Heart Of The Gravamina

Gravamina: The part of a charge or an accusation that weighs most substantially against the accused.


I’m sailing to the End of The World on a ship called Gravamina, and she’s perfect for this Journey because she knows Death.

She is herself as dead as the Black Waters I sail across, as dead as the Crew that still haunt her decks and tend to her needs. She is as Dead as the Corpses that lie in the Catacombs I stole her compass from a week ago.

“ Finding the Gravamina won’t be as hard for you as it is for others. You’ll need the Heart of The Gravamina to find the Caravanserai,” the Hanged Man’s Skull whispered to me from his shelf in my library. “ But tell me, why do you want to join the Caravanserai?”

I walked to the shelf and turned the sectioned skull towards me and looked into his empty eyes and said, “ Because I’m tired of you, I’m tired of this house and I’m very tired of pretending to be something I’m not.”

“ You trail Death behind as if it were a train on a woman’s gown Azi Dahaka. When the Caravanserai become wise to you…they’ll destroy you and then you’ll join me here on this shelf and we’ll have nothing for company except each other’s Sins.

I took the Hanged Man’s Skull from the shelf and wrapped it carefully in linen decorated with a language no living person has ever spoken. “ You wish,” I told it. Then with the Skull, and nothing else in my possession I went into the world to find the Heart of The Gravamina.

The Hanged Man’s Skull told me on our long journey to the Catacombs about the Heart of The Gravamina and why it entombed and the rest of the Gravamina rots in a Grotto below the City.

Then he told me to listen because the Heart of The Gravamina doesn’t beat like a drum.

The Heart of the Gravamina screams.

“All Ships are alive, you know that Azi Dahaka and the Gravamina was alive too…maybe more so then any of her Sisters

Once long ago something dark and wicked boarded The Gravamina and killed her crew.

Now, it was assumed it was the Plague, but of course it wasn’t…it was a Demon and it drained the blood and life from every living thing on board the Gravamina and with no crew the Gravamina drifted and dreamed.

And then she went mad.

Like most Insane things the Gravamina was very good at pretending to be normal and after she was repaired and sold and even re-named she sailed and reacted to her world, as any Ship should

But then she started killing things.

She took the lives of her crew, the fish that swam around her as she sailed the Seas and when she was bored she made the food and water and wine go bad that had been stored below her decks.

Then one day a young sailor whose mother was a Witch and whose father was a Demon from the Mountains boarded the Gravamina and she tried to kill him to…for sport.

But he knew what to do and he tore her Compass from her chest and he took it to the Catacombs and he buried it.

He buried it alive.

The fool.

So the Heart of the Gravamina Screams in anger and rage and the rest of her dreams and rots and then one day a woman named Azi Dahaka went down into those tombs and brought it back out.

Azi Dahaka put the Compass back into her chest and the Gravamina’ s Sails captured a long dead gust of wind and her Crew came from the darkness and now they are all sailing to a port where this is dancing and music and art and poetry.

And Souls.

Lots of them.

And Azi Dahaka is very, very hungry.”

Eventide At Duwamish Bay

This was one of the first stories I wrote for the Soul Food Cafe and I'm partial to this tale for several reasons: but like The Amazing Benandanti and Gone To Croatan you'll see the beginning shades of Duwamish Bay.



Well, good evening to you and welcome! Come in, come in. Yes, that fog did come in fast tonight didn't it? Sometimes it just creeps up the bluff from the beach below and other times it moves as fast as a freight train, doesn't it?

As you can see I've added some things here at the Cafe, officially I'm a Curio Shop now and I'll be open each night at Eventide. That's twilight to you I guess.

So what shall it be tonight? A ghost story? Maybe a twisted tale of revenge or longing or greed? What? My story. Why not? It's a good one, if I don't say so myself.

Have a seat...I have to talk to the Management about those doors... they won't stay open and they're forever slamming themselves closed. Anyway, this is my story and why I'm here today...

When I was a girl, my grandfather owned a Curio Shop down at the Duwamish Bay Marina. You've probably heard of it. He had a genuine Egyptian Mummy, an electric chair and an old time embalming machine that's over six feet tall.

My favorite things were the shrunken heads he billed as genuine fake shrunken heads. He didn't feel like explaining where his sister in law got them. I'd sure be glad to tell you. She got them from her bush pilot days.

I always thought it was cool that I had the only grandmother on the block whose sister flew airplanes and could land them anywhere the ground was level. But it wasn't so cool when I found out exactly what she was flying. Mostly booze, some drugs, guns. Stuff you couldn't very well send through the mail.

One day she started flying around these little Islands in the Pacific. She never sent post cards from these trips. But she always brought back the coolest presents and once she brought back this little chest full of shrunken heads. Some were obviously very old and the hair on those little heads where jet-black. She had just come back from the Central Asia as well as the Pacific, so that wasn't surprising.

Then I saw some with red, blonde and light brown hair. Some even had traces of beards and mustaches. The looked almost brand new and smelled sort of funny. Like Lemons.

She saw me lift one and hold it up to the light and she said somewhat darkly, " See what happens when someone warns you to keep your head or else? "

I dangled the little head around, "or else " I whispered back.

My Grandfather, Cypriano, came into the room then and looked over our shoulders to see what Auntie had brought back. He was starting to expand his curio shop to what it is now and Auntie could be counted on to bring back some very interesting treasures. He looked down into the chest and pulled out about eight of the heads. Then he gently plucked the one from my fingers and dropped it into the chest. "

Bury it you fool, " he told her and then he left the room muttering to himself about being glad stupidity wasn't catchy, or hereditary.

" Auntie, " I asked " do you know how to make shrunken heads now? "

" You bet honey bunny. "

" Is it hard? " "

Nah, once you can stop the body from running around its super easy. "

******************************

So the Curio Shop grew, mostly the patrons in those early days were the people who lived around China Town. Then with the new Marina families started coming in from the suburbs on the weekends for a taste of life by shore. With that my Grandfather's shop grew from a dark old boathouse to a bigger darkened boat house with lots and lots of weird treasures lining the walls, dangling from the ceiling and set out on tables.

Then my Grandather expanded the ice cream shop out front. That use to be my favorite place because it was your traditional 1950's malt shop with a juke box and wonder of wonders, we owned it. He loved rock and roll and those funny songs from the 20's. So it was a nice place to eat and talk and make plans. Then you could walk through this little doorway (the frame itself as well as the door was once used in a court house where an infamous serial killer was held and he was suppose to have been shot trying to escape through this very door, you could still see the bullet holes) and there was the Curio Shop wrapped in shadows and filleted sunlight waiting to be explored.

It was exciting at the Marina in those early days because there were all sorts of fun places opening almost every day. There was even an amusement park owned by the Arima family that had a famous carousel with horses and mermaids and other fanciful creatures to ride. Each one was unique, each was original and Mrs. Arima and her brothers handcrafted them all. That's where I spent my childhood, and then the Mummy of the Priestess came to us.

That's really when things changed for everyone at the Marina.

*********************************

Auntie Akela drove up late one night, it was almost Midnight and she smelled very pleasant. Sort of a mix of Lavender and those thin Cuban cigars that she used to like to smoke. Plus, she smelled of gin.

"You've got to see what I've got Pualani, " she slurred as my Mother opened the door " it'll put hair on your chest."

I guess it's because my Mother had no desire to see hair on her chest that she called over her shoulder " Papa, it's for you. " She invited my Auntie in and discreetly guided her to a chair in the hall. " Where have you been Auntie? Everyone's been looking for you. "

"Oh? " she looked startled and a bit scared. " Look in the truck bed Cypriano."

"It's okay, it's the good every bodies, you know? " my Mother said before my Auntie could make for the back door.

Then my Grandfather came through the door with a body; at least I could see the outline of a body under a thin red shroud edged with gold embroidery.

Auntie Akela got up and pushed her thick black hair back behind her ears. She straightened her shirt and tucked it into blue jeans. Then she went to my grandfather and motioned for him to put the figure in his arms down on the couch. She pulled the shroud back from the face and motioned me forward.

"This is a Priestess and she was buried in the Temple of Bast. You can see where she was stabbed...it's a horrible wound in her back. Then they sewed her mouth so she couldn't talk in the next world shut and they tried to take her heart. They did these things to her when she was alive. See the cuts on her hands? She tried to fight them off. But the city she lived in is gone, the people are gone and all that is left of them is she. But look at her Sarah. She's still the most beautiful woman in the world. They couldn't take that from her."

It was very clear the Priestess had respect from my Auntie that she hardly, if ever gave to the living.

"How did you get her?" I asked in a whisper.

" Won her in a card game," Auntie Akela slurred in my ear" she told me too."

"That's how the Priestess of Bast came to Mountlake Terrace and found her place at the Marina.

**********************************

The Priestess soon replaced the Soda Fountain as my favorite part of the shop.

She had a very nice place in a glass case made of teak from a tree my grandfather cut down himself in the Philippines. He told me that a horrible demon had taken refuge in the tree and in order to get rid of it he cut the tree down to force the demon out. That's how he got the bite marks on his hand and back and that's how my Grandmother lost her eye.

The teak had remained in his garage until the Priestess came to us. It was a symbol of bravery to my Grandfather and he wanted to give at least that much to the Priestess.

My Grandfather even put a guest book by the Priestess where you could read signatures and messages from people who came from among the States and Canada, the Orient, Europe, Transylvania (my favorite) and just about every exotic place you could imagine. The guest book was back there so the Priestess would know that people were paying her respect thousands of years after her death. My family gave her that because after she came to us the Shop wasn't just successful; it had become a major tourist stop. The only one owned by a Filipino family, the only one that always seemed to be opened. No matter what time of the year or time of the day.

****************************

This part of my story about the Curiosity Shop is always the hardest part to tell. It is hard because it is the part where I have to explain how my family lost the Shop. It is about the day many of our friends and the people who had come to the Marina, with nothing more on their minds then looking forward to riding the Arima's Carousel or a trip to the Guzman's Ice Cream Shop to see the Mummy, never went home again.

The Fire at the Marina was supposed to have been started by a cigarette in a trashcan. That's how the legend went anyway. It burned down everything on the Marina that day.

It was just me and my Mom at the Shop the evening the fire broke out. I was stationed by the Priestess explaining the pros and cons of various candy bars, telling her the newest stories circulating about Auntie Akela (something about an angry wife with an ax) when all of the sudden the window behind us flooded with bright orange light. Then I heard my Mom scream my name from the parking lot at the side of the building. There was a terrible crash and the front of the building caved in and was replaced by a wall of flames.

The heat from the firewall in front of me singed my eyelashes and bangs right away. And I think my skin was beginning to blister when I heard the Priestess's glass case crack behind me. In fact, glass all over the shop was cracking and exploding. My little two headed calf disappeared behind running yellow flames that were racing along shelves and the rafters and the dangling shrunken heads burst into flames and looked exactly like little stars glowing along the ceiling.

Then the Priestess's case exploded behind me and before I was buried under a burning rafter, which had crashed at that point someone grabbed me by the hair on top of my head and snatched me back. It was a foreign voice I heard, it said my name and gentle, cool hands pulled me back and held me fast as the building burned and crashed around us. The voice was chanting something, part song, part incantation that I think was a prayer as the ceiling collapsed and the floor caved in and we both fell into the black water below the boathouse.

My Auntie Akela found the Princess and me across the street where the memorial plaque to the 800 people that died on the Marina that day is now. It's a pretty little park with chestnut trees and flowers and benches. There's even a little fishpond stocked with koi.

She found me, minus most of my hair sleeping under a tree. The Princess was leaning against the tree and somehow her ancient arms had unfolded and where now bent upwards, as if she had been carrying something. Her head was bowed and Auntie Akela saw that the dignity and even pride the ancient woman took to her tomb had been replaced with something else.

My Auntie found she couldn't face the Priestess, it seemed wrong to look her in the face at what was such a private moment.



*******************************

I woke up a week later and when I did my Grandmother asked me where I had been and I solemnly replied, " I was with the Priestess " and she nodded and left it at that. No one asked me about my Journey and it's not a story I'm ready to tell. Of all the stories here, the Priestess story haunts me the most.

My Grandfather rebuilt the Shop and my Auntie Akela once again took to the sky and went to the darkened jungles and secret alleyways that every town, no matter how normal and respectable it may look on the outside has. She brought back new treasures and new secrets and stories and in our new Shop we dutifully told each and displayed each and every one.

When my Grandfather died my Mother took over the Shop and you can go there to this day and buy your own shrunken heads, you can see pictures of a female pilot named Akela Guzman who was said to have fought a demon in hand to hand combat in the jungles of the Philippines and you can see her trophy from that adventure in a glass jar...a head of a man with horns and eyes like a snake. Some people swear you can see his eyes follow you as you cross the store.

But as a courtesy I can tell you the true story.

Auntie did take that head with her own two hands.

She got the head after my Grandmother somehow knew to be in an alley a few blocks away from the Marina one evening after the fire. Somehow she found the person responsible for all those deaths would be there, and that that no matter how loud he yelled no one would hear him.

The head was once attached to the body of a man named Lars Cranfield and he was a stranger. When they found his headless, un-robbed body with his ID still in his wallet no one came forward to claim him.

They ran his picture from the license and his last known address at the hotel for over a year in the papers and then his story faded away.

He's the man who never existed and you can hear stories about him around Terrace to this day. Apparently the money in his wallet, even the change in his pocket was minted with the same date. His ID was new and his wallet and clothes on his back and hanging in the closet of his hotel room were brand new. Most of the stuff still had sales tags on them.

"It's like he never existed until the day he was found in the Alley " the story goes.

My Grandmother, she was avenging the death of her friends and all of those people, when her sister took the head...it changed to what you can see now. She keeps it, she says, as a warning. It's near the main door on a pedestal, and you'd think it would be in a place where people couldn't touch it or tap on the glass. Only nobody does.

Ever.

And my Priestess, she's back in her case at the rear of the store. Educated people from all over the world visit her and have tried to learn her secrets. She is still quite beautiful and I like the way her head tilts down a little as if she's acknowledging you. Her hair, courtesy of my Grandmother and Mother is still bright and shinning because they put coconut oil in it at least once a month. They carefully dust her and keep the ornaments my Mother and Auntie Akela brought back from one of their rare trips together into Egypt where they discovered together the true identity of the Priestess polished and carefully arranged on her chest and arms.

When they came back they even put in a little indoor pond right near the Priestess and filled it with water lilies and other exotic water plants from places Auntie Akela traveled too. Some of those plants drive the botanist up the wall because they can't figure out where they came from. Or what they are.

Forensics experts who have studied the Princess, even x-rayed and done ultrasound's on her mummified remains can't explain why she's so well preserved. Being that she's held by human hands on a constant basis and is exposed to sea air 24 hours a day.

I still visit the Shop of course, but like my Aunt Akela I followed many strange and dark paths.

I've been to the Carpathian Mountains and I've seen the ruins of Pompeii and have heard the cries and whispers and pleas that some people mistake for the sounds of wind or echoes from the voices of tourists who visit this necropolis. I've seen the Pyramids and caves in South America where there is almost no air to breath, but there are the ruins of cities down there and I've learned those stories too. I've been stuck on roads in Africa and had to wait for a pride of lions to cross the road, I have seen dark places and light places and they all are here with me now.

And now I have my own little Shop here at the Cafe. I have my exotic books written in forgotten languages and the pictures in those books never look the same when you come back to them later. I have treasures that tell them stories. This is my own little Curio Shop and I'm glad you could visit.

Come back anytime and I'll be glad to tell you a story.

But it will have to be at Eventide.
© anita moscoso 2005

The Strange Tale of The Malloy Sisters

Meet Three of Duwamish Bays More Colorful Residents in
The Strange Tale of The Malloy Sisters



There once were three Sisters that lived on Lake Undercroft and if the stories are true, and please believe they are, they were three of the most vicious prolific serial killers the entire State has ever seen.

They were also Witches.

The Malloy’s weren't the “ lets get naked and celebrate womanhood witches”...no, they were more like the “let me cut your head off and eat your brains and lets celebrate the Dark Lord” type witches.

The Malloy Sisters have always been busy but most recently they were responsible for these dead bodies that littered Fire Road Highway (38 eight and everytime it rains they seem to find more) and a local guy who worked in a bank and liked to upload nasty pictures on the company computer was accused, tried and executed for the crimes.

Of course he didn't do it, and of course the Malloy Sisters did and of course they got away with it, after all they were Witches.

What about the Mountlake Nine?

Have you heard of them?

There were nine little kids that disappeared from this Elementary School in the town of Resolution...and by that I mean they disappeared as they walked into the school, from the schools library, from the lunchroom, gym and the playground.

No one ever figured out what happened to them until a nature photographer found their little skulls hanging from a tree near Undercroft Lake.

The skulls were attached to the tree branches by a chain and they clonked and bonked against each other every time the wind blew.

The skulls still had their eyes and I think that was the last thing the Nature Photographer ever saw with his mind still intact.

After he found the Mountlake Nine he became what you'd call a burden to society and drank himself to death.

Human remains littered the trees and grounds around their boathouse and the bodies paved the highway that led to their front door and no one could or would touch those three women.

The Malloy Sisters did everything short of showing up at the County Court House with a written confession in one hand, the murders recorded on videotape in the other hand and the victims crying out from the Great Beyond," The Malloy Sisters Did It! "

So why didn't the people in Resolution do something you ask?

They eventually did, they sent them down the River straight to the heart of Duwamish.



The Sheriff in Duwamish Bay is a very capable woman named Sarah Blitzer.

Sarah's Mother owns a Curiosity Shop on the Marina (complete with an Egyptian Mummy in a glass case) and Sarah's best friends are Conjoined Twins that work a perm ant Sideshow down on the Lost Road.

In the big large grand scheme of things Sarah is a practical creature who inhabits a very impractical town.

Mr. Cavanaugh that lives behind the Sheriffs Office? He never comes out at daylight. The Sideshows star performer? A former Resident of the Carpathian Mountains and the edge of Duwamish Bay…the place the locals call “ Ghost Town.”

It really is a ghost town.

The night the Malloy Sisters arrived in Duwamish Bay Sarah was waiting for them at the end of the Pier with a smile, full can of gasoline, three nooses and a very angry group of people from the Merchants Society and between the twelve of them they welcomed the Sisters to their new home.

It was the Merchants who strung the Sisters up and it was Sarah who kicked the chairs from under their feet and it was Sarah, still acting as the Law that hit the match and tossed it into the kindling at the Witches feet.

Sheriff Blitzer sat on one of those green and yellow stripped lawn chairs all night and watched the Witches burn and then she watched the sun come up.

The next morning the Malloy Sisters were still hanging from the tree.

Their hair had been burned away and their clothes hung in tatters and one of the Sisters no longer had flesh on one side of her face so she seemed to be grinning down at Sarah as she said, “ was there a point to this Sheriff…exactly how many times do you plan on going through with this little charade of yours?”

And Sarah replied as she stretched her long legs, yawned wide and said, “We have all eternity to understand each other Ladies and Welcome to Duwamish Bay.”


© anita moscoso text 2005

The Black Monk of Fallen

Here's a little Halloween treat from me to you...its about this little town up the road from where I live and here in Duwamish Bay some of us like to visit it at about this time of year and this is why....

Fallen was this little town on the verge of dieing when the State put the Prison there.

It took its first breath, I think, the day they opened it.

You see, right after the first Prisoner walked through the gates the town started to come to life, new houses went up almost everyday and a school and a main street with all sorts of stores and it even had a cemetery.

After the first execution you'd have thought they struck gold up in those hills and in a way I guess they did. Fallen went from being a corpse drying out in the hot desert sun to not being a corpse drying out in the desert sun in a matter of weeks.

It turned into this living thing where the greens were too green and the trees were to tall and no matter how cold it got the leaves and plants and flowers never died...not even during the winter.

They didn't even die in that fire that broke out about two months after Fallen Penitentiary opened.

How did it happen? Was it magic? When you look back on it, it was simple.

All it took really was for someone to fall through that trapdoor in Section " D " of Fallen Penitentiary.

After the people in the nearby town Duwamish Bay saw what was happening in Fallen they stayed away and refused to do business or talk to anyone who was from that cadaver of a town suddenly returned from the Dead.

Fallen in time became one of those little towns you only saw when you were lost off the Main Highway and you were so busy screaming at the person with the map in their hand that you don't really notice anything outside of your car.

So while it was, alive...if you can call it that no one from Duwamish Bay would set foot in it.

After it died again they would outright deny that monstrosity of stone and brick and metal was back in those hills.

The residents of Duwamish would look at the curious traveler like they were a simpletons...much loved simpletons and say very sweetly and kindly, " Fallen Penitentiary? You drove all the way out here to see that place? It doesn't exist you know, it never has. Here, why don't you go on down to the Marina, there's a Sideshow there that's world famous you know..."

What the Residents in Duwamish said to the outside world was one thing, what they knew for a fact was another and besides they weren't really lying when they said Fallen never existed...but that's just mincing words.

The truth is they were afraid of Fallen and they wanted whatever that place was to stay up there in the High Desert and rot.

Then on Halloween in 1920 the people in Duwamish Bay got their wish granted.

That was the year Fallen died.

Again.

That's what people think because Laramie Underwood had been up there on October 30th to drop off a prisoner and he went back on November 1st to bring down the body of an executed woman named Elizabeth Everett.

Elizabeth Everett wasn't in the pine box in the one room little brick house where they stored the executed. In fact not only was Elizabeth Everett not there neither were the 200 living inmates or the Prison Staff.

Gone, they were all gone.

Laramie Underwood said the building was empty and dusty and the bars were rusted and the mortar between the bricks was crumbling and there was puddles of stagnant water all over the place.

" Its like no one had set foot in that place for 100 years. But let me tell you, that wasn't the part that scared me. What scared me was when I heard this door to one of the offices open and close and I heard these footsteps and I could hear keys being jangled around and I heard whistling and what scared me was that voice and those footsteps were moving along like it was just your normal everyday thing to do. How could a normal person act like that? I mean, that place was dead...dead you know? "

Laramie he lived in this little town called Resolution and he shot himself about two weeks after discovering that Fallen was dead.

Some of the people from Duwamish went up to Fallen after Laramie's funeral because they wanted to make sure whatever had come after Laramie wasn't going to go after anyone else.

So they brought a grave marker of sorts up to the front gates of Fallen and hoped that it would be enough to keep whatever was walking those halls inside of that evil place.

The Marker was carved from white marble and it was an effigy of a hooded man and his arms are at his sides and his head is tilted slightly to the right, like he's listening for something.

They faced him away from the Prison and the the six or so people that made the trip that day said some prayers for the dead and as they walked away they could hear sounds back there.

Not one of them turned around.

Not one of them looked back.

They knew...the " Monk" brought from the Plague Chapel had turned black and it was now facing the Prison, not away from it.

And then as time went by people did forget about the Prison and became less afraid of it and in the end it became another neglected cemetery...the hills around Duwamish are littered with those.

So that brings us to twenty years ago and a game that local teenagers had been playing for years...it was called " Clinking " and it involved bottles and the Black Monk.

It was a simple game; you'd dare someone to go up to Fallen and drink to the Monk and you'd toss your empty bottle towards where he stands and you'd hear this ' clink ' because the bottles have carpeted the ground there.

Clinking... get it?

Of course what some people tried to do was actually hit the statue but that wasn't easy to do because it was black and there were no lights up there.

So one year this girl takes the dare and goes up to Fallen and she can see things in the windows...misshapen hands grasping at the bars and she thought she even saw people walking through the gates.

Then she takes her drink and tosses her bottle and ... there is no clink.

Then suddenly the bottle comes flying back at her and catches her right between the eyes and she's knocked off her feet and her face splits open and there's blood everywhere and this isn't Hollywood you know. The bottle doesn't shatter; it smacks the ground with a ' clink '.

" Doesn't feel so good, does it? " says a man's voice.

So...that's my Halloween story, straight from Duwamish Bay and if you think the Black Monk of Fallen or Clinking sounds like some made up story or an urban legend I'd say to you, lean a little closer and take a good look at me.

This isn't a beauty mark running down the center of my face.

I wish it were.

I really do.

© anita marie moscoso 2005
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Borgia Sainbury Waits

Borgia Sainbury’s family cut the trail that leads up to Mourning Ridge and they built the little house that’s up there and now Borgia Sainbury tends to the cemetery, the special cemetery that overlooks the town of Duwamish Bay.

This special cemetery belongs to the Sainbury Family and in this special cemetery they bury secrets and confessions, cries for mercy and dark deeds.

Even the truth is entombed here.

Where Borgia Sainbury Waits.

The Cemetery holds eight graves and a wall that circles the little reflection pool is crumbling now but here and there you can see into the niches and in those little vaults you can see small brass urns and little wooden chests.

Borgia Sainbury waits in the little cemetery and she sits on a little marble bench dressed in gray.

She's unmoved by wind or rain or snow and she casts no shadow and when the leaves turn gold and blood red around her and then fall to the dusty ground she does not blink.

When the ground beneath her feet begins to tremor, when the trees fill with crows and they begin to scream and the tide below the bluff begins to bubble she opens and closes her eyes very slowly.

Her pale lips part and dust that is as fine and thin as baby powder is exhaled from her stilled lungs and drifts down to her chin and chest.

Borgia Sainbury smiles and the muscles in her face and neck creak and groan with the effort.

Then she stands.

" Time to go to work, " she whispers, " time to wake and work. "

She walks from headstone to headstone and rakes her thin cold hand over each one and then she stops and her smile becomes too wide, too joyful, and too hungry.

" You. "

Then Borgia Sainbury steps back.

The ground comes apart, and from the ruined grave a figure crawls out.

Sometimes its a man sometimes its a woman but its always pale, shrouded in gray and its eyes are always as dark as midnight.

Borgia watches as the figure makes its way out of the cemetery and she can still see it when she closes her eyes

Borgia watches her kin as they walk through prison gates and to the ends of hallways with heavy barred doors. She's there when they take their place on scaffolds, or behind screens and when they go alone into secret rooms to prepare the tools of their trade.

The Sainburys are Executioners and this little cemetery is not where they go after they die

This is where they are from...

Where Borgia Sainbury Waits.

© anita marie moscoso 2005
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Stone Hearts By Anita Moscoso

Years ago I saw two women sitting on a bench outside of an abandoned train station. I only saw them for a few seconds but I was sure of one thing...they disliked each other very, very much.

This is their Weird Tale from Deadwood Hall...enjoy....





We sat side by side at the abandoned railway station looking out onto the dead tracks.

" I don't sing, I don't dance and I don't do poetry " I told my companion " but I do know stories. Lots of them. "

The woman next to me settled back against the rotting wooden bench and stretched her arms in front of herself and I could see her fingernails were long and polished and curled slightly at the tips.
" I like stories, so go ahead. Tell me one. "

It was a challenge.

Fine, I like challenges.

" There once was a woman, who lived on the Bluffs above Deadwood Hall, her name was Cecelia Marrow. "

I heard my companion draw a long deep breath and I could feel her staring at the side of my head and I knew she wasn't smiling. " Marrow, as in..." she began.

" Marrow of your bones " I said " which is how she affected people. To the Marrow of their bones. She wasn't a pleasant woman. She was the Pharmacists wife and everyone thought she married him just so she could be near all those...potions. "

" They flirted with her, those pretty things in the jars " I heard my companion say.

" Yes they did, " I said " It was an infatuation at first. She'd hold those little bottles up to the sunlight and admire them the same way other women would admire jewelry or fine fabrics or even flowers. She'd hold them up and nothing else was more real to her then what was inside of those bottles."

" She looked very pretty, soft, and sweet when she was behind the counter standing among those jars and bottles with their hand written labels. Then someone would walk into the shop and her face would harden into a mask, a grimace and she would stand between you and those medicines and dare you to reach out and touch them. She was jealous, even then. "

" She was obsessed " was whispered right into my ear and I had to clench my hands together so that I wouldn't reach out and slap my companion away.

" Oh she was, she would walk into the shop in the morning after dreaming of her lovers all night and she would stand there with flushed cheeks and a racing heart. Then those powders and liquids and roots and herbs would whisper to her, whisper things that they could do for her, gladly, blindly and with pleasure...for her just for her. "

" What did they give her? "

" Lives, they gave her lives the same way a young man gives flowers or chocolates to his sweetheart. They would escape the shop at night and find their way into the food stored in kitchens and the water in the wells. They found their way onto fruits and vegetables still growing on vines and in the trees and fields, they would hide themselves in clothing, blankets toothpaste and perfumes. There was wasn't a place her love wouldn't go to find tokens of it's affection "

" When it was done, most of Marrow Falls was dead. All that was left was Cecelia, her husband Ben and a handful of families. But they were not well people, Cecelia's Lovers hadn't been able to kill them but they ruined them all the same. Sickened them for the rest of their short tortured lives. "

" She was caught, " my companion said.

" Do you know the people of Marrow Falls were once simply called the River People and they knew this; the River was alive. Its full of ghosts. They buried their dead there you see. That River” I said pointing beyond the fence where we could hear rushing water “ is a cemetery.”

I continued, “ she tried to escape on a Barge down the River to Duwamish and it was more then the Sprits could bear, her walking on those graves like that, so they reached up out of the water and pulled her over the side and held her down and then they took her face. "

" Didn’t they? " I asked my companion.

" She wears a mask now " my companion told me but no matter what she puts on her ruined face it turns to stone and each stone face is a cursed face"

" You're from the River, you’re from the Falls, aren't you? " my Companion asked.

" Yes. "

" Will you let me go? Will you ask the River People to let me leave? "

I looked straight into that stone face, the face that froze hearts in terror...not for it's ugliness but because the true curse of the River People was this; my Companions face would always mirror the Sins of the person looking into it. That was the terror, to look into this creatures face and see your own monster carved in marble staring back at you.

She would never know love of any kind ever again.

I put my face close to hers and said, " Never. "

Then I got up and walked up over the little hill and into the waters and all the time I could hear my Companion...weeping.

Or maybe she was laughing.

It all sounds the same from down here.
© anita moscoso text 2005

A Weird Tale from The Chamber of Horrors

Welcome to the Chamber of Horrors!
As you know, we at the Soul Food Cafe have been using this building as a place to teach Horror Writers how to be...horrid? At any rate, this was a Victorian Era Medical School at one time and if you'd care...if you'd dare, stay right here in the shadows and listen to Dr Delphine Heller and a few other voices tell their stories...
And in case you're curious, the door to this room doesn't lock....
AMM


What remains today of the Asylum
( Back Right- The Infamous "Plague Church "

THE CHAMBER OF HORRORS: THE BEGINNING

Isn't it just amazing that we have come here to learn to make up stories when all around us are the remains of one of the most notorious Medical Schools of it's time?
This particular book has already been written and is just sitting here, waiting to be read.

You know, I think it's time time for a story.

Interested?

Good...

So please step this way and follow me.

Here we are in the vestibule; do you like the marble effigies? Stolen of course from religious places and cemeteries. When you're as rich as the owners of this school were, they didn't call it stealing, they didn't call it grave-robbing.

They called it the procurement of antiquities

The School itself was once run and owned by a husband and wife team; Dr Johnathan and Delphine Heller. I'm not kidding about the last name. Can you imagine trusting your body and life to a Dr Jack Heller?

And his wife!

Delphine Heller, she was a pioneer in the study of Psychiatry and she believed there wasn't a malady of the human brain that COULDN'T be cured by surgery. Delphine's belief in scalpels and other sharp medical instruments bordered on religious mania.

Her patients in the insane asylum behind the school use to say she was crazier then all 200 of them put together. They also use to call her " De fiend ".

They were right on both counts.

They may have been insane, but they weren't stupid.

If you follow me, I'll take you to the surgery theatre. Awful place, the floors in here are wood and if you drop anything on the floor...write it off. Even after all this time you couldn't credit what sort of nastiness has made it's way into the woodwork.

That's in general I suppose.

This school is not a good place.

Upstairs are the labs. To your right are Dr Johnathan's offices. His books, instruments, specimen jars, charts and journals are exactly as he left them.

Here, let me get the lights. Yes, those are real body parts. Pretty standard fare. Only...well, there seems to be an awful lot of them. More then you'd need for study. Don't you think?

I call this Dr Heller's trophy room.

It seems like that man couldn't perform the most simple of surgery without taking something more then was required. Eyes, hands, feet...and other things as you can see.

Follow me here to his wife's offices...which should be full of books, notes, maybe even pictures of the unfortunates she treated. But her rooms. Well, look for yourself.

These offices are twice the size of Johnathan's and they are full of these...curiosities. These things would be more at home in a circus sideshow or a medical museum then in offices for a psychiatrist.

On this wall, let me get those doors..they slide, there. Physical deformities of embryos..human, animal...some, well, we're not to this day what they are. You will also find if you care to look...are more, medical oddities.

Some of those heads and hands have been altered. Parts sewn on, sewn together, body parts created, in other words, by a surgeon.

She has shelves and shelves of medical instruments that appear to be one of a kind. Tools designed to reshape bones of all sizes, scalpels with specially designed blades and oddly shaped needles.

What the Morgue?

Oh my friend, I was hoping someone would ask me about that.

This elevator is old, but don't worry it works just fine.

The Morgue, was someone's pride and joy and I'm pretty sure it was Delphine's pride and joy. It screams her name...as you'll see.

The morgue is twice the size then the entire school above it. As you can see this is the place where those things in the jars were created. This is the heart of this place.

Now, my astute authors look at the autopsy tables...notice anything strange? Look closer...go ahead you won't see it from way back there.

What, you don't see anything?

You wouldn't see what I'm looking at right now anywhere in any morgue in the world.

They're not necessary for the work down here.

You didn't notice the straps on the autopsy tables?

Hey, don't you all run up the stairs like that, someone is going to get hurt!


THE CHAMBER OF HORRORS AND THE LEGEND OF THE 6TH FLOOR

What, now you all want a tour of the Sixth Floor? After that baloney down in the Morgue when you all tried to trample each other to death? I had visions of it on the evening news: Students perish in freak accident in a Morgue.

Well, forget it.

Oh, stop begging. But I mean it, the first one of you to turn tail and run winds up in a jar. Got it? Okay, then lets go.

As you can see the Sixth Floor was where the chapel was...well, actually where it is because as you see, everything is still here.

The altar and all of this artwork and effigies are from a church in the Carpathian Mountains once known as the Plague Church. Yes, that’s what it was called and if you think that’s strange takes a closer look at the effigies and the carvings on the altar.

Very good, I'm glad you noticed...none of the human figures have eyes.

Do you wonder what Delphine said, when she took her place at the altar and preached the Sunday sermon? I mean, what on earth there was to say to over 100 deeply psychotic and criminally insane individuals?

Perhaps Delphine answered that question all those years ago in her own special way.

In her logbooks she blocked this time off not as " Sunday Services " or " Church ". Nope, she wrote in " Alternative Therapy Session "

To answer your question, I'm not sure it worked...no one is because this wasn't the sort of place you were released from...ever. Delphine’ s Asylum wasn't a place you came to in order to be cured. No, you came here because you couldn't be cured.

Anyway, this is the legend of the 6th Floor.

Years after the Asylum was closed people insisted that the "Alternative Therapy Sessions" were still happening every Sunday evening, and if you were unlucky enough to be here when they started you would go mad.

You would become just as crazy as the ghosts that still haunt the Chapel.

They're supposed to be here still, sitting in the pews, waiting for their treatment.

Some are in straight jackets, or other types of restraints that were popular in those days. A few of the patients wear cages that fit over their heads and rest on their shoulders, some are brought in coffin like contraptions called ' Lunatic Boxes ' and others, the truly insane walked in and eagerly waited for " Church " to begin.

It's widely believed that Delphine’ s Congregation has actually grown over the years because sure as the Sun comes up each day one fool after another feels the need to bust into the school and come to the Plague Church and attend services with Delphine’ s Congregation of the Mad.

Once a group of girls dared their friend to come up here at sunset and sit in that front pew and wait for the Session to begin.

She was sitting right there when she heard the opening and closing of doors and feet shuffling along the corridor. At first she was positive it was her friends playing a joke on her. So she sat facing the altar and refused to turn around, she didn't want her friends to see how much they had frightened her.

Suddenly those heavy doors swung open with a hiss and a horrible stifling hot breeze rushed up the aisle. With it, as if it were woven into the heat, she could hear whispering and every once and awhile she caught a phrase or two and heard laughter and giggling.

Within minutes the entire Chapel was full.

So she wasn't surprised when someone sat next to her...because she was sure that the empty space to her right was the last empty space left in the entire chapel. To her credit she wasn't terribly startled when felt something encased in canvas and metal scrape then rest against her upper arm and shoulder.

She did however bite her lips so hard to keep from screaming they bled.

Suddenly the Chapel was quiet and the girl caught the heavy scent of lavender and heard the rustle of a skirt and heard the sound of light footsteps come up the aisle from behind her. From the corner of her eye she saw light gray fabric and a woman's hand adorned with small thin gold bands on all the fingers of her right hand.

The girl snapped her eyes shut... or really maybe that's when her mind snapped.

Alternative Therapy began.

So what happens when the doors suddenly swing open and the new convert emerges?

Go on, have a seat...I'd be glad to share what I learned that evening all those years ago with each and every one of you.

Okay, I meant what I said...you in the sweater, come back here. I told you what I'd do to the first person that made a run for it.

I warned you all, didn’t?


THE CHAMBER OF HORRORS AND THE MIDNIGHT SHIFT

What on Earth are you people doing in here?

What tour?

We most certainly do not give tours of the Asylum...let alone the Chapel. Now all of you come out of there at once! Here now, what's this? Let go of me and quit that babbling and for heaven's sake quit that crying. You are all far to old for that.

You, young man, what's going on here?

A woman? With a scalpel?

Ah, I see you've had the misfortune of running into our Mrs Everett. Well, don't expect me to feel sorry for any of you. We were very clear when we opened this school which part of the properties were for your use and which areas were off limits.

If you got chased around by a psychotic ghost that's your problem.

Now follow me, we have to get out of here before the Midnight Shift comes on.

Okay, here we are, safe and sound and back in the school and safely tucked away in the library. I'm going to have Miss Bayloche the Librarian explain somethings to you.

May I suggest that this time you listen.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, I'm Miss Bayloche and I'm the school's librarian. Which is probably why I've never laid eyes on any of you. Hmmm, not in the mood for chit chat are we?

That's just as well. Let me get straight to the point.

This school is not a safe place, but you'll do just fine if you understand a few things.

One is the original staff is still here.

Mrs Everett, the Hellers, the teachers and lab workers. They are all still here and they are all still very busy doing the same things they did over 100 years ago, I'm very sorry to say.

One of the worst members of this staff is a very unstable woman who is the head nurse...her name is Elizabeth Telrico and she is perhaps the most worrying to the present day staff because she's in charge of the Midnight Shift.

Simply put, the Midnight Shift is the heart of this school.

At exactly the stroke of Midnight all of the lights in the Asylum blazed on and you could see the Midnight Shift come up the path from the north side of the Asylum.

They walked across a footbridge and came in through the back entrance.

Then the doors and windows would slam shut just as the last member of the night staff entered the building. You could hear the echoes for miles around, I've been told.

Now most of the day staff were locals, they never really met the night staff and tried very hard to keep it that way.

No it's not a mystery why.

Go ahead and take a look out the window, it faces north.

You can see the trail the Midnight Shift used, the bridge they crossed. That piece of property doesn't connect to the road. It's fenced off.

It's the cemetery.

THE CHAMBER OF HORRORS AND THE GHOST HUNTERS

NO!

I will not allow ghost hunters into this building. That's out of the question. Have you people finally lost your hold on sanity?

Do you think for a minute that the ghosts would be the hunted in this situation? I don't know who these people are you've invited but get rid of them...all of them!

What do you mean, it's too late. Go down there and tell them...oh this is just wonderful.

Is running around kicking your mortality in the backside what you do to amuse yourselves? What do you do when you really want to have a good time... play a little Russian Roulette?

Fine, bring them up to the Library and do it quickly, things have been a little to noisy in the Isolation Ward lately. Well...you'll find out the hard way if you don't do what I say at once!

So you are the ... how quaint the Gaslight Society Ghost Hunters. Yes, charmed I'm sure. My name is Miss Bayloche.

To make a very long story short these eight students are all that remains of 25. The others left a week ago after running into the Night Staffers.These remaining eight are suppose to be here to study writing, music and art. They've done none of that. But they've paid room and board till the end of next month so they're here for at least that long.

Their instructors leave them to their own now because all they want to do is talk ghosts and demons and about the living dead.

That's it in a nutshell.

Oh the story...you mean of the School itself.

Well, it was founded by two serial killers one of which was a demon and the other a creation of the demon itself, the Asylum was run by a psychotic and it's Night Staff were residents of a little place called Leaning Birch...which I'm sure you've been informed is the town's cemetery.

Every evening at Midnight a Shift occurs between the world of the living and the world of the dead and the School, or parts of it return to it's former self. Our problem is that now after each shift has occurred parts of the old school are finding their way into the new school and staying.

Furnishings, cups of tea on desks, a room here and there...and things in the Morgue.

Yesterday the kitchen was in full use, food was being prepared, the tables were set...the days paper was even propped up against a bowl of steaming oatmeal.

Well, we don't use that as a kitchen, it was closed off over 100 years ago and the paper for your information was dated 1905.

Things you see from the past are shifting into the present and I don't know why, it's never happened before. It's your standard Chamber of Horrors fare. Boring to individuals of your expertise. So, I guess you'll be...

Staying.

Why of course you are.

This place is one of a kind? You don't say. The racket? It's the door leading to the Isolation Ward. From the sounds of it, it's just been torn off of it's hinges.

Welcome members of the Gaslight Society to the Chamber of Horrors.

THE CHAMBER OF HORRORS AND THE ISOLATION WARD

How many times do I have to tell you I came back as the School’s Librarian because I wanted a nice safe place to settle back in? I've been out of practice for a very long time and I had to brush up on my studies.

It was peaceful, quiet and with each day I felt...hmmm, more involved you might say.

The next thing you know I'm hunting around a morgue for lost students, I'm settling in staff and
trying to set up housekeeping under ridiculous circumstances then I find myself pulling out some old medical equipment (oh don't look like that, I'm referring to the straight jackets) for some Ghost Hunters who decided to try to dive out a window in my library and haven't been quite the same since.

From the looks of them right now, the kindest thing to do was let them fly.

I had to put them in the Isolation Ward; it's the safest place really. Nothing in there can hurt them. I just wish you wouldn't have done that damaged to the door because I've had to restrain all eight of them in there.

It was no easy task...look, one even bit me.

So it's you and me now, until the next shift anyway.

The rest? They're all tucked away safely, the students, the Ghost Hunters (sorry, no I'm okay I was trying not to laugh and I choked a bit there) the curious and the very, very stupid. Tucked away and waiting for... well, you know, help.

Ignore the yelling, I do. It's good practice; it's only going to get worse later.

Yes, it's a good thing the Midnight Shift kept the place up all these years.

They better have, the lazy brutes.

So now let me see here, the beds are ready, the treatment rooms and the equipment are in perfect working order.

Why even the Plague Church is ready.

Now there's a happy surprise.

Everything is ready and I think it's time to begin our rounds. Shall we start with the Isolation Ward? No, you first Jonathan. And do quit calling me by that silly name. How long exactly have you been in that room? It's me; it's your wife...

It's Delphine.

Come Darling, you first...

I insist.
© anita moscoso text 2005

Eventide at The Cafe : A Ghost Story By Anita Moscoso

[Middle English, from Old English fentd : fen, evening + td, time; see d- in Indo-European Roots.]

Hello? Well, as a matter of fact we are open. No, really we are open, it's alright come on in. Yes it is a little darker here then in the rest of the Cafe, isn't it? But as you can see, we have plenty of candles. And those chills come and go, you won't even notice them after a while.

Who's that? Wow, are you jumpy. It's no one. Yes it does look like a woman doesn't it? Yes it looks like a shadow, only it's not a shadow exactly.

The man who designed this part of the cafe believed that if you captured a soul and pinned it to the wall it would keep your home safe from earthquakes.

So what he did was wait for a shadow to be cast against the wall and then he took that silver spike and placed it right there, between the eyes and hammered the spike in. I've been told it's just a painting of sorts. Or maybe he scorched it onto the wall...somehow.

It's okay, come a little closer and take a look.

But if you believe the legend, that person's soul was taken from them and is trapped in these walls now.

Of course, the Builder also told me that he heard stories that in the old times they didn't capture shadows. He says they use to sacrifice people, not their shadows. What happened if you removed the spike? Do you want to give it a try?

Me neither.

Go ahead and have a seat, I have a story just for you. It'll help pass the time...

What? I know it sounds like someone is in the hall. But trust me, there's no one there. Go ahead and take a look. Boy, did you just jump a mile there, but it's okay, it was the breeze slamming the door shut. So relax, it's only you and me after all.

********************************************************

When my grandmother was a young girl, she was about 16 at the time this took place, she took her youngest sister Cassie to the beach. It had been extremely hot all that summer. She told me that the heat came early that Spring and just got worse as the months wore on.

They left early that morning while it was still cool and they walked the quarter mile to the shoreline where people were already gathering in their swim outfits and complaining about the heat.

My Grandmother found her friends and they set up for a long hot day of doing nothing. Cassie was about 12 at the time amused herself by running from the water to the beach umbrella and by making a nuisance of herself. Grandmother said she had finally tuned Cassie out when one of her friend's said " hey June, what's Cassie doing? " My grandmother looked towards the shoreline and saw Cassie looking out towards the water. She was shaking so hard that my Grandmother swore she could hear Cassie's teeth clicking together and she was over 16 feet away.

And then Cassie began to scream, a horrible cry that seemed to start off as a whimper. It grew and grew until all you could hear up and down the beach. It was a horrible wail that shouldn't have come from a little girl. She didn't even sound human.

Then Cassie turned and ran, she ran up towards them, stopped a few feet away from my Grandmother and then she turned and looked back towards the water. Before my Grandmother could reach out and grab her Cassie was running, running and screaming that horrible scream all the way to the road.

My Grandmother, her young man and some of their friends ran after Cassie but they just couldn't catch her. Cassie had never run so fast in her life, my Grandmother remembered to me years later.

When they got home Cassie was running from room to room, her cut and bloody feet leaving smears all over the hardwood floor and the rugs. She was trying to shut windows, lock doors and begging everyone to help her, to not let him get her.

She was crying to them that she could still see his horrible teeth, his eyes blood red eyes and his red blistered skin. She could still see him when she closed her eyes. She begged and begged for us to help her. To make him go away.

" Who? " they asked and begged because Cassie was looking right through them. They doubted she could even see them.

The Devil she said, the devil came up out of the Ocean and chased her home. Didn't anyone of them see? He was right behind her the whole way home. They must have seen him they were right behind him, right behind her. Didn't they see?

Cassie insisted some more and probably would've stayed that hysterical for the rest of the night but a few hours later she suffered a terrible seizure, the first of several she would suffer for the next 4 months.

At the end of those four months Cassie died.

It was a lifetime later, for my Wedding in fact that my Grandmother came home. She didn't like visiting Seattle, she hadn't for years. It reminded her of Cassie. But that's where my Mother and Stepfather lived now and where my wedding was going to be so Grandmother steeled herself and made the trip.

So it was at my Mother's house, a day after my Wedding that a former neighbor stopped by to visit my Grandmother, her name was Nadine.

Nadine and my Grandmother were sitting on the porch visiting on a very nice Spring afternoon when Nadine asked about Cassie.

" Do you remember that day at the beach, the day your sister got sick? "

My Grandmother said she did, though she always thought of that day as the day Cassie actually died. She just never said that out loud.

" I feel just awful for asking this, and look it's taken me over 50 years to bring it up. It didn't seem right, being how Cassie got so sick and..."

My grandmother was curious and encouraged Nadine to go on.

" Well, I was wondering if you ever saw that young man again... the one who tried to help your sister? "

" What? "

" He was right behind her, a handsome man in a red swim outfit. He had the most wonderful smile and green, green eyes. All these years later and I can still see his face. I've always wondered...if you knew his name, or if Cassie knew it. If he told her when he caught her...

" My Grandmother flinched, and said just above a whisper " you say he caught her..."

" Yes, I saw him on your porch with her, before she opened the door. He had his hand on her shoulder."

" I think he did tell her" my Grandmother said more to herself then Nadine " who he was but she was so sick that night, and of course she just kept getting worse. I'm afraid, well, it wasn't important at the time. I'm sorry, I just don't remember it. "

" Then you're sure..." Nadine asked.

My grandmother didn't like the look on Nadine's face. That hungry, covetous look. That was it. There was no mistaking it. Nadine was still jealous after all these years that it was who Cassie who had spoken with, and been close to the golden haired man in the red swim suit.

My Grandmother made some excuse about helping my Mother in the kitchen and both women rose from their chairs. "

I am sorry about Cassie, June. " My grandmother could see that Nadine at that moment meant it. She was sorry for that little girl who never grew up.

Then as my Grandmother watched, Nadine's eyes started to shine and she new that Nadine wasn't seeing her, or anything else around them. Nadine was gone. She had the same look Cassie had when she begged to be helped all those summers ago.

Nadine turned and walked down the porch steps and when she got to the walkway she called some pleasantries back to my Grandmother and reminded her that if she remembered anything to please get in touch with her.

My grandmother watched Nadine walk off down the street and a few moments later a man passed the porch. He was a young man with shoulder length golden hair and he was wearing a bright red t-shirt. He didn't see my grandmother, but she saw him and she could her him whistling.

When Nadine turned around the young man suddenly turned the corner and was gone.

And as she walked on, the young man suddenly reappeared behind Nadine, right out of thin air, right before my Grandmother's eyes. And after a few more minutes, when they were both out of sight, my grandmother could hear that aimless little tune drifting through the air as it suddenly became warm.

Very, very warm.

Ballast Island By Anita Moscoso

This is the first in a series of stories about the strange history of Duwamish Bay Village. Legend says that the Village still exists just beyond Lost Harbor. This story was given to me by a woman who's Great Grandfather may have seen the ending of the Village...or perhaps it was it's beginning.
AMM




Is Ballast Island Haunted? We use to ask our Great Grandparents, are there ghosts out there?

My Great Grandfather who was a Magician and could spin tales as easily as he could make a coin disappear and then reappear would only look sad and say, " It's full of Ghosts. "

Located in the Lost Harbor, Ballast Island is where ships would dump their ballasts. " It was a garbage dump, it was a disgrace to us all when they sent those poor people out to live on that thing. "

Of course nobody lives there now, in fact most of the Island is gone but on some days you can see what's left of it when the tide is low.

" It was a disgrace to us all" he said slowly " and then the Halloween Storm came. "

I'd been brought up on the stories about the Halloween Storm.

The Halloween storm was freak windstorm that came to our coast just before 6:00pm on October 31of 1896 with no warning.

The winds came up off the Harbor and raged and raged until November 2nd.

When it was over everything had been wiped off of Ballast Island.

Wiped off the island and straight into the Harbor.

My Great Grandfather told us that the next year on the 31st to the hour the storm hit the people working on the new Marina saw them coming from the mists.

Canoes.

They were coming towards the shore, and the people in them were looking over their shoulders at something...something large and dark and alive and just before they reached the new Pier they disappeared.

Lots of people saw them then, they still see them now.

My Grandfather was a young man back when he first saw them and he said he saw the sky pull apart and the world around him flooded with Shadows and then the winds screamed off the harbor and he was swept up in a storm that wasn't there.

He couldn't breath because the wind was pulling the air from his lungs and he could barely keep his eyes opened against the force of it.

Then in the shadows and the boiling waters he saw a woman fighting the wind and the waves in a canoe and he saw three little children desperately hanging onto the sides of the canoe to keep from being pulled over its sides.

" I'll never forget it Tiger, " he told me, " it was like the Wind you know was pulling at them trying to pull them out of that canoe. Then she saw me, I looked into her eyes and she didn't want to die she wanted to fight. The Ghost Woman saw me and then she dropped the oar into the harbor and she reached for me. "

I dove off the dock and straight into the Harbor because the tide because, well, I could feel it. It wasn't the harbor that wanted them. It was that damn Wind...so I swam out to her and then I put my hand out and she was gone. But I won't forget that look. Never, I will never forget look. "

" Well, don't you think I was the only person to see the Ghost People in those Canoes. Lots of people have. When I was down at the Pier just a few years ago they came back like they always do at this time of the year and this time Tiger I could hear them calling to the shore for help. Pleading and calling for help. "

" Do you know Mrs. Linden from the Hill? She was down there with her little kids and the winds came and the canoes came from the mists and we could hear them Tiger and the sound of it would've broken your heart. Well, Mrs. Linden starts shrieking like a lunatic, " Look at the pretty lights at the Marina ... look at the pretty lights. "

" And I'll be damned but everyone did, they all looked back up the shoreline and away from those poor Ghost People. "

My Great Grandfather told me that story every Halloween as we stood on the Pier and watched the Ghost People try to make it to shore.

It was the very least we could do.

Now I have Grandchildren of my own and when they ask me if Ballast Island is full of ghosts I tell them no.

I tell them the Ghost People are all around us...and they always will be.

That's what I tell my Grandchildren.
© anita marie moscoso 2005-text

My Hero

Weird Picture

The Fiji Mermaid and Stuart of The Six Shadows By Anita Moscoso

When my Great Grandfather was a young man he was a Magician who once shared billing with the Famous Harry Houdini. My Great Grandfather wasn't the Showman his peers were plus he had nine kids to support and he wasn't able to do it on an entertainer’s salary.

So you’ve probably never heard of Stuart of the Six Shadows.

Instead of becoming a famous magician my Great Grandfather published our town's local newspaper and no matter how big or small he made each story fun to read. He had a wonderful imagination and was quiet the showman, so I guess it was to be expected

It was a gift he had, he knew how to tell a good story and he was so good at it that it was a relief to know somewhere in the back of your mind it was only a story...like the one he use to tell about how he came to own a Fiji Mermaid.

One day late in the Fall of 1910 my Great Grandfather Stuart was invited to perform his Magic Act for a ' Foreign Gentleman' and his Wife.

Stuart boarded a train and then a boat that took him up a River somewhere back East. The trip was long and lonely because Stuart was the only passenger the entire journey.

Then after nearly after a week of travel he arrived at a very old Manor House in the Mountains.

Everything around him looked so foreign to Stuart that he would have sworn on the head of his newborn son back home that he was in a different Country all together.

The clothes the people he did see where of odd designs and made from strange fabrics. The houses were dark and looked empty but he saw little signs of life, toys scattered here and there, baskets tied shut with twine and livestock wandering around in fields.

Even the Plants were different from anything he'd ever seen before, and the lakes were an unnatural shade of blue and stayed that color even in the moonlight.

And he didn't hear Night Sounds...nothing moved or stirred in that strange countryside and even the Stars looked different...and then Stuart realized though he didn't want to acknowledge it at first what was wrong with them.

The Constellations were all backwards.

It was like he was seeing their reflections in a mirror or a lake.

When he realized that, he didn't look up again and he wanted very desperately to turn around and go home. But a deal was a deal and the Gentleman and his Wife were willing to pay a lot of money for an hours entertainment.

And of course...the show must always go on.

The Hall he performed in on that night was cavernous and full of shadows.

The guests of the Gentleman and his Wife had odd shaped hands and their faces were almost mask like and pale but their eyes were bright as candlelight in the darkness

They reacted to each trick, each slight of hand, each story with delight and laughter and they said " Ooohh " and " Ahh" much like any other audience Stuart had ever performed in front of before. But they seemed unwilling to move away from the walls and shadows to try to sneak peaks and figure out Stuart's secrets like most audiences do.

Then Stuart called for a volunteer, some brave soul willing to participate in a routine called, " The Coffin of Mystery."

The Coffin of Mystery, he boomed into the darkness in his great stage voice would restore life to the dead.

To prove his claim, Stuart asked for a volunteer to plunge a sword into his chest and then close the Coffin Mystery’s door and latch it closed.

Then Stuart claimed dramatically he would emerge moments later alive and unmarked from The Coffin.

The Gentleman's Wife seemed very excited at this story and she whispered something to one of the guests who hurried up to Stuart and asked, " Tell me again Sir, if someone dead is placed in this box they'll be restored to life?"

Stuart nodded and the Guest begged for Stuart to wait, and from the back of the room one of those twisted little forms broke out of the darkness and slowly made it's way to the stage.

The Man was pale and Stuart could see under better circumstances he was a young man and probably a handsome man but right now he looked aged and sick and his hair was falling out in patches.

" Run in with a nasty neighbor of ours a hunter of sorts...climb on in Zhiam and let's see what this can do..."

Stuart stepped back and watched the young man helped inside of the Coffin and the Gentleman looked on with longing and the Wife looked so sad and he heard her say, " Please Dear, don't expect too much..."

" Do your Magic. " Begged the Guest and Stuart looked into his dark eyes that glowed in the dark and the guest said with such pleading in his voice it broke Stuart's heart. " Please Sir, do your Magic. "

As the young man lay back on the cream colored satin lining Stuart leaned in and whispered, " Knock when you see the blue light. "

Then Stuart closed the Coffin's lid and because he'd never performed this trick with anyone else in the Coffin he opened the lid again and told the young man inside, " This is a Magician's Trick, and you're sworn to secrecy...you can never tell anyone what you see and hear in there. Is it a deal? "

The young man who looked old nodded and he said solemnly, " I swear. "

Stuart looked deep into the boy’s eyes and nodded. " I believe you. "

And then Stuart shut the lid and latched it.

Stuart wasn't surprised when he heard the knock from inside the Coffin a few minutes later and he wasn't surprised when the sickly young man emerged a very healthy young man.

Everyone else in the Hall was amazed as Stuart knew they would be; the Gentleman's stern face dissolved into a much kinder stern face the Lady's face broke into sunlight and the guests moved out of the shadows to shake Stuart's hand.

The guests Stuart could see weren't really human, some resembled Wolves, some he took for witches, others were pale and thin and he knew they were Vampires and others were exotic creatures from places where the Sun never traveled to.

But that didn't matter, because for those few moments really...they were all the same.

Stuart was packing his props, which he always did in an empty room when he heard the Guest clear his throat and say, " Excuse me, Sir? "

" Just a minute..." Stuart closed the last case and locked it and turned around and the Guest introduced himself as Mr. Nightson.

" This is just a gift from the Young Count, to show his appreciation. He'd have brought it himself but..." Mr. Nightson pointed to the window and Stuart could see the morning sunlight just coming over the tops of the trees.

Stuart removed the burlap cover from the box and inside he saw the form of something that looked half fish, half monkey...at least that was his first impression.

" The Young Count calls it his Fiji Mermaid. That’s where he and his friend...a wonderful young Werewoman found it. They found it in Fiji washed up on the shore and I think it only lived for a few minutes. He's very fond of it...I'm not sure why. Young Love...strange what it does to the mind. "

" It means quite a bit to him..."

" It will to me as well. " Stuart promised.

And Stuart always kept his word.

So now the Fiji Mermaid sits on my desk as I write my stories and for Halloween and Christmas I bring her out to my living room and I tell the story and people laugh and say, " Well Anita, you certainly inherited Stuart's flair for the dramatic. "

And I look into their eyes with Stuart's Magician's Eyes and I nod and assure them, " Yes, dramatic...it's all just a story after all. "

Then I look over at the Fiji Mermaid and wink and the Fiji Mermaid floating in her jar winks back at me.
© anita marie moscoso 2005-text

October 31, 2005 By Anita Moscoso

October 31, 2005

" They were so wrong about the Cemetery, they were so wrong about the 13 Steps, " my Grandmother told me on her Deathbed. She said this very forcefully, which shocked me because she was hopped up on Morphine and about 2 hours away from dieing.

She was laughing her usual laugh, which always reminded me of a cat's growl, and I took that as a sign of health.

I'm not sure why.

I had been begging since I was a little girl for my Grandmother to tell me about the Cemetery of 13 Steps and she just out right refused. " It's all Hogwash "she'd snap, " its a little private cemetery that a very nice family buried their own in and there's nothing evil about it. So for Pete's Sake drop it will you? "

" I think there's a interesting story there. " I insisted.

" I think the young people around here need to find a new place to get drunk and look for ghosts. "That's what I think" she'd sneer and then she'd pop open a beer and drink herself blind.

When my Grandmother was about 13 she use to go up to the Manzoor Family Cemetery and tend the garden that use to be there. In those days there were only about 6 graves and they were back up on a little plateau lined with Hazel Nut Trees.

My Grandmother used to like to work under the trees because Owls perched in them at night and she said she use to find little bones from mice and other prey littering the ground under the branches.

She'd call them treasures and she kept them in a canning jar tinted light green. She'd given me the Jar when I sold my first Novel and I thought it was right she had it back now.

As far as I knew it was the only childhood memento she truly cherished.

When I put the Jar at her bedside her eyes, which had somehow changed color before they became glassy and unfocused during her last week of life blazed on when she saw that Jar, that's when she told me about the Steps, that's when she told me the truth about the 13 Steps.

" It all changed up there the day Mrs. Manzoor and her children died in that accident. The youngest his name was Broody, he ran out in front of that Ice Wagon, it was pulled by a horse you know. Well, Mrs. Manzoor ran after him to snatch him out of the way and she didn't realize it but her daughter was right behind her...probably trying to help. Maybe reflex, maybe its because that little girl knew death was all around them and was going to the safest place she could see...her Mother's side."

" They were crushed together under the wagons wheels and then if over turned and God what a sight that was. Mr. Cooley the Ice Man, the horse Pedro, the children, Mrs. Manzoor. All ended up at the bottom of the Gully. They were just a tangle of wood and bodies. It wasn't easy to untangle them all. I think they used Axes, I think it was that bad. Then of course they had to pull that entire lot up the hill by rope and pulleys. Awful sight, something you can't forget no matter how hard you try. "

I didn't like the look in Grandmother's eyes, her voice was saying one thing and her eyes, well, and they weren't saying the same thing. I was looking into two faces, that’s
what it felt like. Her voice sounded sorry, her eyes, well they just looked alive.

The desire to clamp my hand over her eyes was strong and they itched to go to her face. So like a little kid I sat on them instead.

" What happened after that? "

" Bad things, people died out there, later it was car accidents, suicides, some people well you'd see them walking along side the road past the Cemetery and then they'd just be gone right before your eyes. "

" Mrs. Swenson said she saw Irma Liston, this was in what, 1946 I think walk past the cemetery and then she said she just wasn't there anymore. Thing is, no one ever saw Irma Liston again and Mrs. Swenson lost her mind and cut her wrists up at the Manzoor Cemetery. "

" So the Cemetery killed people. "

" Don't be stupid, of course it didn't. "

My Grandmother was looking over my shoulder and she laughed a little again and went on," Then the stories started about the 13 Steps to Hell being in the Cemetery. You could walk down these little gray steps that went down into the ground, and led into a tomb and an evil witch with white hair and no eyes was suppose to be down there. You'd bring her a little offering and she'd let you pass and then you'd see the devil and he'd give you powers. It was all a trick of course; it made things easier...for me. People are curious animals you know. "

Grandmother yowled her laugh and her eyes; they were shining " of course the Devil's a Liar you know. "

I watched her face, which was already changed by Death and from no where the thought came to me," why I'll bet she's looked like this all along."

" No I don't know that I don't know the Devil I'm glad to say. "

Grandmother chuckled long and deep and I almost screamed. Something inside of me was desperate to cry out and I wasn't sure why.

" It wasn't the Cemetery where the steps where. That was the lie. One of them anyway. The 13 Steps were on the other side of the fence by the Hazel Nut Trees. I found it when I was looking for my treasures. They were like a little trail of breadcrumbs you know. I followed them. Down the little gray steps that went below the work shed.

There was a garden down there, full of treasure..."

" Bones. "

" That's what I said, are you stupid? I wanted them...all of them and I made a deal with the Gardener I met down there. I would bring the seeds and he would give me the treasure. He told me he loved my treasures, he'd hold my hand and tell me how beautiful they were and how proud he was of all my work. "

" So I waited out on the road rain or shine day or night, and I found them one by one...and he gave me the treasure but you know...the Devil's a Liar. I tended his Garden for him and in the end why, I found out he didn't care about my treasures or love them the way I did. No, the treasure he wanted was Souls you know. Greedy, corrupt ones..."

" Those poor people..."

" Oh no, he didn't take those Souls he took mine...and its been his for a very long time in the Garden...."

The words snaked around in side my head and nested in my heart...she'd been in the garden " for a very long time..."

I backed up against the wall and my Grandmother turned her head towards me and smiled and smiled and the light in her eyes went out and her mouth went slack and on that Halloween Night someone died right before my eyes.

I'm just not sure who it was.



This is dedicated to my Grandmother the late Virginia Godfrey
It Might Seem An Odd Choice To Some
But She'd Have Loved It.
That's Why It’s Her Story Now.
© anita marie moscoso 2005-text

Echoes from Deadwood Hall-Anita Moscoso

It's a thought that echoes through Deadwood Hall:

The little girl in this picture is standing next to a dress owned by her deceased sister.

Had there been a body she would have been standing next to that, but for some reason there wasn't one and I have spared more then a few moments wondering why.

Echoes...

ENTOMBED-by Anita Moscoso

Up on Mount Rainier here in Washington State is a glacier that is a cemetery.

There are 65 bodies in that Cemetery that are accounted for; we know they're up there we just can't bring them down because they've fallen into crevasses and have become entombed in the ice.


(Mount Rainier Glacier)

Rainier since they began recording the deaths in 1909 claims lives every single year.
Some of the dead can be recovered.

The Mountain keeps the rest.

I've grown up in the Shadow of Rainier and it has grown larger in my mind every single year.

It haunts me now.

When I look at it I think, if it was a human you'd see it on the evening news; it'd be like that guy next door, that ordinary man who wears glasses and drives a fuel efficient car and mows his lawn and rakes the leaves and does all those other things that says, " Hey, don't worry about me, I'm just Mr. Normal...see? So don't worry about me...look the other way "

And you do and it turns out he's a serial killer and has bodies buried in his yard,
his basement and has left a trail of them up and down the highway he drives every day to work.

That's what Mount Rainier is like, it takes a great picture you trust it enough to let your loved ones to go up there for fun and short visits.

Why it's just a beautiful place.

Then one day you run across its history...its OTHER history like I did and you find bodies.

Lots of them.

There are over 300 recorded deaths since the Mountain became a park a century ago.

That's the key, recorded.

The thing is killers keep killing until you catch them and once you do it turns out the damage was worse than anyone could have imagined.

Mount Rainier hasn't been caught.

And I’m sure we haven’t seen the worst of what it can do.

It’s a volcano and no, it’s not dead.

It’s very much alive.


© anita marie moscoso 2005-text

Weird Thoughts from Deadwood Hall

Weird Things I've found Inspiring:




It's Called Crypt Lake...no I'm not kidding and I haven't tried to find out HOW it got it's name. Might spoil the Magic, you know?


See the things in these cabinets? Take your pick, they're novels waiting to happen.


For the Record: I think the Death Penalty should be ABOLISHED... ITS FREAKY AND SICK. Point in case is this thing...its shown me People spend way to much time thinking of ways to kill each other. At least I keep it in the world of Make Believe!


Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe In Seattle, Washington. The finest place on EARTH!

The Von Bormann's Children By Anita Moscoso

I would love to have you come visit me and see for yourself where I spent my childhood.

I mean, for a writer like yourself…well, it would be time well spent, as you’ll see:

I grew up outside of a town where there's this small private Cemetery owned by the Von Bormann Family. The Von Bormann Family's Home is still up there overlooking the Cemetery and there's some talk about making it into a Historical Landmark.

The Local Smart Alecs started that movement. They are the types that like to go to The Clover Patch Bar and wear t-shirts with sports team logos on them and drink alcohol until they pass out.

The Blue Bloods, who do the exact same thing as the Smart Alecs only they do it in more expensive clothes would like to see the entire 100 acres shoved off the bluffs into the Straights, but you can't always get what you want...no matter what Mick Jagger says.

The Von Bormann’ s were this odd family where everyone looked alike, even the husband and wife...who in all probability were actually brother and sister and they had ' about a million kids' and it was said the kids wore really ratty, gray, ugly clothes even though the Von Bormann’ s were suppose to be Mega-Rich.

So the Von Bormann’ s kept having kids and the cemetery kept filling up until there was about 30 graves and the house fell apart little by little and the people in town saw less and less of the Von Bormann’ s until the sightings stopped all together.

The Von Bormann’ s were probably all dead the people in Town thought…though hoped was more likely what they were feeling.

Had the Von Bormann’ s been alive they’d have been way over a hundred when the stories started

It was the stories about the children that came first.

People saw these little kids wandering up and down the road leading to the Von Bormann’ s house in the middle of the night in all sorts of weather. Though, mostly they seemed to be seen more when the weather was bad.

So these people would pull over in their cars and ask the kids if they needed help and these kids would say yes and hop into the car. Then as soon as the car door slammed shut and the driver turned around to ask what on earth are you wondering around at this hour of the night they'd be gone.

Just like that.

Mrs. Woods said that once she stopped to help what she thought were two little girls walking hand in hand up that long dark road and when they got close to the car Mrs. Woods could see that the two little figures only looked liked children from a distance.

But they weren't...they were twisted and small and as Mrs. Woods would try to explain " they only looked like children, but they weren't they were just dried little husks. "

" Husks of what? "

Mrs. Woods would be asked and she would shake her head and say, " Husks, that's all. Husks."

Then the story about the Singing Lady in the cemetery started.

She was suppose to be dressed in old fashioned clothes and would wander from grave to grave singing lullabies. Once someone new to town actually talked to the Singing Lady and asked what she was she doing out there in the dark and she said, " why, I'm singing to my babies of course " and then she wandered off into the darkness.

Then a few years ago the Blue Bloods got their wish...sort of.

We had this massive rainstorm hit our town, which had started off as a massive blizzard, and we were nearly buried alive in all the snow and ice. Then something called the Pineapple Express tore in off the Pacific and the entire mess turned to water and instead of snow it rained.

And it rained and rained and rained.

Sometime during the storm part of the cliff that the Von Bormann’ s House stood on slid straight into the Straights and took part of the cemetery up there with it.

Coffins and body parts in all sorts of stages of decay started to wash up alone the shoreline.

My Dad was one of the half dozen that went up there to check and see what the state of the rest of the cemetery and the house was in.

The Von Bormann’ s House only looked abandoned. My Dad was convinced someone was watching them from that house ' lots of someones ' he told me ' that house was full of eyes.



Then they made their way carefully to the place where the cemetery was and they saw row after row of sleeping lambs and baby angels and little marble bibles with that prayer little kids say ' now I lay me down to sleep' carved into them.

I'm not sure who noticed the names first, but they started to go from stone to stone and familiar names started to come up...one after the other.

All had once been residents of the Town and later of the Town's Cemetery.

Now they were up here buried under children's tombstones.

" Oh God, " someone said, " it's them, it's Mrs. Von Bormann’ s Babies. "

They were you see...they had become Mrs. Von Bormann’ s babies.

This was Mrs. Von Bormann’ s nursery.

The Cemetery.

It probably always had been where her ‘babies’ came from.

Later these people from the Health Department found more of Von Bormann’ s Babies up at the Von Bormann’ s house. They were in the sitting rooms reading books and comics in front of cold dusty fireplaces and in a spider-webbed schoolroom with a blackboard and the ABC's printed on it in colored chalk.

They held stuffed toys and had ribbons in their hair and some were even sitting on a swinging bench in the backyard.

Corpses.

Mrs. Von Bormann’ s babies.

And to this day no one knows how they got up there.

So if you come to visit me soon (and I hope you do) all I can say is watch out for those kids on the road and if you hear singing coming from the cemetery I suggest you run, not walk away as fast as you can.
© anita marie moscoso 2005-text