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.