern winds, of an incomprehensible idyll of beaded moisture on oxidising iron. You’ll see, if you’ve time enough in the bar, the locals side-eyeing you, even more than might be expected for an out-of-town businessman. You’ll notice lips twitching and elbows dug into friends’ sides.

An outsider would notice these things, an imbecile even. I think you’re more than that, friend.