Strange Tales from Deadwood Hall

Moved....

2008-10-27T08:26:00.000-07:00

Deadwood Hall has moved to

Anita's Owl Creek Bridge.

Visit me there for new stories and some awesome links.

http://anita64.wordpress.com/

a.m.

2007-11-04T13:15:00.000-08:00

For More Strange Tales
visit

Anita's Owl Creek Bridge

It'll be a scream

Tiny Tina Dahl

2007-06-10T16:32:00.001-07:00

by a.m. moscoso

" My Ex-Wife took everything from me " Corrin Ails said to no one in particular as he waited in line for the doors to the Village Place Mall to open.

"She took my home and my record collection and she even took my old photo album.

All that I had in there were pictures of me with my pets and dressed up at Halloween and I think there was one of me a holding a Brady Bunch lunchbox when I was 9 . Oh, and there were about four pictures of me on my first bike.

She told me I was an ugly kid. So what did she want with my childhood pictures?"

The woman standing in front of Corrin turned around and told him " I cut my wedding dress up and used it to scrub the kitchen floor the day I found out my ex-husband was getting remarried. I made that dress. Then I mailed it to his new wife. She slapped me with a restraining order and now I have to take anger managment classes. People do weird things when the realize a relationship is truly over."

" She burned that album on my front lawn " Corrin Ails went on "then the fire spread and burned my house down and she even killed me dog with rat poison. She used him to start the fire."

" No way. " the man standing in back of Corrin said.

" 'fraid so- three fire fighters died trying to put that thing out. "

" I heard about that, " the woman said have they caught her yet? "

" No. "

" I'd like to catch her " the Man in front of Corrin said, " I'd like to catch her in the headlights of my car if you get what I mean."

The Woman in front of Corrin said " she sounds like a bad woman."

" Her family used to call her Tiny Tina Dahl...just like that. It was her nickname...and no one seemed to care that it sounded like some freaky Special Edition collector's toy you get for buying something really big and expensive. Tiny Tina Dahl...she's so sweet and great with poisons and fire. Get your free Tiny Tina Dahl with your next purchase."

There was a chorus of snickers and Corrin went on. " Tiny Tina Dahl would take anything she could get her hands on...your house, your clothes, your money the Twinkies you keep hidden in your desk drawer at work for munchie attacks."

" Wow, she wasn't bad she was just evil. " someone further down the line said.

" Yeah " Corrin said " she was pretty good at taking things...she even stole my heart and she left me with nothing."

" You seem like a nice enough guy " the Woman said " you'll find someone new. You certainly won't find anybody WORSE."

Corrin reached for the top button on his shirt and said as faint as a dieing man's last breath, " You don't get it she stole my heart and left with me nothing "

In Memory Of A Practical Man

2007-06-10T16:29:00.000-07:00

by
a.m. moscoso

Mattie Greaves sat across from Mr. Sawyer Day, the owner of a small and all but forgotten funeral home in Seattle, Washington and together they were quietly discussing a suitable coffin for Mattie's husband Tabor.

" My husband is a practical man " Mattie told Mr. Day " and he wouldn't like anything with those fancy gold handles and he certainly wouldn't approve of things like this " Mattie was pointing at a catalog opened to a glossy page of coffins painted blue and gold and even black with ducks and eagles flying around their edges.

" I understand " Mr. Day said " and I have several models for you to consider that are more traditional. I'm sure we can find one here that your husband would approve of. "

Mr. Day is almost 65 and he had taken over Morning Ridge Funeral Home from his Mother's family right after he had turned 30. He had started working there right after he turned 16 so that means that for over 50 years Mr. Sawyer Day had heard and seen it all.

So when Mattie Greaves asked if the traditional model she was looking at came with a comfortable pillow Mr. Day didn't even look up. " From what I understand it does, however in the past some of our families have brought in their own blankets and pillows. "

" My husband is very fond of candy as well. " Mattie whispered. " Now his doctor told him he needs to give up sweets but you know, he's along in years and he's been through so much. I ask you Mr. Day how could I take away his salt water taffy?"

" My Mother was the same way, she was fond of her Cuban Cigars. Not only did she refuse to give them up we could never figure out how she got her hands on them to begin with. In the end, we just let it go."

" So of course I can..."

" Of course you can Mrs. Greaves, whatever you think would have made your husband happy."

After going through a few more books Mattie decided on a solid oak model with bronze handles and a lovely cream colored liner. She passed on the flowers.

" He's allergic " she told Mr. Day.

Mr. Day and Mattie went through numbers and she was about to pull out her check book when Mr. Day said, " We're almost finished Mrs. Greaves all we have to do is discuss your choice of a grave liners..

Mattie dropped her checkbook on the table and looked at Mr. Day for almost two minutes before her face turned a little red and tears welled up in her eyes., " Oh my, that sounds so final."

" Mrs. Greaves, I'm very sorry. I don't mean to rush you. If you need more time to go over..."

" No Mr Day...you've been very kind and patient with me. It's my fault. I'm the one who has been doing the rushing. I should have explained...my husband just needs a coffin until the one he normally uses arrives from back home."

Inspired by the Soul Food Cafe Prompt

Memory's Molten Stream

Corners

2007-06-02T12:05:00.000-07:00

Blaze Godfredo lives out on Old Creek Road- most of the Godfredo Family have lived out on Old Creek Road long before Washington became a state and if you want to hear any stories about the infamous ghost town called Fallen you can ask Blaze.

His Great Grandmother, Tanis Blaze won the town in a card game back in the 1920's but that's another story.

So when he was a kid Blaze used to play on the grounds of an abandoned insane asylum haunted by the Black Monk of Fallen and to add along with that interesting bit of family history you might be interested to learn that Blaze's Great Great Grandmother had the dubious honor of being the one and only woman on the West Coast too be hung for Witchcraft.

" That's a rotten shame Blaze " some people would say when he would tell that story.

" Oh heck, what can I say? It was true..Bartsia wasn't one of those poor creatures that they burned at the stake on trumped up charges....no Sir. Bartsia was an honest to goodn-well, Bartsia was the real thing. She was a fire and brimstone demon conjuring type of gal and she'd just as soon cut your heart out and feed it to her cat as look at you."

Old Creek Road was where they hung Bartsia from the infamous Devil's Tree. The tree is where Bartsia was supposed to have done her deals with the Devil herself

The people of Fallen hung her there ....twice.

In order to rid themselves Bartsia some of the people who lived in Fallen had to do some deals themselves at that tree and it was about another 100 years before they got that mess with Bartsia worked out.

Afterwords Fallen was a ghost town and no one in Snohomish County will go near it let alone admit it's still up there.

Of course you can find it if you want.

There's this town called Cascade Ridge that you have to drive through to get to Fallen and that's where Blaze lives out on Old Creek Road where he runs his business right out of his home.

Whenever someone in Cascade sees cars pull up to Blaze's house where a sign says, " Blaze Godfredo's Haunted Washington Tours " they just stand there and cry and wonder how much longer that old man is going to live for.

That's how Blaze makes a living and no one has ever considered telling him to stop the flood of people in black clothes and show up in droves during Halloween. On a practical note it goes without saying that no one really wants to mess with a man who has a genuine Witch buried out on his property

Anway, that's what Blaze does.

He takes little groups of people up to Fallen and to Old Creek who are ghost hunters and people who fancy themselves to be Vampires and Witches and he tells them all about Fallen.

Some of them just get angry at his stories and the rest just get scared but nobody walks away feeling like they'd been had.

One year this writer from Seattle took the tour and as Blaze walked her back to her car she stopped and asked, " You know Blaze, these stories of yours are top drawer- but I'm curious. All these stories about The Creek, they're about other people. You've lived out here your entire life and except for that trip to Hawaii you told us about on the way up to Fallen it doesn't sound like you've been much more the 100 miles away from here. You must have seen or been through something yourself. Come on Blaze, where do you fit into this story? "

Blaze shrugged, " Well, it's my family's history you know and I'm not the adventurous type and on the whole I'd have to say my uneventful life would affirm that sad fact."

" Yeah, sure Blaze...come one what's your story? "

Blaze held his arm out and the writer, a woman named Honor took it and they walked up to Blaze's porch and he told her about what happened to him 40 years ago out on Old Creek Road.

" No doubt about it, my family has a dark history- and the one thing I know about darkness, it creeps from the corners. Think about it there, nothing bothers people more then the things they see from the corners of their eyes. It's because the things you see there have creeped up on you.

And then they either creep away or just disapear and then you get that trickle of sweat running down your spine...You know what mean don't you."

Honor nodded.

" Back in the 1960's there wasn't any lights out on the highway that hooks Old Creek up to Snohomish County and the rest of the world. But that didn't stop people from driving their cars like the Devil was chasing them...well, you know sometimes....but for the most part people were just careless and stupid or drunk and stupid and they'd miss the road that leads to bridge over the Creek and they would end up smashed to pieces in the ravine."

"So one winter we hear about this car full of college kids that disapeared on their way back from Seattle- they were headed up to Everett and they never made it."

" Well that year my wife gets it in her head that she wants a fresh cut tree for Christmas and I'm the good guy right? I actually do it, I take an ax out into 30 degrees of ice and snow and go and cut her a tree. But that wasn't so much to do for a woman who was willing to live out here just to be with me. She was a good Gal " Blaze said with a smile " Really Good...and kind. Anyway I go out and find her a nice blue spruce and I'm on my way home when just before I get to the bridge I hit a dog and it bounces off my hood and takes a dive right over the bridge into the ravine."

" Wouldn't you kno it? Just as I get out of my car that dog comes flying up the bank and with a busted leg it's got it's tail between it's legs and Honor...that dog is screaming, not howling- it's screaming. "

" So I go over to the railing and look down and I see this black patch- it's perfectly square and black and I realize what I'm looking at his the undercarriage of a car and I figure out the screaming I'm hearing didn't come from the dog- it was coming from the car."

" I slide and crawl down into that Ravine the best I can and just as I come up on the car I start seeing what look like body parts scattered all of the place and I figure the animals have been visiting the car for a snack or two and then I see this hand come from the window on the passenger side and I'm about to pass out when I hear someone say, " please get me out they're getting closer....please get me out."

" Sure enough there was a lady still alive in that car and I figure she'd been down there for almost four days with those dead bodies."

" God " Honor whispered.

Blaze looked up from his memories and the look on his face was confused. " Oh no, no, no God was down in that Ravine, wasn't nothing down in there but death and if you know Death you know how it doesn't like to share space with anybody or anything...."

Honor shrugged. " I'll give you that. "

" Anyway, I reach down and grab the hand and that woman just slides out on a trail of blood and ice and I'm pretty sure she cut herself up pretty good when she came out. But before I could help her up she turned over and got up on her knees and was holding herself up with one arm and she was holding her other arm to her chest. Then she jumps up grabs my hand and says, " come on, we have to get out of here. I can hear them....let's go!"

" Who? " I ask her " who is coming? "

" Those animals!" she screams at me and then she starts running and she was one sure footed Gal because she didn't slide or slow down as she drags me all the way up the bank to the road.

When we get up to the road we both look down into the Ravine and I can hear something all right. I can see something too. Only it wasn't animals, it was little lights and and the sounds were voices and they were saying something about "picking up tracks here..."

That's when I can see, right there out of the corner of my eye that woman spit something out onto the snow and what lands there are four little red and white lumps and I know those things are teeth.

Then she looks down at her hands and I hear her whistle and say something like, " I guess I won't be playing the piano for awhile."

After she gets done talking I see her from the corner of my eye pull a long blond hair from the corner of her mouth and no it wasn't her's because the woman standing next to me had long black hair. It was so black it almost looked blue.

It was just seconds later that she walks away down that road like she wasn't cut up and bleeding and hurt- I'm not sure but I think she may have been whistling.

Well, a few minutes later a bunch of people come up over the bank and they've got dogs and guns.

" Hey there " says this man " are you alright?"

" Course. What's up? " I asked.

" There's a wolf on the loose, it tore apart a bunch of dogs and horses and even a cow at on Maltby a few days ago and we tracked it out here- looks like it was spending some time down in that car. I'm not sure but it looks like it went through the windshield and got itself stuck. Then it got itself unstuck."

" How? " I ask.

One of the men drops something at my feet and there it was...this wolf's paw with fur so black it shined blue.

" I don't know who that woman was or where she went - but she should be easy to spot . After all, she only has one hand."

Honor sat back and smiled, " that was a good one Blaze...you really should- " and then Honor's smile sort of froze and faded and she turned her head a little and she said to Blaze " I thought I saw something from the corner of my eye...sorry where was I?"

Inspired by the Soul Food Cafe Story Starter:

Werewolf Project

Devil's Luck

2007-05-02T21:00:00.000-07:00

by anita marie moscoso

based on the Soul Food Cafe Story Prompt

T is For Transformative

Did you ever have one of those days when everything went wrong?

Maybe you knew it was going to be bad when your alarm went off 20 minutes too early and to make it worse it was one of those nights where you woke up every half hour and when you got out of bed you knew, you could feel it was going to get much worse.

Veta Trella had a night like that.

After she got out of bed she went to take a shower and as she stepped into her tub she slipped but was lucky enough to break her fall with her knees.

That was okay because Veta wasn't the kind of person anyone paid attention to so if she had to limp and shuffle no one was going to notice.

That was the only lucky break Veta had for the rest of the day.

When Veta dried her hair she was distracted by the sizzling sound the wires made everytime she turned her wrist and just before her hair was completely dry some blue sparks flew out of the wall and all of the lights in Veta's house went out and stayed out.

She guessed all of those black scorch marks all over her walls by the electrical outlets she saw on the way to her basement to check her fuse box was not a good sign.

When Veta finally made it out thedoor she looked down in time to see her that not only were her shoes not tied, they were different colors and just as she turned to go back into her house the door swung shut and she knew that not only was the door locked she had never taken her keys out of the candy bowl she kept them in.

But none of that mattered for very long because as she took a step she tripped on her laces and went face first into the door.

It was only a matter of seconds- not minutes before her nose started to swell and she could feel her lips start to go numb. She poked at her face and sighed and then Veta walked around to her back yard.

She walked slowly up the steps to her back porch and when she reached down to pick up a little clay flowerpot to break the little glass window in center of the porch door she felt her fingernail peel back and then it came off with a sting.

She held her hand up, looked at raw finger tip and sighed.

Veta made it through her kitchen safe enough but when she got to the living room she scared her cat Blitzer right off of the couch he knew wasn't suppose to be on.

Veta didn't have the heart or energy to yell at him because she shouldn't have had to break into her own house and put herself in the position to scare her black cat into running straight across her path.

In fact, he was so startled by her that he jumped straight up onto the mantle piece above the fireplace and sent Veta's antique mirror crashing to the floor where it didn't just break.

It smashed into millions of little shards and a cloud of dust and glass wafted up and into Veta's face- Veta's bruised and swollen face that was now in the process of working it's way into a full fledged allergy attack.

" Oh, why the Hell not " Veta said and then she sneezed and her nose started to bleed- all over her brand new white blouse.

When Veta made it to her bus- well it wasn't her usual bus because she missed her regular bus- she almost tripped over a woman who had suddenly stopped to pick something up off of the ground and that sent Veta and her things flying in about four different directions.

Veta sort of shuffled and cringed all the way to the back of the bus and when she sat down it was on something wet and sticky and she closed her eyes and when she opened them she looked up and then down and then from her left to her right and then slowly behind her. When she was done she slouched down and held her belongings to her chest and tried to make herself breathe.

She thought if she concentrated on doing just that she wouldn't start screaming.

Then the woman Veta had tripped over took the seat right in front of her and she was jabbering and laughing and chatting away to the very good-looking man next to her.

" Can you believe it? " she sang, " first I find a hundred dollar bill right there on the curb on the very morning I'm thinking I'm going to for sure miss my bus and then..." she leaned towards her seat mate and nudged him with her shoulder " you ask me out and look! "

She was holding her phone up and the man read the text message and he congratulated the woman on her promotion and then he moved a little closer to her and put his arm over the back of her seat.

" I mean, I don't know where all of this is coming from. I've never had luck like this before!"

" My Grandma would have said you have the luck of the Devil " he told the woman happily.

And then Veta reached over she tapped them each on the shoulder.

When they turned around they were looking straight into Veta's bright yellow eyes which were ringed with bruises and they saw the little white horns she normally hid under her blow dried hair and then her forked tongue shot from under her broken nose and swollen lips and she hissed " your Grandma is liar."

Has The Cat Got Your Tongue?

2007-04-18T10:43:00.000-07:00

by anita marie moscoso

Daisy Cutting was not normal- her parents knew it, her brothers and sisters knew it and her dog knew it too.

That's why Tarzan lived under the porch instead of above it and if they could have the rest of Daisy Cutting's family would have followed Tarzan under the porch too- but there wasn't enough room for all of them.

So the rest of the family was forced to deal with their world with Daisy in it in their own way. The Cutting Family learned to be invisible- which was easy when all anyone really noticed was Daisy.

She was very hard to ignore no matter how hard you tried.

On the day her parents found out they were expecting a baby their house burned down, on the day Daisy was born the sky above the hospital turned black.

Not from thunderclouds- from birds.

The noise they made was deafening and the smell was bad and then while they were in mid-flight they died and fell with soft wet thuds for miles around.

Mrs Cutting saw the rain of dead birds from her hospital window and she raised her baby to her lips and whispered into Daisy's ear, "what have you done Daisy? "

Of course Daisy couldn't answer because she wasn't even an hour old but she did laugh and that's when Mrs. Cutting saw Daisy already had teeth.

" Well, " Mrs. Cutting said " at least you don't have horns too."

Then Daisy laughed some more.

The funny thing about Daisy is that she never really laughed again after that day- she just smiled.

A lot.

Daisy Cutting had a normal life- she had her own room, she had her own toys and she got two full grown black cats from her family on her 12th birthday.

Her cats, Potato and Chips didn't hide under the porch when they saw her. Everyone including Daisy figured they hung around just to see what sort of odd thing she would come up with next but that was in the nature of cats and the Cutting Family understood that.

That's why they got them for her.

So at least now Daisy had a couple of friends- which is what her family wanted. Daisy, if they had asked, would have told them she busy for a social life because Daisy was always busy working on her collections.

-like her Bug Collection.

To be specific Daisy had a Bug Zoo in her bedroom.

Her bugs were in jars and plastic containers and in front of each little cage was a card with their proper scientific names and dietary habits.

Daisy also collected yo-yos that she displayed on her bookshelf and under her bed was Daisy's Grave Collection- it wasn't as organized as her bug zoo or her yo-yo collection.

Daisy collected those little candy boxes- the ones that 6 different pieces of chocolate come in. She'd buy a box or two a month, toss the pieces to Tarzan under the porch ( he buried them ) and then she'd take the empty boxes to her bedroom.

What Daisy liked about the boxes were the little pictures of smiling cherubs on the lids.

It worked for what Daisy put in them.

At least once a month Daisy took the bus to Morning Ridge Cemetery in Duwamish Bay and she'd go from grave to grave snapping petals and leaves from the Grave Flowers.

She always did it in a way that didn't disturb the arrangements- then she'd take the flowers home, dry them and put them in the little boxes.

Each box was numbered- Daisy had a map of the cemetery in her desk and when she got home she took the numbers and not the names from the Cemetery Map and copied them onto the inside lid of the boxes.

Daisy's room was full of her collections.

One Summer Mrs Cutting was in her kitchen reading the paper and drinking some juice when she looked down into her glass and saw two flies drowning in her lemonade

She took a deep breath because she was about to yell for Daisy- and how fair was that? There were two black blowflies in her juice and the first words out of Mrs. Cutting's mouth weren't going to be "yuck".

She was about to scream, " Daisy!"

Instead she took the glass outside and threw the entire mess into the garbage can.

The next day Mrs Cutting found four blowflies in the refrigerator, two in the toilet and instead of yelling " Daisy" she went to the store and bought some No Pest Traps.

It didn't work.

In fact, it got worse.

Much worse.

By the third day there was family meeting in the Cutting home that didn't include Daisy or her cats but did include Tarzan the Dog.

The result of that meeting was Mrs Cutting was sent up to Daisy's room to see if the newest members of the Cutting Family had something to do with Daisy's Collections.

Mrs Cutting took a deep breath and before she knocked she her her daughter-sounding flustered and a little angry- which was something Daisy never did. Daisy never got rattled- so Instead of knocking she put her ear to the door.

" Hey you guys...give those back this minute...I've got you ...let go of that Potato! Chips you're next hand it over....come out from under there you two- I mean it.

You guys are in so much trouble"

Mrs. Cutting looked back down the hall and almost called for somebody- anybody to go with her into Daisy's room.

But this was her daughter- and Mrs Cutting wasn't about to forget that. To be honest, Daisy wasn't the type of person you could forget even if you wanted to.

So Mrs Cutting took a deep breath and knocked on Daisy's door.

From inside of the room came a meow, a couple of hisses and a lot of growling and then she heard a door slam.

Daisy called, " come on in Mom."

Daisy's room didn't have a few flies buzzing around the way they were in the rest of the house.

There were hundreds of them and when one landed on Daisy's face and crawled around and flew off without Daisy flinching even once or trying to brush it away Mrs Cutting lost her temper.

" Flies Daisy? You're collecting flies now? That's...that's... Daisy that's not interesting, that's just stupid. What were you thinking? Look at your room...look at the rest of the house. Young lady you are in so much trouble!"

Daisy was standing next to her closet door and from the inside Potato and Chips had started to shove their paws out from under the door and were trying to pull it open.

" Let them out Daisy...and answer me, what were you thinking?"

Daisy bit her lip and shrugged.

" What were you thinking Daisy? Answer me or did your cats get your tongue?

" No Mommy, " Daisy said " they don't have my tongue..."

It's All In The Cards

2007-03-28T17:28:00.001-07:00

by Anita Marie Moscoso

Idell Galina tells fortunes and casts spells from her little store on Eastlake Road.

Of Course Idell can't really see into the the future and she can't really cast spells but she can tell a good story and she's got a very winning smile and looks good in velvet so none of that really mattered.

Until the night Denae Colquite came in and asked for a Reading- then what Idell could or could not do mattered very much.

Denae Colquite took a seat on the little wooden chair Idell offered her and she kept her purse in her lap. She even kept her jacket on, refusing to take it off when Idell asked for it. " I know this is all- um, subjective. But I'm at a loss Miss-"

" Madam Galina " Idell extended a long hand over the crystal ball that sat on the table between them.

Denae looked down at Idell's left hand and then she looked back up and said, " Miss Galina. "

Idell shrugged pulled her hand back and slumped a little into her chair with her arms crossed over her chest and the air sucked out of her lungs. " What exactly can I help you with ..."

" Denae my name is Denae Colquite and I'll get right down to it Idell- I need to know if one can escape their fate."

Idell felt her Sea Legs come back, and she said " Our fates are..."

" Yes, yes, yes, written on the sands or wind or something like that but Miss Galina the upshot is my fate is about to ruin my life and I'd like to escape that. So, can you help me or not."

It wasn't a question and it wasn't a demand but Denae expected an answer all the same.

And it was obvious she wanted it now.

So Idell reached over to the counter to her left for a candlestick and she placed it next to the crystal ball and struck a match. Then she looked down into the reflection cast by the small yellow flame and as she did Denae put her forehead on the table's rounded edge and started to bang it up and down.

" Yes or no Madame Galina can you change a fate that's been cast. Do you really need to look into the future to answer that question? Because if you're that unsure of your present I don't see how you can help me with the future."

Without raising her head from the table Denae reached into her handbag pulled out a small box of playing cards and dropped it on the table.

" Here, it's all in here. My Grandmother did a reading for me 10 years ago when I got married. It's all there, in those cards. I need to know if I can escape it."

Idell smirked a little and wiped it off her face as Denae looked up. " Our futures, our destiny are constantly being rewritten, I see images, impression of things that could be. That's what I can offer you in the way of help and guidance."

Denae dropped her head back onto the table and mumbled, " Well, damn. It's starting to look like there is no way around this. No way at all. I mean the one person who can really pull this gig off was like a thousand percent right. You know, she was the real thing.I've been to hundreds of you people for the past ten years and all you guys have been less then...er talented then she was. Everyone said Grand was one in a million. I guess that was just the simple truth. She was one in a million."

Denae got up and sighed " How much."

" An offering of 20.00 is appreciated."

Denae got up and and put her jacket on. Then she opened her purse and dropped the offering on the table.

" Oh your..." Idell picked the box up.

" Cards- you can keep them I don't need them anymore. I know what they say. They've been saying the same thing for 10 years now."

And then as Denae walked towards the door the little flap on the bottom of the box slid open and the cards spilled out onto the table and the floor at Idell's feet.

Idell reached down and picked up one of the cards. She could see they were ordinary playing cards with something written in spidery red script across their faces.

She held the card up to the light and she could see written in old fashioned script, " My Granddaughter is going to kill you, run Miss Galina "

Idell looked up in time to see Denae throw the deadbolt on the door. " Don't bother, I told you...it's all in the cards."

Eye of the Beholder

2007-01-10T06:51:00.000-08:00

by Anita Marie Moscoso

Abney Hawkweed taught music for 25 years in the Caswell School District and those were the best years of her life.

Not that she liked teaching; in fact Abney didn't even like kids.

But the hours were good, she got the Summers off and at the end of the day not many people go out of their way to pay attention to plain looking women with wire rimmed glasses who know how to play the violin and trumpet and the saxophone.

Which suited Miss Abney Hawkweed just fine.

In the old days, after school was over and Abney was on her way home she used to roll the windows of her fuel-efficient little car down and she use to turn the radio off just so she could hear the honking horns and screeching tires. Sometimes she even got an earful and eyeful of some road raging driver screaming their lungs out and waving their fingers around in nasty gestures.

People were great and when they were driving and when they were ugly they were even better to watch.

Just for the fun of it Abney would go out of her way on certain days just so that she could drive passed the Great Mall of Felton Hills.

She just loved to watch people dodge buses and trucks and cars and then no matter how many cars were behind her honking their horns she'd drive slow just so she could see the same people sprint, jog or run across the parking lots with baby strollers and shopping carts- all so that they could get into the shops and the food court and consume anything they could lay their hands on.

It all seemed so trivial and innocent and final.

There was no mystery to life in the suburbs.

You worked, you shopped, you watched TV and then you got to die.

Some people, Abney thought, don’t know how good they have it and that's a fact.

Abney's day job paid the rent; what she did at night was who Abney Hawkweed was. She could always find another day job, but there was only one Abney and when the Sunset came she couldn't be anything else.

So just after dinner she would gather her tools into a little black leather medical bag- the one she inherited from her Grandfather and she turn the little gold clasps counter clockwise to lock it.

Then for luck, just like Grandpa taught her, she would touch the little brass plate that said, " Post Mortem Case " three times.

The luck thing was important because she usually needed it.

Like with most family businesses you could either take up the reigns and do the family proud or you could skate by and make them wish they could at least say you were adopted or 'from the other side of the family'.

The worst you could be neither, the worst thing you could be is mediocre.

And know it.

Abney figured she could get the job done- and that phrase pretty much summed up Abney's job performance. She wasn't as glamorous and thin and blond as her cousin Inez and she wasn't as smart or athletic as her Father Dr Setwell Hawkweed had been.

They were impressive figures at work and well respected.

No doubt, Abney could dig up a coffin, pop it open and hammer a stake into the bloated red face of a vampire before it could open it's mouth and spit blood all over her face-which is what they did when they were about to attack.

If they got you it was bad news because that mess could make you blind.

That's how they brought you down.

Anyway...

The problem was it was just plain old Abney Hawkweed in some old decrepit church or over grown cemetery carrying on the family trade.

There was no sense of style about how Abney did her work so she did it quietly and efficiently as possible and then she'd go home feed her cat, listen to a little Mozart and then she'd turn in for what was left of the evening.

She did that for 25 years and she never complained.

She didn't even complain when she had to go into a house on Halloween (of all nights) and take out a family of Vampires who had been sleeping in their basement and then had taken to hanging from the rafters like water logged Piñatas-dripping blood and purge from their hardly working bowels onto the floor.

All Abney figured when she slipped in the gunk and broke her wrist was that they had done that on purpose.

It wasn't like the books and comics and video games you know.

Abney learned the hard way that oxygen deprivation at death and then waking up to find you had been turned into a mosquito was enough to make anyone crazy.

Very Crazy.

On the day Abney retired- both from the Day Job and the Family Trade, her work friends had taken her out for lunch and given her some neat gifts and they had promised to keep in touch.

She doubted they would.

And of course they didn't.

Her family same to celebrate her retirement and of course they promised to stay in touch too- and Abney figured they'd make good on that and of course they did.

Especially when they needed a night off.

As time went by Abney started to play the Violin again for the simple pleasure of it. She never got calls to lend a hand at this Graveyard or that Morgue because the Vampire Problem was a Problem Solved and Abney decided to take up the guitar.

It was at Inez's birthday part last winter that Inez had told Abney, " You know in the old days we could never have all gotten together like this. It'd have been too dangerous. I mean, a couple of nutty blood suckers and a can of gasoline and before you know it we're crispy critters and people are dropping like flies from ' the plague' again."

" You had a lot to do with that Abney. Thank you."

And Abney decided right then and there that she may not have been the sleekest of models to hit the showroom floor but she had made a difference all the same.

That was when Abney really felt it for the first time- her life; her simple quiet life was all she ever was.

And she missed it.

When Spring came Abney had decided to take up sketching. She was pretty awful at it, but she had nothing but time on her hands and if this didn't work she could always try something else.

So one day she's at her favorite park sketching her favorite tree when four teenagers went walking by.

Shoulder to shoulder they looked like a little black thundercloud rolling along on the cobble stone pathway.

Their faces were pale, their lips were black and they smelled like the perfume counter at the Bay Side Department store.

Abney watched them for a moment and then she called out, " You there...are you suppose to be Vampires? "

There was a chorus of snorts and chuckles and someone tried to growl " suppose to be " but his his voice cracked.

One of the little black clouds broke away from the rest and she tried to glide up towards the middle-aged woman with salt and pepper hair " We're Goth " she said slowly with her jaw clenched tight and her black hair falling into her face.

" Is that a new type of Vampire?" Abney asked cheerfully.

" I guess you could say that." the girl with the pointed white teeth said. Then she tried to stare the old woman down. " Why do you want to know? "

Abney shrugged, " just checking. "

And as the little black cloud drifted down the path Abney got up, reached for the black bag under her chair and touched the little brass plate three times.

Then she went to work.

RSVP

2006-12-09T14:39:00.000-08:00

Valaria Aberdeen's house stands alone on Brier Road and it stands alone because no one will go near it.

There were other houses up there too, but they're gone now and all that's left of them are their foundations. In some lots you might window frames and screens stacked in sloppy piles and here and there are wooden chairs and mailboxes.

And then there's Valaria's House.

There is no furniture in Valaria ‘s House but there is a mirror at the end of a hall where the doors rusted off of their hinges years and years ago.

The mirrors face is so clear that you might think you were looking out of an open window, in fact if your were standing in front of it right now I'll bet you'd even put your hand out and touch the glass just to make sure that it wasn't an open window.

The funny thing is-that's exactly what the mirror is.

That's what I've heard anyway.

Every Halloween the Aberdeen Family hosted a Halloween Party.

Everyone wore costumes, everyone bobbed for apples, everyone somehow ended up in the attic to tell ghost stories and then everyone would stumble down Brier Road to their houses by moonlight leaving a trail of candy wrappers behind them.

Valaria Aberdeen loved to host her parties and at the last one she wasn’t her usual energetic self. She didn't even dress up in one of her elaborate rental costumes-she wasn't a lady pirate or a lady vampire or a sorceress or a belly dancer.

That year, she wore a black dress and a set of acrylic 'fangs' on her teeth and painted her nails black. She had smeared pale blue makeup on her face and penciled dark circles under her eyes.

She just shrugged when Mitchell asked about her costume and said to her husband who was dressed as a mummy " I'm just not really into it this year, so I guess I'm just going to be a boring witch" then she slammed her felt witch's hat onto her head with the little ghosts sewn around the brim and then she stomped down the hallway to the kitchen.

Mitchell tried to cheer Valaria up; he helped her finish the decorating and he told her little jokes and reminded her of the fun from their past parties and then the door bell rang.

As the guests started to arrive Valaria seemed to blend into the background and she would hardly talk to anyone. It wasn't easy to avoid over 50 people in a room but Valaria found a way to do it and that's exactly what she did for hours.

Sometime during the evening Mitchell looked up and saw Valaria fussing at the table with the food and punch. She looked up and saw him and waved and then she went out to the kitchen.

At about Midnight she came bouncing out of the kitchen with a little wicker basket full of cookies shaped like pumpkins and cats and she was handing them out and laughing...not that thin laugh she had been using all evening but a heart felt laugh and when she saw him she held her basket up and said," guess what Mitchell I'm into it after all...I'm feeling like my old self again"

" That's great dear! " he called out to her over his cup of hot cider.

Valaria winked at him and kept handing out her cookies.

She joined him a few minutes later and he put his hand out and asked for one of her cookies.

Valaria looked stunned and hurt. " Why would I give you one of those Mitchell? "

Mitchell said to her, " Because you love me..."

Valaria rolled her eyes so far up all he could see were the whites of her eyes. God, he really hated it when she did that. " It's because I love you that you don't get one Mitchell."

From over Valaria ‘s left shoulder Mitchell could see Missy Jenson from next door start to do a weird little dance and then she started to spin around and around and as she did he could that she was crying and that her tears were red.

Blood red.

In a few seconds everyone in the room were 'dancing' and they were shrieking and tearing at their throats. " What have you done Valaria? " Mitchell screamed, " What in God's name have you done?"

Mitchell watched his wife dance around the room and as she swung her empty basket from side to side he could hear her say, " Guess what I am? Guess what I am? Guess what I am?"

He chased her down the hall and when he caught up to her she was looking into the mirror her Grandmother had given them as a wedding present.

It was a large ceiling to floor mirror encased in a heavy silver frame and until that moment Mitchell never wondered how they had ever gotten that thing through their door.

Valaria was wiping her face and when she turned around he could see she had taken off most of the thick blue makeup and the black eyeliner pencil from around her eyes.

Now her face was dark, dark red and her lips were black and then she pulled the hat off of her head with a flourish and he saw...

he saw Valaria Aberdeen.

Her pointed forked tongue snaked out from between her lips and she was feathering the hair away from the horns that she now had on her forehead.

" I told you I was feeling like my old self again. Happy Halloween Mitchell" she said with a wink and then she turned and stepped into the mirror.

After that night people started to move away from Brier Road.

Within days the houses the next block over were abandoned and then the houses on the block over from that were abandoned next and after awhile no one lived in that little town at all.

But if you're feeling brave you can actually go up to Valaria Aberdeen's House and you can walk in and go down the hall and look into that mirror...and if you stare into it and say, " I know what you are Valaria Aberdeen..." three times...

She'll give you a cookie

DARK TRAVELS

2006-12-09T14:37:00.000-08:00

Last Summer Mata Dark and her family took a vacation.

Mata was almost 20 at the time and during her entire twenty years of life none of the Dark Family had set foot off of the Olympic Mountain Range in Washington State. They had never traveled further then 40 miles away from their hometown of Leaning Birches.

It's because Mata's Father was a workaholic and he had this thing about being replaced. He was terrified of losing his job.

" Lord Derby, do you really believe there's a line of people waiting for to do your job? " Mata's mom Rue screamed at the top of her lungs while waving around a bunch of travel pamphlets in her hand. Mom had wanted a vacation in the worst way and she felt like if she didn’t get this trip she wouldn’t have the energy to fight for another.

Derby's eyes crossed a little like they always do when he thinks to hard and finally he said, " I'm sure there's a few people who would love to do my job. And do you know what Rue? They're probably a lot younger and smarter and quicker then me. Don't ask me to take a chance on losing the only thing I've ever been good at in my life."

Rue who's eyes never crossed when she thought to hard lowered her voice and said " Derby you are the hardest working man in town and you've earned a vacation. Promise me you'll think about it."

Derby who adored his wife and family as much as he adored his job gave in about a week after that argument. He came home one night from work and out of nowhere asked Rue would she mind if they took a road trip? He had a route and a destination picked out. He even had a leather folder that read “ USA TOURS” full of flyers, confirmation forms and event tickets.

The travel agent he had worked with in town had even got them t-shirts to wear.

Mata's Mom looked through the folder and then she unfolded one of the T-Shirts and held it up. " You've got to be kidding. " was all she could think to say.

The shirt read:

" UFO PALOOZA 2006 "

Derby smiled and shook his head. " Pack up, we leave at Dawn "

Mata's brother 15-year-old brother Wilton not only wore the t-shirt the morning they left he went out to Joker's Galore the night before and bought a set of " Deeply Boppers" to wear on his head too.

The " Deely Boppers " were silver antenna with gold balls at the top that were the size of marbles. When you turned your head something in them shifted and made a crackling sound.

Mata took one long hard look at her brother, walked out the front door and then jumped on her motorcycle and rode at break neck speed into town and bought herself a set too.

Mata and her brother Wilton had agreed with each other sometime during that very long drive that if Mom said the words, ' UFO's? Are you kidding me Derby UFO's? Our one and only vacation as a family is to celebrate something that doesn't exist?" one more time they were both going to jump out of the car and take their chances on the New Mexico Desert, the New Mexico Sun and until they decided it sounded like fun the mutants that were suppose to have been created by the first Atomic Test back in 1945.

" Hey Mom " Wilton asked, " do you think there really are Radioactive Mutants out here? "

" Well I haven't seen any but that doesn't mean they don't exist...am I right Derby? "

Derby reached over and patted her shoulder and said, " That's the Spirit Querida "

The little town was almost full of people dressed up like aliens, there were also a lot of people not dressed like aliens and they all seemed to know a lot about space travel and where you could get " Saucer Burgers ", " Milkway Meals " and everyone wanted to know if you were able to get reservations to stay at the " Station 51 Hotel "

Most of the Dark Family were secretly pleased they were staying at the " Place to Be " for the Festival but they kept it to themselves because of the look on Rue's face.

Rue's face was this mask; she looked like someone had attached strings to her eyebrows and yanked them straight up.

She had speechless since they arrived in town, which was actually a relief.

Finally she opened her mouth, breathed and said " God in Heaven " and then she went back to the hotel and ordered a blood red steak and drank Strawberry Margaritas until she couldn't focus her eyes.

After that she went back out and joined her family.

Derby talked Rue into joining a UFO Watcher's Group and by the time they got back from spending an evening learning to plot their own star charts and joined in on a few debates about the Roswell Incident and watched a video of a genuine Alien Autopsy it was obvious Rue was having a good time.

At least her eyebrows had gone back to their normal spot on her forehead and she had quit saying " God in Heaven " everytime someone walked by.

So it really turned out to be a good trip and on their last night Rue and Derby went out with some new friends to make arrangements to get together for next year’s festival and Mata and Wilton went shopping.

Mata and Wilton decided to go and pick up some souvenirs for their friends back home and they spent a lot of time talking to Mr. Fanshaw who ran the little Museum just around the street from the hotel.

They talked about their Mom and their Dad and their home back in Washington. Small town stuff but Mr Fanshaw was a good audience and he asked lots of good questions.

Mr Fanshaw, Mata and Wilton were pleased to discover knew all about Aliens and he also knew at least an hours worth of top drawer ghost stories and as he packed up Mata and Wilton's purchases he asked, " so tell me about your Mom, in the end she had a good time? Is she a believer now do you think? "

" Doubt it, " Wilton said "she doesn't have much going in the way of imagination."

" Sorry to hear that...its a curse of the Modern Age " Mr Fanshaw said sadly. Then he asked, "and what does she do for a living? "

" Homemaker, " Mata told him " she use to be a Phlebotomist. That's how she met our Dad. See the offices she worked at used to get busted into and vandalized all of the time. One night she got attacked and our Dad actually saved her from being killed. They've been together ever since"

" And what does your Dad do? " Mr Fanshaw asked.

" He's a Vampire Hunter " Wilton said from behind a stack of packages and then he and Mata thanked Mr Fanshaw for all of his time and as the two young people left the Museum he heard Mata say " hey Wilton we should talk to Dad about The Triangle for our next trip..."

FAMILY TIES

2006-07-01T09:06:00.000-07:00

I reached into the Chocolate Box and found...
http://www.outbackonline.net/choc%20box/choc_suitcase_memories.htm

Orcella Moss sat at his kitchen table with a small box of bones in front of him. Every once and awhile he’d reach out and jiggle the box around and then he’d look down into the top of it and sometimes he’d start to reach into it and then he’d stop.

Then he moved the box back to the center of the table and he wondered.

He wondered where his 13-year-old daughter could have found a human jawbone and other broken little pieces of bone and how it all ended up in an old fashion hatbox mixed up with the bits and pieces of her day-to-day life.

Orcella could hear her up in her room; a little while ago he had heard her TV go on, then he heard a beep and whine and then a hum as her computer came to life and he wondered how that little monster could do anything as normal as hit on and off switches when she’d been living in the same room with a busted human jaw bone, a mummified finger and little bits of bone in a hatbox she had left on her desk top.

Earlier that morning Orcella had gone up to Kirsten’s room to liberate the batteries from the remote control for the TV in the living room that somehow always found their way upstairs to Kirsten’s room and into her remote control.

That’s when he saw the old box with the faded candy pink stripes sitting on her desk and almost as an after thought looked down into it.

The box was right next to her California Cutie doll and her makeup (cotton candy flavored lipstick and some blush-on) and her hairbrush and a little bottle of perfume she’d mixed herself at Scent By You at the Mall.

And in the middle of all of that junk was the hatbox with the jawbone that was on the table in front of him now. He looked into the box one more time and that’s when he noticed the nail on the finger was manicured and polished and had a tiny rainbow decal near it’s tip.

“ Kirsten,” he called up to her “ come on down here for a second, would you?”

He heard the sound go down on the TV and she called back, “ What?”

“ I want to talk to you.”

“ Busy.” She called back in her best little girl in the world voice.

Then not only did the TV go back on it went up.

“ Kirsten get down here.”

“ This better be important Dad,” she snapped back from over the racket “ cause I’m…”

“ Missing something from off your desk. So get down here NOW.”

The TV clicked off and the computer hummed and shut down. He could hear Kirsten walking across her bedroom floor. He heard the door open and then close and then the sound of her footsteps at the top of the stairs.

“ This is very serious Dad.” He heard her walking down the steps “ You need to respect me and my privacy.”

She was standing in the kitchen now. Her mouth was a hard straight line and her chin was tilted up and she looked down her nose at him, “ That box is mine and what’s in it is mine and I want it back.”

“ I want to know where you found this Kirsten, for heaven’s sake Kid, this is a human jaw bone and what are these? “ he held the box up and shook it at her.

“ Finger bones, “ she held her hand up ‘ fingertip bones, I don’t know exactly but they’re mine Daddy and I want them back.”

“ Just answer me, where did you find this stuff?’ she was looking at him with a dull flat expression and he knew very well by the look on her face she hadn’t ‘found’ anything. Not in this condition anyway.

He tried another tact.

“ Kirsten these are human remains and you had them mixed in with your makeup, some CD’s and a half eaten candy bar and a stale bagel. Do you know how abnormal that is?”

It was very clear by the way she was still looking down her nose that she did know and that she also didn’t care.

“ Give me back my things Daddy.” She said in her best schoolmarm voice. “ Or else.”

“ Or what Kirsten? Am I going to end up in a box on your desk with candy bar wrappers and a half eaten bagel?”

“ No, but you know that thing you have hidden in the basement? If you want it back Daddy you’ll hand that box over right now.”

“ You didn’t…”

“ I mean it Daddy, hand the box over right now.”

He practically threw it at her and as she bent over to pick up some of the little bones that had fallen out she said, “ you’re gross Daddy “ she said with disgust “ I can’t believe you brought that into our house and hid it in a trunk with the Christmas ornaments. That’s twisted.”

She was looking into the box and then she looked around on the floor and came back up with the finger with the nail still attached and she dropped it into the box. “ You’re sick Daddy, you need help.”

Orcella watched Kirsten stomp up the stairs, he heard the door slam shut and the music go on full blast. It was loud; loud enough to shake the pictures on the wall, loud enough to attract attention, loud enough to maybe force the neighbors to call the police and complain.

Orcella didn’t go up the stairs, he went back into his kitchen and down the steps to the basement…and then he started to clear the Christmas ornaments out of the trunk.

WELCOME TO BOCKSBOHNE

2006-06-24T08:23:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been on a road trip, and ended up driving down those dirt roads that lead into the dead empty towns with boarded up fast food places with names like “ Chicken Basket “ or “ Hank’s Hamburger Haven “ and have you noticed there’s always a gas station with those funny tin signs advertising a brand of cigarettes or beer that no one’s seen on a shelf in over 50 years?

No doubt on these trips you’ve seen the houses too, the odd gray houses sitting up off the road.

You’ve probably even seen curtains hanging in the windows and your not sure but you think you may have seen someone looking back out at you as you drove by. Maybe you’ve even seen one of those old time drug stores with the Soda Fountain in the back but you know, you wouldn’t stop there on a bet to check it out because you’ll tell yourself you don’t have the time…you’ve got somewhere to get to.

There, you’ll reassure yourself that sounds good.

But that little voice, it’s it the real reason you don’t stop because it’s screaming at you, “ don’t you dare stop! Hey are you listening to me? I don’t care if you run out of gas! You will not stop in this town because if you do you’re going to have to get out and push. Don’t you even think about stopping here, is that clear?”

Then when you hit the other end of “ Main Street” (which will only take about three minutes) and you’re back on that long empty dirt road that some joker of a map maker called “ interstate 101 or Highway 19” you’ll have forgotten you were afraid.

After a few more minutes that empty little town that scared you half to death will be long behind you and it’ll be like you were never there at all

That’s what the town of Bocksbohne is like; once you leave it you’ll never be sure you were really there.

One summer Audley Frame was driving to Seattle and somewhere along Amorita Pass high in the Olympic Mountains she passed through a town called Turnsole (clearly marked on her map) and after a few miles she was on a dirt highway that lead straight into Bocksbohne.

That’s what the white sign with the peeling black letters read.

Welcome to Bocksbohne

It wasn’t suppose to be there according to the map, it had no reason to be there out in the middle of nowhere but it was there all the same and before she knew it Audley Frame was speeding passed a drive in theatre with a rusted swing set and a fallen over carousel under a weather-beaten movie screen. Across the street from the drive in was Chieko’s Drugstore and further up from that was little brick building with a sign in its window.

She slammed on her brakes and was snapped back in her seat by her seatbelt and she hardly noticed the pain because all she saw was the sign.

It was a simple sign, the background was flat black and the letters were neon orange and the sign simply said:

Help Wanted.

The window was caked with dust and grime and right there in the center of the window screaming in brand new orange neon letters was the word:

HELP.

Not help wanted.

Now it just said

HELP

Audley’ s foot came off the brake and she let her car roll forward and she turned to watch the window as her car tried to pull itself away from building.

Now the sign read “ HELP WANTED INQUIRE WITHIN “.The letters were blood red and the ink was so fresh it had smudged a little on the filthy glass window.

“ Red Ink” she heard herself say, “ it’s red ink.”

Then her foot found the gas pedal and Audley’ s car roared passed buildings and houses with broken windows and doors that were falling off of their hinges. She ignored the rusty children’s toys abandoned on the sidewalks and she hit a few curbs and before she knew it she was out the other end of Bocksbohne and when she looked into her rearview mirror she saw her dark brown hair had turned white.

She put her hand to the mirror and turned it down, she had no intentions of using it until Bocksbohne was behind her.

Far behind her.

BURNSTONE

2006-06-18T00:06:00.000-07:00

In Burnstone, Washington one of my favorite places to visit is the Tymbal Cemetery and Funeral Home.

Tymbal is a pauper's cemetery from the old days so it's not great shakes. No fancy monuments, no fancy gates but there are trees and they’re covered with ivy which is nice because the trees have been dead for years and they don’t put leaves out anymore.

The sad thing is everyone forgot the Cemetery was there and for awhile the City of Burnstone Streets Department used Tymbal as a storage place for their work trucks and they used the Funeral home as office space until someone realized all those garbage trucks and lawn mowers and a bunch of other maintenance tools were leaking oil all over unmarked graves.

So before you could say ' desecration ' the City decided to build a new maintenance facility for the Street Works Department and without as much as a backwards glance they left the graveyard to choke on weeds and nettles and blackberry bushes.

Looking back, it was sort of odd the way the weeds came back so fast.

Anyway.

About a month after the big move a young woman named Tamus Bloodroot slammed her car into one of the dead trees near the cemetery entrance and she never left.

She never left because no one ever found her.

They found her car, they found the door open and they found a large pool of blood about three feet away from the crash sight.

But they never found Tamus.

The day after they found her car stories about an injured woman, who was identified as Tamus, asking for help at the side of the road started up. Some people said they actually stopped for her and picked her up and talked to her and she always said the same thing, “ can you help me now. “

When they turned to reassure her that’s what they’re doing she’d be gone.

You can imagine Tamus Bloodroot's family was pretty upset that they're daughter had become an urban legend and people were suppose to be talking to her ghost.

" I doubt " her Father had screamed into the face of a reporter doing Halloween stories for the evening news one year, " that if my daughter could come back from the grave she'd spend all of her time asking drunken teenagers for rides to the hospital."

That was true, in life Tamus wasn’t the sort of person who asked for anything, she’d tell you exactly what she wanted and if you didn’t come across…heaven help you. The girl had a temper and the holes in her bedroom walls and her trail of broken relationships were solid proof of that.

Life went on after that… even Tamus Bloodroot went on, people never stopped seeing her and they all knew she was out there asking for help.

Bryony Middleton and his family live out on Cemetery Road. He’s lived out there his entire life
And he knows that stretch of road so well he could drive it with his eyes closed.

That’s something he did almost every Saturday night after and evening on the town with his friends. He’s sort of famous around here for that, you might not know Bryony’s name or anything about him but you’ve heard of the ‘ guy who drives passed the cemetery in his sleep on Saturdays’.

Anyway it was one of his 10 or was it 12 kids that said to him after finding him and his truck at the end of their driveway one morning " if you're going to drive when you’re sleeping Daddy, at least wear your seat belt."

Not to be mean, and Bryony loved his 10-12 children a lot even if he forgot their names and didn't know exactly how many of them there were, but on more then one occasion Bryony was heard to say, " Geeze, my kids, you know they're okay as far as rug rats go but they sure aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, if you get my meaning."

But this time Bryony’s kids were right and on that winter evening out on Tymbal Cemetery Road his kids were the sharpest tools to be found in any shed anywhere on the planet.

The roads were iced over when Bryony left the " Corner Tavern " only he didn't notice. I mean he was sliding and tripping a lot...but you know he'd chalked that up to the liquid refreshments he'd indulged in for the past four hours.

So Bryony got into his truck and tried to buckle himself in, but he couldn't make the lock work so he put the belt on and tied it closed and then he took a roll of duct tape and somehow managed to tape himself to his seat.

I'm not kidding I wish I were. Like I said, Bryony loved his kids and he'd do any for them even if they only had a handful of brain cells between them.

Then he turned the key in the ignition (he always left it in because it was pretty hard for him to fit that key into that little hole after a long evening out) and he took a sloppy left and turned out onto the unlit road, marked as Old Burnstone Highway but known unofficially as Cemetery Road by the locals.

He was halfway home and nearly asleep when he came to Tymbal Cemetery and saw the Funeral Home with the tape on it’s cracked windows. Bryony mistook it for his house and in a panic he jerked the steering wheel and sent his truck into the ditch that surrounded the cemetery.

Like I said, Tymbal’s is a Pauper’s Graveyard and there are no frills about it. The people out there were forgotten in life and they were forgotten in death too.

So the residents of Tymbal's have numbers, not names and they have pine boxes made at the Prison in Fallen not fancy caskets with brass handles. And there is no fence surrounding the cemetery just a ditch cut into a “V” shape and it's lined with jagged sharp rocks that were once the face of an old Mansion that burned to the ground about 100 years ago.

The Old Mansion was wasn't a good place and it’s owners were sort of an embarrassment to the City so after the fire Burnstone hauled off a mountain of debris and they decided to put it to good use.

Anything they could salvage went into the construction of The Tymbal Funeral Home and Cemetery.

The " fence" is what Bryony hit that night. His truck went into the ditch head on and then it flipped and rolled and finally stopped almost in the middle of the graveyard.

Taped and tied to his seat Bryony was bruised and beaten and good thing he was sitting upright because if he'd been in any other position he'd probably have choked on his own vomit, of which he apparently lost a lot of that night.

When he was done he considered his options.

He could cut himself loose but more then likely he'd end up stabbing himself to death because at the moment one of his eyes was swollen shut and the other, well you know Bryony should probably be wearing glasses but he doesn't.

Plus the crash had done nothing to sober him up he wasn’t sure he could find the business end of the knife if he wanted to.

" Poor Daddy, " he could actually see one of his many children saying to his unborn grandchildren " he survived the worse car accident ever and he ended up stabbing himself to death trying to cut himself loose from his car seat. No, he wasn't trapped. Somehow he taped himself to his seat. No I can't explain it. I loved my Dad but he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed if you get my meaning."

So Bryony figured all he could do was sit there and more likely then not someone would see him from the road in the morning. Resigned to a long cold smelly night he was about to try to catch some sleep when he saw the woman standing next to his car.

She was facing away from him and the way she was standing was wrong. Her shoulders were twisted and one of her arms seemed to be hanging a little lower then the other. At first Bryony thought she was tilting her head to the side like she was listening for something, but then he realized her head wasn't tilted it was flatter, much flatter then the other side of her head.

All Bryony could think to say was, " heck of a night, ain't it? "

" Can you help me now? " she said to no one " can you help me now?"

She started to turn and Bryony knew, he just knew that the front of that woman was going to look worse then the back and he didn't want to see that.

So Bryony did all he could think of to do. He turned the key, gave his battered truck some gas and there is a Heaven because it screamed (more then likely it was Bryony doing the screaming) to life and Bryony drove it blindly through the cemetery and towards the road…and the fence.

Only he never hit the fence, he never even made it out of the cemetery because before he hit the ditch he hit a tree and when he did the world around him exploded.

It was three of Bryony’s kids that found their dad and his truck the next morning. No, he wasn't dead; Bryony is made out of tougher stuff then that. Plus, I'm sure that with his dietary habits of fried food and alcohol he's pretty much preserved himself alive.

Which was good because Bryony had a story that people from all over the county wanted him to tell over and over again.

First of all the woman in the Graveyard, Bryony figured, wasn’t saying " Can you help me now " she was saying " Can you help me down " and he figured that out because on the night Tamus Bloodroot hit the Tymbal ‘fence’ she wasn't duct taped to her seat the way Bryony was so she smashed through her windshield and was thrown up and out of her car...

And straight up into a tree covered with Ivy.

That’s the story of Tamus Bloodroot and that’s how it ends…with parts of her raining down onto the hood of Bryony Middleton's truck.

The story about Old Burnstone Highway hasn’t ended. Earlier this year it earned this label as the most dangerous stretch road in the entire state of Washington.

It’s not a main highway and you can’t find it from any major roads but over 300 people have died along it this year alone. I mean, people from Arizona and Texas visitors from other countries in rental cars have met their end out there an if they don’t die in the wreck they can’t explain why they were there…at dark.

They never say though that they were lost.

Funny, isn’t it?

THE WITCH OF WHITE ASH MOUNTAIN

2006-06-14T22:42:00.000-07:00

The Grave of Calisaya Stoneroot is lost back up in the hills of White Ash Mountain here in Washington State and not a year goes by a story doesn't show up on the evening news or the front page of a local newspaper with the headline:

" Remains of Hikers Found "

And somewhere in the story you will find that these Hikers weren't going to White Ash to admire the scenery. They’re out there looking for the grave of the infamous Witch of White Ash Mountain.

I know this story by heart and here’s how it goes…

Rocella Coffin was the law in White Ash back in 1964, she was short and dark and bad tempered, as most of the Sheriffs in the Duwamish Bay area are. To be specific none of the Sheriffs in Ballast County are known for their sense of humor but at times they do laugh and some joke and some smile all except for Sheriff Coffin.

Sheriff Coffin held her spot as the Ballast County" least likely to be amused by anything law enforcement official " with a grip so tight it’s unlikely anyone would ever be able to pry the title from her hand.

That title, however, became Coffin’s for all eternity when Avery Bowen showed up the day after the execution of Calisaya Stoneroot.

Avery pulled into the Sheriff's station and forgot to stop his truck. It only stopped because the Sheriff’s car (her own car, not her patrol car) was in the way. Avery wasn't hurt but he was bleeding and he was sort of running around in circles and no matter how loud she yelled he wouldn’t stop.

Sheriff Coffin didn't even read him his rights.

She just pulled her gun and shot him right between the eyes, right there in the parking lot in front of the Sheriff’s Station. When she was done Rocella stood over Avery's body and said down at his pale white face, " I told you to settle down, now start over. "

Avery looked up at her and said, " she's back Sheriff, and I saw her walking up the road not even an hour ago. Calisaya Stoneroot is back."

Rocella dragged Avery into her office and pulled a pair of tweezers from her desk drawer. She took a look at Avery's wound and dropped them back in and he saw she had a crochet hook in her hand. " Sit still " she told him.

Avery obeyed and he felt Rocella pull some of his skin away from his wound with her fingers and then with one smooth move the hook was in and out and in her hand was a small piece of mashed gray metal.

" Tell me what you saw, and I suggest you don't fool around with me because the next thing I'm pulling out are the silver bullets. Got it? "

Avery tried very hard to focus his eyes and he nodded, " I saw her down on Middleditch Road, walking kind of slow and funny and …”

If Avery hadn’t been so distracted by picking at the bullet wound in his forehead he would have found it a little amusing that Calisaya had been hung just the day before on November 5, 1964 at dawn for Witchcraft.

You read that right. Not 1664, 1564, 1264.

1964.

1964: That was the year Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in Prison and China detonated it's first atomic bomb and US Surgeon General Luther Terry affirmed that cigarette smoking caused cancer.

You read that right, it was 1964, and back in the hills of White Ash Mountain a woman died laughing with a noose around her neck and she was buried with that terrible wide grin on her face and her mouth was stuffed with garlic and her eyes had been sewn shut.

Not that anyone in the town thought it would do them any good; they'd figure Calisaya would be back before dawn.

They were right.

The towns’ people of White Ash had for the past 20 years tried everything to rid themselves of Calisaya Stoneroot.

First they tried bringing in that Priest from Seattle.

The Sheriff from Duwamish Bay and two of her friends that worked the Sideshow came to watch Father Thomas bless the Cemetery the Witch and her Demons were living in and Sheriff Coffin thought it might actually work; the Witch and the demons rode out of the Cemetery Gates like the Devil himself was chasing them.

Later Sheriff Coffin realized Sheriff Blitzer and her friends snorting and snickering and stupid comments were probably what really drove Demons and the Witch away.

Four days later Stoneroot was back.

Another year they even tried to burn Calisaya at the stake and Blitzer and a woman with bad skin actually brought Snow Puffed Marshmallows and skewers and handed them to Rocella and her Deputy with the advice, “ you might as well get something out of this cause that won’t work either.”

Calisaya, over the years, went from tormenting farm animals and turning the water in the wells to blood and making the crops and the fruit trees go bad (which turned out to be a favorite of hers) and casting curses and playing petty tricks on the Towns People to grave robbing.

That was the last straw as far as Ballast County was concerned.

They sent word down that White Ash cut out the theatrical executions and do something about Stoneroot or they (Duwamish Bay, Fallen, Ninebones Cross and Abandon) were going to do something about them.

The Valleys and Mountains if Ballast County were full of barren dead places where it could reach over 90 degrees in the summer and it didn't matter because it was so cold you'd get frostbite if you weren't covered up.

The ground in these barren places are full of a fine heavy dust that’s almost impossible to wash from your clothes and if you aren’t careful it’ll work it's way into your skin and cause a nasty infection that acts like leprosy.

That dust is all that’s was left of the people and the places that Ballast County 'did something about' when things got out of hand.

Sheriff Coffin had no intention of letting the town of White Ash become another open grave.

No matter what it took.

Even if it meant going to Duwamish Bay itself.

The Duwamish Bay Curiosity Shop is famous for a lot of things: it's genuine Egyptian Mummy, it's collection of shrunken heads, it's electric chair (you could sit in it and get your picture taken) it's " funeral tools from across the ages” and it's jars.

People drove from all over the state to look at " The jars" which where kept behind a door riddled with bullet holes.
Inside of those jars are things like the three headed cat, an alligator with human face, tumors and eyes and brains and limbs and hearts and medical experiments gone bad.
Most infamous of all in this collectoin is the 'devil baby”.
The Devil Baby not only had horns and a tail but an eye in the center of it's forehead and sometimes that eye opened and sometimes it was shut and no matter where you stood in the store you knew it was watching you.

The Shop was also famous for it's Soda Fountain but on that day Sheriff Coffin wasn't in the mood for a Strawberry Phosphate. She looked over the menu tacked to the wall and next to it on pressed tin sign was a sign that read

OVER 2000 AMAZING ARTIFCATS
25 ARE GENUINE FAKES
FREE SUNDAES FOR A YEAR
IF YOU GUESS RIGHT

“ Want to take a guess?” Ignancia asked

“ No. “

“ Go on, take a guess…I got all day and from what I hear you don’t.”

“ The Baby…”

“ Nope, you’re wrong. Everybody wants that baby to be fake. That’s how come we don’t have to cough up the free ice cream. It’s that baby bless it’s dark little heart. Nobody wants that baby to be real.”

It was true; Rocella felt her chest tighten when Ignancia told her about the baby. “ Look Mrs. Guzman, I need to get rid of a nasty tempered Witch who’s developed some weird culinary habits. Can you help us?”

Ignancia looked up at the ceiling like she was reading something up there and Rocella had to fight the urge to do the same.

Finally Ignancia said, “ Oh, this is going to be good, come on follow me, we have to go into the Workshop”

Rocella followed Ignancia behind the Counter and they went back into her Workshop and as the door clicked shut behind them it occurred to Rocella the door had been there a minute ago.

As Rocella drove back up to White Ash she went over the instruction again, “ You can’t write these down you know. You have to memorize this so don’t blow it. “

“ You know why Calisaya is bothering you all up in White Ash and not us down here in Duwamish?” Ignancia asked

“ I don’t know she likes the View?”

“ Don’t be stupid, it’s because you’re all old world up there. All that garlic and chanting and potions. She’s a modern woman and none of that is going to work on her. You have to think, how do you trap and kill a modern witch? “

Rocella shook her head, “ Come on Mrs. Guzman, the Sun is going to set soon and the Auditors will be heading up soon. “

Ignancia handed Rocella three sheets of what she thought were paper. But as the Sheriff took each one from Ignancia’ s hand she saw what they were, she could feel what they were and worse they were still warm. “ I don’t want to know “ Rocella said.

“ Don’t be such a baby. Now listen. You go to that tree by your courthouse. You go up on a ladder this has to be at least 7 feet up and you nail this first…”

“ Spells? I thought you said the old world…”

“ It’s not what you think. This is strictly modern and legal. Don’t look at me like that … it is. See, this is a Summons for her to appear, the minute this goes up no matter what she has to come forward. This is a warrant for her execution you nail this up second. This time I think you’ll find your rope will do it’s job and so will fire. I’d go with the rope it’s so dry out right now you wouldn’t want to start a forest fire, would you? Now, this little puppy is the dealmaker. This is her death certificate. You just sign here and there and here “ Ignancia said as she flipped the heavy pages up one by one and I think you’ll find yourself short a citizen before morning.

But if this comes down, if someone is dumb enough to pull the nail out and this paperwork is disturbed. Well, it won’t be good for White Ash. Won’t be so hot for me either.”

“ Fine, you got a pen or something cause I have to be going…Oh let me guess” Rocella said as she sat down hard on a wooden barstool and tilted her head to the side. “ Don’t get any of it on the Uniform. I just had it cleaned.”

Ignancia pulled a scalpel from a little black bag and as she found Sheriff Coffin’s artery and nicked it open she asked, “ so Rocella, how’s the family?”

So did it work? You’re probably wondering.

Well, White Ash is on the Map, and you can go there if you want and see for yourself.

It’s small and old fashion and the Sheriff is bad tempered and has this funny scar on the side of her neck that bleeds at the wrong time (birthday parties, funerals when she’s in Court and swearing and using profanity isn’t something you don’t want to do at the tops of your lungs)

As for Calisaya Stoneroot, you know there isn’t a Halloween that’s gone by for the past 40 odd years since her execution that a bunch of weirdos from Seattle and as far away as Bellingham don’t descend by the hundreds on poor little White Ash looking for the grave of the Witch of White Ash.

Was she real?

If proof is all you want all you have to do is go to the tree besides the court house and look up and there on one of the branches is an old frayed piece of rope still gray and covered with moss and further up still are three pieces of something that looks like parchment nailed firmly to the tree’s trunk.

Just make sure you leave White Ash before the sunsets.

And before the residents of White Ash start thinking about dinner.

WHAT THE DEAD MAN HEARD

2006-04-17T19:38:00.000-07:00

The Dead Man was wrapped in plastic and resting on the lower shelf of a C.U in a Funeral Home exactly four miles from where he once lived and exactly a half a block from where he died.

" So this is the guy that bought it outside the cemetery, I mean, is that a smack down or what?" the Dead Man heard. " Like, to DIE right outside a Funeral Home." The plastic was pulled back from his face and the Mortician, a young woman with vines and flowers tattooed around her neck, hidden while she worked with a high neck collars shook her head. " Dude, normally I don't pass judgment on the dead or how you got that way.... but that has got to be a major burn."

Her name was Alissa and she liked to listen to music as she worked. Loud music, especially at night when she had to work alone. The caretaker who had seen her drive up and knew he was about to be treated to hours of something called The Ramones asked her why she had to have the stereo up so loud and she said, " You know, we really shouldn't be here at night. You ever get that feeling?"

The Caretaker nodded because he understood it all right; he didn't like having a night shift around. He wished that the Morticians quit slacking off or doing whatever it was during the day that managed to put them behind schedule.

What he really hated though was that they called these night shifts " Embalming Parties" and when more then two of them were at these "embalming parties" they ordered Pizza from 4 different places and took bets on which delivery would actually show up.

Morbid little psychos.

" So, anyway, wouldn't want to over hear something I shouldn't."

The Caretaker agreed, "No you wouldn't" and he smiled and Alissa thought that The Caretaker (Tony) was one of the rare human beings who were lucky enought to be exactly where he should be in this life.

Alissa spent hours rebuilding the Dead Man’s face. At least only one side was damaged and she could use the other side as a guide. When she was finished she pulled the skin back up and over and looked at him for a very long time.

Then she started over.

Alissa was cleaning the Dead Man up when she heard someone walking up behind her, felt someone look over her shoulder and they were close enough that Alissa could feel their chest press against her shoulder.

“ You do wonderful work” the voice that was neither male nor female said but one thing she was sure of it was cold.

Alissa shook her head and wouldn’t allow herself to turn around because if she did that she’d end up running and leaving the Dead Man alone with that cold voice and she couldn’t.

Until they put him into the casket he was her responsibility.

After awhile Alissa heard rustling behind her, and she knew that whatever was back there had just sat down on the little green chair they kept in the room and they had slid it forwards towards the embalming table.

“I do enjoy watching you all work. After all with the flick of a scalpel and the plunge of a needle you try, and the word is try to not only hide my art, but also deny I even exist. Young lady, we’re speaking artist to artist here. How would you like it if I reached out and did the same…”

Alissa turned her head away and she felt a hand push at her waist to move her aside and she knew it was reaching towards the Dead Man, to the stitches on the right side of his neck. She pushed back and ignored the voice.

She even managed to smile.

The she placed her hand on the Dead Man’s shoulder and she told him, “ Here we go Sir.”

Alissa gently slid The Dead Man off the embalming table and onto the cot and she was about to wheel him out of the Embalming room when she saw the radio through the doorway next to the lockers in the Prep room. It was sitting on an orange plastic chair, like always only this time the cord was neatly coiled and resting on top of the stereo.

She had forgot to plug it in.

HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

2006-04-17T19:10:00.000-07:00

Back along on Deception Road is a little farmhouse that no one lives in.

After the house was built and then put up for sale the orchard out back died, the little vegetable garden died and all of the pumpkins and squashes and tomatoes rotted right on their vines.

Even the flowers in the window boxes shriveled up and turned to dust within a day or so after they were set out and all the little farmhouse could do was slam its doors open and shut and make the clock in its kitchen strike twelve over and over again.

The man who built the farmhouse, Travis Janosik, use to stand out at the road and wonder what the hell was going on in there, why was it that nothing could live near that place without giving up the ghost.

There was nothing about Travis that would make you say, ‘you know that killer house? The one on Deception Road? It was built by Travis Janosik” and the person you would be talking to wouldn’t reply, “ Well of course it was a strange house. Look who built it.”

No, the house turned bad all by itself and this bothered no one more then Travis. What bothered him more than that though happened when the house was two years old.

That’s when someone actually bought it and moved in.

The ‘someones’ who bought the farmhouse were the Korbar Family.

Travis use to drive out to Deception Road and park across the way from the Farmhouse and watch it. He’d see Darius Korbar working the vegetable garden or see him sitting on the porch with one of the many children he and Mrs. Korbar had and they acted like any other family living in those hills.

Unless of course you really watched them the way Travis did.

At first he had no interest in the Korbar family. His interest was in that house and what it was up to now. It didn’t have to settle for killing plants and the odd field animal that got to close to its walls. Now it had the Korbar children who scuttled around the property in their ill-fitting clothes.

At least that’s how it looked but then Travis realized it wasn’t the clothes that didn’t fit right, it was the bodies inside the clothes that weren’t right.

The children’s heads were to large for their small bodies and their hands and feet didn’t seem to be the same size and when they talked Travis felt the hair rising up on his arms and the back of his neck and that’s when he’d cut his daily vigil off.

Once Travis saw Mrs. Korbar come down the front steps with a tall glass in her hand and make her way to the garden to where Mr Korbar was working. She handed him the glass and he kissed her cheek and then she made her way back up the steps and Travis watched her but didn’t notice that as she climbed the steps her head was tilted slightly backwards and her back was straight as a pole and she never bent her knees.

It was like she was gliding up the steps and not walking up them at all.

Towards the end of the summer the gardens were dead and rotten and Mr Korbar was out there working it like it as if it were alive and thriving. The ground was water logged and moldy with green slime. The vegtables were rotting and decayed and you could actually smell it when the wind shifted.

On top of the fact that Travis was watching a man harvest from a garden full of rotten vegetables he was also sure that some of that smell was coming from Mr Korbar too.

Travis promised himself after that visit he wouldn’t go near the Farmhouse on Deception Road. Something was wrong with it, something was wrong with the people living inside of it and Travis was certain if he didn’t stop going over there something would be wrong with him too.

Of course, it was too late because that something had already happened to Travis and he found himself standing at the end of the drive leading right up to the Farmhouse the next day.

He was in plain view and Mrs. Korbar must have seen him from one of her windows because he wasn't there for long before she came down the steps and met him with a basket of rotting carrots and maggot filled tomatoes on her arm.

“ We never got the chance to thank you for building this wonderful house Mr Janosik. Its perfect and we love it so.”

Travis was looking into the basket of dead and decaying vegetables and he said, “ How could you love it so? Nothing can live inside of that thing…”

And Mrs. Korbar said, “ Well, Mr Janosik nothing does…”

BINDERWEED

2006-04-17T10:29:00.000-07:00

I introduced Lesser Thornapple here in the Land of Standing Stones and I thought some of you might be interested in learning how he got there. So here’s his story and it actually starts at...

THE END

On the Doctor's desk in the village of Ninebones Cross is the skull of a hanged man whose name was Lesser Thornapple.

Lesser was hung in 1864 for three murders and for a few that the people in the town of Bronson were pretty sure he did but couldn't prove and for the ones they were sure he would commit in the future.

So Lesser went to the Gallows and they hung him as the sun came up, which is the custom in the town of Bronson and no one there expected this was the last they'd hear of Lesser Thornapple and they were right.

100 Years Later

The night that Doctor Stavesacre and her assistant took Lesser from his grave it was raining and she was in one of her moods that Lesser would soon call her ‘bad hair days’.

Only two things truly annoyed Azi Stavesacre.

One of those things was not getting her way. The other was anything that kept her from getting her way. Tonight both things were nipping at her heels and she wasn’t angry, she wasn’t furious she was mad.

Truly and strictly by definition: Mad.

As in insane.

“ How many of these things have we opened tonight Henbane?”

Henbane looked over his shoulder and let out a sob and said, “ a lot Azi, an awful lot.”

“ And this is the best we could do?" she asked as she pointed into the last grave.

“ Its all we can do Azi, the rest of the graves were empty.”

Azi Stavesacre, Dr Azi Stavesacre the type of Doctor you went to if you had a silver bullet lodged in you somewhere or a stake in your heart or you were burned or had been maimed and were about to die…yet again was not a patient woman.

In fact she wasn’t a woman at all.

But lets get on with Lesser’s story, shall we?

Azi jumped down into the open grave and then she leaned over Lesser and carefully
pulled the shroud back from his upper body. “ Geeze Henbane, they didn’t even bother to cut the noose off. Look it’s still there.”

Henbane looked down to where Azi was pointing and shook his head.” Now that’s just not dignified.”

Azi straddled Lesser’s chest and pressed her knees against his shoulders.“ People are pathetic Henbane. There’s no two ways about it.”

Then she cut off Lesser’s head.

Lesser remembered Azi taking him to a little place in a town called Duwamish Bay and carefully handing him over to a small dark woman with short black hair. The woman’s name was Ignancia and he saw at once that Azi’s little rough edges and her general
unpleasant personality seemed to smooth out at least temporarily as the two women talked.

Ignancia who was the owner of the Shop, which was full of curious items including a mummy and a three-headed cat in a jar, lifted him carefully up to the light and nodded. “Sure, we can clean him up I think he’ll do just fine for you Azi.”

“He’s a hanged man Ignancia.”

“ The condemned work harder, you know that Azi.”

“ But they buried him with the noose still around his neck.”

“ You don’t say.”

“ I just did,”

Ignancia lifted Lesser up to her face and her dark eyes looked down into his dead ones and she said; “ now that’s very curious. When he comes around see if you can get him to tell you why.”

Lesser sat on the Doctor’s desk for over 10 years before he said one word and when he did Azi told him to shut up, she was working. He saw that yet another Were creature had been skewered with yet another silver arrow and the Werecat the Doctor was treating had already clawed Dr Stavesacre down the side of her face and had chewed off two of her fingers.

It was a good thing Azi couldn’t bleed Lesser thought or the examination room would be full of those Vampires who were out in the waiting room suffering from Garlic Poisoning.

So after ten years of saying nothing Lesser finally made a sound, and that sound sent Azi to her desk, dragging the were-cat by its neck with her.

She opened her desk drawer and dropped Lesser into it.

“ Bite me.” She snapped

And from the drawer Lesser tried to do just that.

Ignancia came by a few weeks later with her sister to invite Azi to tea. It was a tradition. They pretended to drink tea and act like ladies and when they were done they were usually drunk and Azi’s hazel eyes would turn to their natural shade of yellow and they would all pretend like they had the flu for the next few days.

“So, how is Mr Thornapple working out for you?”

Ignancia’ s sister Akela asked who was Thornapple and Azi said, “ The ungrateful dead man I rescued from an eternity of solitary confinement.”

“ Oh, you cut off some poor bastard’s head so that you could turn him into your own private guard dog.”

“Rescue.” Akela didn’t chuckle or snicker. When she laughed she really put effort into it “ you kill me Azi, you really do.”

“ Well, he’s not working. That’s the problem. Lazy dog just sits on my desk and does he warn me that danger is near? Hell no. Let me make that clear to you ladies HELL NO. I had a Werecat go crazy when I tried to pull some silver out of it’s chest and look” Azi held up her hand, “ it doesn’t hurt when you loose them but it sure as heck does when they grow back. Then I had to deal with all those little beasts at the same time.
Damn kids.”

“ What they do?”

“ The Benandanti kids rubbed garlic all over the Hellebore’s shrouds and the Hellebore’s dropped Wolfsbane into the Benandanti’ s well.”

“ Kid stuff…”

“ Yes well, I had to deal with a bunch of rowdy teenage vampires and werewolves tearing my reception area apart as well as have an insane Werecat try to eat my arm
and does Thornapple say anything before Armageddon rides into my office?
No. Unless you count laughing as a word.”

“ He laughed?”

“ Loudly, very, very, very loudly.”

Ignancia lowered her voice, “ what did you do to him?”

“ Nothing…nothing. He’s in my desk drawer. Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t touch him. Really!”

Ignancia leaned back and nodded, “ I don’t believe you.”

It's a fool who doesn't know their own friends and Ignancia Guzman was nobody's fool.

Azi was wrapped in a soft warm alcohol woven blanket when she stumbled into her office and pulled open her desk drawer. She reached in for Lesser and then dropped him down onto her desk from at least two feet up in the air and when he landed his teeth snapped together and then it was Azi’s turn to laugh.

“ I’m supposed to apologize.” She slurred imperiously.

Lesser’s black empty eye sockets seemed to be paying attention so she went on. “ It was wrong of me to dump you in the drawer, it was wrong of me to not even ask you your name. I’m sorry, okay?”

“ You robbed my grave.”

“ Oh, hell, there are worse things you can do the rob a grave like I don’t know, let me think…. oh yes here’s one Murder. That’s pretty darn bad too, isn’t it Lesser.”

Azi dropped herself into her chair and scooted it up to her desk. She reached for Lesser and when they were nose to, well, eye to eye he said, “ I never killed anybody Azi. I was innocent.”

He saw Azi sober up and felt her grip tighten around him. “ What?”

“ I was innocent. I never killed anyone Azi, but I know who did those awful things
and I never told the truth. I couldn’t.”

“ Damn it. That’s why you were down there still, you condemned yourself.”

“ I don’t know anything about that.”

“ Look, why’d they leave the rope around your neck. Do you know?”

“ The Hangman knew I was innocent. But he didn’t want me to be. So he left the noose on.”

Azi shook her head, “ People just mystify me Lesser, they really do.”

“ When do you plan on asking me about the graves Azi, all of those empty graves. You haven’t mentioned them once.”

“ I’m asking you now then, what happened to those graves. Why were they all empty?”

“ A friend of yours moved to Mourning Ridge, did you know?”

“ What friend?”

“ Delphine Heller. She’s back Azi and I’m pretty sure she was tearing that cemetery apart because she was looking for…”

Azi’s eyes didn’t flare or shine or glow deep orange and then yellow.

They burned.

“ Me.”

That one word echoed lonely and hallow in the dark office and Lesser was surprised because if he had to name a truly shunned creature it wouldn't be Azi Stavesacre. Still from the way that one word sounded he wondered if she felt the same way he did when he realized he was about to be hung for the murders his own son committed and then blamed him for.

Lesser Thornapple knew what if felt like to be abandoned. To be cast out so far you could never come back no matter how hard you tried.

He wouldn’t wish that feeling on anybody…or anything.

Lesser watched the face of the Witch Doctor and what surprised him was what he said next. “ Put me in the window Azi, I have work to do.”

And that Dear Readers is The beginning of my tale.
amm

DATURA MANZANILLO WALKS ALONE

2006-04-07T21:28:00.000-07:00

Datura Manzanillo walks alone and she started walking alone back in 1964.

That was the year she murdered her husband because she got tired of him.

She was tired of his jokes and the sound of his voice and the way he buttered his toast.

That was the worst; the careful way he sliced that thin shaving of butter from the cube and the careful way he smoothed it over the bread, which was of course a certain shade of gold.

Nothing else would do.

God she couldn’t stand it, he’d actually concentrate over those slices of bread the same way a heart surgeon would over an open chest. No, that’s going to far. The heart surgeon probably didn’t put that much effort or concentration into his work the Stewart did.

So one morning after listening to him blah, blah, blah-she didn’t actually remember what he said because she’d learned to shut off the minute he opened his mouth years ago she saw him start his toast.

“ God, no “ she said “ please not the toast, sweet Lord not the toast. I can’t take it anymore.”

But Stewart, who was actually a nice person if you asked anybody else and really had no idea that a monster had been sleeping next to him for over 20 years thought she was teasing and he actually laughed. She remembered him asking her if she wanted some too and when she said yes and he turned away from her to reach for more bread Datura Manzanillo came up behind Stewart with a knife and she said, “ I wasn’t kidding Stewart.”

And when Stewart turned around he saw how serious she was.

There was a trial and Datura remembered the way the Jury tittered when the story about the toast came up. It didn’t matter though, it was a cheap laugh and in the end they sentenced her to death.

If she had just stabbed Stewart to death they may have spared her life. But she’d cut and hacked and at some point nearly took off his head. The jurors didn’t laugh when they heard that. One looked positively green and the rest looked at her with pure unadulterated disgust.

The jury only had a glimpse of the real Datura when they heard the details of her crime, poor Stewart saw her for what she was in all of her glory and if anyone thought a rope around her neck would end anyone having to suffer through that again they were woefully mistaken.

Datura remembered her execution and she remembered when they cut her down from the hangman’s noose. “ Don’t let her fall, “ someone had said, “ if you drop her you get to clean up the mess “

She remembered that no one came to her funeral and she remembered the way the Undertaker had looked into her flat dead eyes and said, “I sure wouldn’t want to be you right now. “

" No, you wouldn't want to be me " she wanted to say back, but instead she smiled her dead woman's smile and then they buried her.

She thought at least she’d go to Hell or something…but where did she end up? Right outside the cemetery they buried her in. She wondered if she would see Stewart and she guessed not. They wouldn’t bury him in the same place they buried her now would they?

Datura Manzanillo spent years and years walking that short walk in front of the cemetery and she didn’t mind, though she did wonder why she was here and not anywhere else.

Then one day it all changed

She’d hung around for years, in all of that time she couldn’t actually see anyone but she could feel them…living people passing around her and by her and one day a woman actually stopped and turned around and she really saw Datura and Datura finally saw someone else.

After that first time it happened more and more often.

Datura eventually learned that only certain people with a certain little secret festering away at their brains and soul would see her. Those people popped out of thin air and she’d come up behind them and snicker into their ear, “ I know what you’re thinking, you silly goose and we can make it happen. Come on, let’s take a walk.”

It was difficult to say how time passed after Datura first talked to newfound friends and when it was she’d see them again. When she finally did see them they’d be leaving the cemetery and getting into these old fashioned paddy wagons being pulled by these gigantic black horses.

As they’d pass her they’d spit or swear and more often then not she’d hear, “ thanks for the advice you bitch!”

Datura would shrug and laugh and she’d start to do what she will be doing forever; she’s walking in front of that cemetery gate. So here’s a little useful advice; if you’re out walking one night and you're devoutly praying for someone close to you to drop dead and a little voice says,“ I know what you’re thinking, you silly goose and we can make it happen. Come on, let’s take a walk.”

Don’t turn around and for heavens don’t stop and listen, Datura Manzanillo walks alone and she’s always looking for a little company.

THE UNQUIET GRAVE OF IRIS WINTERBARK

2006-04-07T15:16:00.000-07:00

Behind the building called the school house, under the hanging tree is the Unquiet Grave of Iris Winterbark. She was supposed to have been the teacher in that little schoolhouse and the twisted rotted oak tree out back is where she was suppose to have dispatched her more unruly students by hanging…either that or she was suppose to have hung them by their heals and burned them alive.

This particular story came from a town called Deuil right here in the Olympics of Washington State…and morbid story about a demonic school teacher aside the real mystery is why, in what was considered a good sized town, there was there only one grave and no cemetery.

When Deuil was founded there were 30 families living there- and it was exactly 30 families that were to disappear from there one day.

No one could tell what day that was, or what year or if it happened slowly or all at once because nobody in the surrounding towns really had much to do with the residents of Deuil .

For the most part they were shunned because most shocking of all to the somewhat narrow of mind and narrow of spirit of their neighbors was that some of the men and women of Deuil had taken Indians and other dark skinned people as their husbands and wives.

And worst of all, no request had ever come from the Town of Deuil for a Minister to come out and visit them.

It’s very famous, or infamous depending on your point of view, and most of the stories you’ll probably come across aren’t true, but the one about Iris Winterbark is.

Iris Winterbark showed up to teach school in April, she was small and thin and nobody liked her. It wasn’t because she was strict and she kept the razor strop on her desk that she could snatch up with lighting speed that you’d never think a woman her age was capable of, no it was because of something no one could put there finger on because it wasn’t easy to notice but it preyed on your mind like a starving wolf all the same.

Iris Winterbark never seemed to take a breath and she never blinked.

She would spend her teaching days looking out at her few dozen students with disgust because they were filthy little creatures that smelled like they never bathed and she would hiss out history lessons and math lessons and spelling lessons and geography lessons.

The rest of the time her gaze and face was as slack and expressionless as a corpse’s face.

That is until some unfortunate student made a mistake. Then those flat blue eyes would suddenly spark to life and her face would crack into a smile and bang!

The strop would be in her hand and some poor slow pupil would be bleeding and Iris Winterbark would be at her desk again prim and still as a marble statue in a cemetery.

Now every class has its odd student out and in this class it was a boy named Petty Morel.

Petty had a hard time studying because he’d been sick for most of that spring and when he got well he wasn’t the same.

He’d glare at his classmates and he’d glare at his parents and he’d glare right back at Miss Winterbark hardest of all. After failing an arithmetic lesson and after writing the correct answer 500 times on the blackboard and after Miss Winterbark had administered the strop Petty stood at the front of the class and dripped blood all over the shiny wood floor and said, “ you’re just an evil old witch.”

And Miss Winterbark had said, “ There are no such things as witches Petty, but I’m very real and I would be very careful of what you said if I were you.”

“ Then you’re not a witch? “ Petty had asked as a wide beautiful smile crossed his face.

“ I most certainly am not.”

“ I’m glad to hear that Miss Winterbark, I really am.”

None of his classmates were paying attention to anything Petty and Miss Winterbark were saying. They were too busy watching the blood pool at Petty’s feet.

The next day Petty Morel walked up to Miss Winterbark’s desk after class and he asked her, “ is it true you hang people out behind the school house and they come back to life when you want them too.”

“ No it isn’t.”

“ Do you bury people alive?”

“ I most certainly do not!”

Petty almost looked disappointed, then he sighed.

Petty stood in front of Miss Winterbark’ s desk with his hands folded behind his back and was about to say something more when Miss Winterbark slammed her hand on her desk and made Petty jump about six inches off the ground. “ I have never a group of such dull slow witted children as I have in this town. And look at those nails and your hair…. dirt and leaves in your hair. My goodness, what do you children do, sleep outside with the rest of the animals?”

“ I don’t sleep outside in the open, my Parents would never let me do that Miss Winterbark. Its not safe you know.”

Then Petty watched the sun sink behind the window and he said with his sharp pointed white teeth “I’m so glad you’re not a witch Miss Winterbark, I really am. “

Petty wasn't really worried about how angry his Mother was , he could deal with her being angry. It wasn't the same this time because his Mother was furious and she shook his arm so hard it made his teeth rattle. “ Who on earth is going to clean up this mess Petty Morel? “

“ I am mother, “ he said. He around the blood spattered walls and what was left of Miss Winterbark on her desk and what was left of her under the window and over by the door and he sobbed, “This is the biggest mess I’ve ever seen in my life! It’s going to take me all night to clean up!”

“ Well, being that you already ate all I can do is deny you dessert and playtime with your friends. This is very serious Petty, do you know how hard it is to get a teacher to come out to places like this?”

“ I don’t know why we have to go to school at all, I don’t see why it matters anymore.”

“ Listen to me Petty Morel, we maybe living out in the middle of nowhere in these godforsaken mountains, but our family has been well educated since we left our home in Transylvania and I see no reason now why that should stop. Do you understand me?”

Then she handed him a shovel, gave him a good solid whack on his backside and she sent Petty out back to dig the only grave they ever really needed in the little town called Deuil.

THE STRANGE ADVENTURE OF OLIBANUM FRANKS WORD THIEF

2006-04-04T12:39:00.000-07:00

It was snowing on the night Olibanum Franks disappeared from his cottage on the cliffs and Olibanum who thought electricity was an uncontrollable monster just waiting to strike him down lived alone in that house by lamplight.

On that awful night there must have been some sort of accident with one of those lamps or maybe a candle because that little cottage on the cliffs burned down and from the valley below the burning trees looked just like the candles that Olibanum used to read by when the Sun went down.

All they could do in the little village of Ninebones Cross was to watch and hope the fire didn’t spread down the hillside and take them the way it must have taken poor Olibanum up there on the cliffs.

Four days later it was safe enough to go up to Olibanum’ s cottage and they didn’t find a trace of their friend; not a bone or a button or even the melted remains of the little silver rings he wore on his left hand.

So with nothing to bury the Villagers wondered what kind of funeral should they hold for their friend and in the end they didn’t have a funeral because none of them really believed Olibanum was dead.

He was just gone.

Of course Olibanum wasn’t really gone, but he knew if he didn’t get away from the crazy woman sitting in front of the computer soon he would be.

Olibanum remembered the fire and he remembered the roof caving in on his head and he even remembered the smell of his own flesh beginning to burn.

And then there was a bright light and he was lying on his back and looking up into the very unwell face of Tamara Osterick and when she smiled he knew he was in trouble.

Lots and lots of trouble.

At first Olibanum wouldn’t say a word, he went to the window and looked out into the strange world that this strange woman had brought him into. She lived in a tall building and the people and cars below were the size of children’s toys. But looking out into this awful world was much better then looking into the face of that awful monster that brought him here.

He didn’t want her to talk to him; he didn’t want her to look him. Because when she did she got into his head and that was somewhere he wanted to keep her out of as long as he could.

So as long as Olibanum’ s eyes were opened and he was looking around the woman at the computer wrote and the screen filled with words and images and she ignored him.

She didn’t care that she was stealing from him…that she had stolen him from Kamala. She just wanted the words; no matter what she had to do she wanted the words for her own.

He was nothing except for letters and words and punctuation marks to Tamara Osterick and that was how she treated him.

It was only when he sat down and closed his eyes that she seemed to take notice of him. “ You’re not helping either one of us by refusing to cooperate Ollie.” She stopped typing and looked up at him and then she shuddered.

“ Geeze, the first thing we’re going to change is that hair cut. Really, is that the best Kamala could come up with at the end of her long and prolific writing career? A crazy man who cuts his own hair and lives on a cliff and gets blamed for murders being committed by vampires?

“ I’m not crazy. “

“ Dude, you’re crazy she wrote you that way.”

“ No, she didn’t.”

Tamara laughed “ look at me, I’m arguing with a character a dead woman made up. Is that a riot or what Ollie?”

And all Olibanum could do was back up against the wall and try not to panic. But it was hard too because that woman was about to murder him and there was nothing to stop her from doing it.

Nothing.

All he could think to say was “ Don’t call me Ollie.”

But of course Tamara wasn’t listening.

She was too busy stealing…and losing her mind.

Olibanum couldn’t know it but his world was gone; Ninebones Cross, his burned out cottage and all his friends. Gone and the woman sitting across from him was the reason why.

There was no way for him to know, but he did and the quiet gentle man that lived on cliff in a small cottage and read by candlelight felt it…and then he began to change.

He watched the screen fill up with words and words and more words and as they appeared Olibanum could feel himself becoming less. He could see his reflection in the mirror over Tamara’s couch and his hair was changing. It was lighter and longer and his eyes were dark green now. He held his hand up and saw that all of the silver rings Kamala had given him in her first book were gone. She’d written it into the story just for Olibanum because he had suffered so much in that story. As she ended the story she thought the gift of those little rings was the least she could do for him.

He remembered the sound of her fighting with someone she thought of as EDITOR over what was called a “throw away scene.”

He’d heard her yell, “ No, its staying in there. I know it doesn’t make sense! But if you take it out I take a walk and I take those four books you want with me!”

And in the end the rings stayed and Olibanum had something in that forest of words that Kamala grew over 30 years of writing just for him.

Now Olibanum didn’t have his cottage on a cliff, he was being moved to an apartment and his hair was blond and neatly trimmed and he murdered women for fun. That’s what he picked up as the Monster re- wrote and butchered away at Olibanum’ s life.

Tamara’s thoughts weren’t as clear as Kamala’ s. They were dark and twisted and Olibanum didn’t like them rolling around in his head. But the more she wrote the more clearly he could hear and see them.

They were making him crazy.

“ Will you answer just one question for me?” Olibanum asked, “ What happened to Kamala?”

Tamara stopped typing and Olibanum saw her shoulders shake and he thought she was crying.

“ Freak accident, she was electrocuted “ Tamara choked “ her radio fell into her tub and fried her up like calamari.” And then Tamara laughed so hard she vomited all over her desk.

But she didn’t seem to care.

She just kept laughing.

So Olibanum’ s friends were dead and he was pretty sure his world was gone and pretty soon he would be gone too. Rewritten by this horrible woman and her dark thoughts.

And then he got an idea, he was inspired and he realized it was probably Tamara’s idea so it wouldn’t be like murder at all.

It was more like suicide.

With that squared up and neatly justified in what was left of his eroding brain Olibanum asked Tamara “could you open the glass doors Tamara? I’d like to feel the night air before…you know. I change. Just one last time. Please. I’d open the door myself, but I might… I don’t know... break.”

Olibanum held up his hand and Tamara could see both his hands were missing fingers and his left wrist had no flesh on it at all.

Then Tamara looked up into Olibanum’ s changing face and she felt sorry for him. Until she was done writing he was going to look like a poorly made rag doll and that of course he might stay that way if she never finished her story.

Oh well.

She opened the door and went into the kitchen to get some supplies to clean up the mess on her desk. When she came back out into the living room Olibanum was gone.

Tamara raced out onto the patio and looked down over the railing and then her feet left the ground and she was over the railing and as the ground rushed up to meet her Tamara's last thought was ‘ the world is melting”

The Villagers of Ninebones Cross found Olibanum wandering next to the remains of his burned out home. His face was scared and one of his eyes was gone but he was back and that was all that mattered.

“ Where did you go Olibanum? What happened to you?” they all asked.

And Olibanum said,

“It was snowing on the night I disappeared from my cottage on the cliffs and because I thought electricity was an uncontrollable monster just waiting to strike me down I live in alone in that house by lamplight…”

The Strange Tale of Waldgrave Dahaka

2006-04-01T15:33:00.000-08:00

In the Land of Standing Stones is a place called Mourning Ridge and when I was last there I learned the Strange Tale of Waldgrave Dahaka-enjoy!
amm

They found the last body on Mourning Ridge just before sundown

The Sheriff was there and so was her deputy and Borgia Sainbury the Chief Undertaker of Mourning Ridge Cemetery and Funeral Home was there too. Borgia looked up at the Sheriff and said “ that makes 46”.

The headless corpse had been tied to the ornate iron gate that separated Mourning Ridge Cemetery and Funeral Home from the rest of the world. It was a messy set of human remains and it was starting to attract flies that the women flicked away from their faces when one of the pests settled to close to their eyes.

In the back seat of the Sheriff’s Jeep a set of dark red eyes glared at them and a voice called to them in a long dead language that they all understood, “ It wasn’t me! Do you hear me? It was him it was Abendroth Danvers! He’s back! Listen to me I’m innocent!”

They all laughed as the sunset because no matter how you looked at it that was a pretty funny comment to be coming from a Demon.

After he was booked and then convicted by the Sheriff and the Merchants Association of Duwamish Bay the Sheriff began as she had for years and years to prepare for the execution of her inmate.

“ Do you have to do that in front of me? “

The Sheriff looked up and said, “ as a matter of fact I do Danvers. You know the rules. You’ve lived here long enough”

“ I’m not Danvers, I’m Waldgrave, Waldgrave Dahaka. I’ve told you. I’m not Danvers. Not now anyway” and Waldgrave suddenly sounded so scared that Sarah almost dropped the metal sling and the rope in her hands.

When she saw it was just Waldgrave she went back to work.

“ Look Waldgrave. Answer me this… are those Danver's hands? Danver’s teeth? Well are they?”

“ Yes they are.”

“ Good then we understand each other. Those hands killed 46 people in the past four months and those teeth well, those teeth acted in the crimes too. That’s all I care about. You were in possession of those so you are responsible. Sorry.” Of course she didn’t sound sorry. It wasn’t a Warden or a Sheriff’s job to feel sorry.

“ Listen to me, Danvers is coming back. I couldn’t stop him.”

“ Oh, and I’m sure you tried very hard to do that.”

“ Yes I did Sheriff. I don’t care what you think of me but that’s the truth. I like it here. I don’t want to leave. I wouldn’t have done anything to endanger myself or my home here.”

Then Waldgrave saw what the Sheriff had in her hands and he looked up and whispered, “ my neck…you’re going to break my neck.” He could barely whisper the words. Then he turned away from her and slid to the floor cradling his head in his hands “ I can’t believe this. Its not right”

“ Listen Waldgrave…46. Four – Six, 17 were from Duwamish Bay. That wasn’t right either.”

“ 98.” He said dully.

“ What?”

“98” Waldgrave told her, “ You forgot to check Lake Undercroft. It’s 98”

And so it was.

The next night Sheriff Guzman and her Deputy prepared Waldgrave for his execution.

When they were done tattooing his face and after they had cut off his left hand Sarah and her Deputy drove him out to Lost Harbor Road and to the oak tree they kept out there for nights just like this one.

Next to Waldgrave on the seat, and it was Waldgrave in the Jeep that night because Danvers was unusually quiet, was the rope and sling, a burlap bag dotted with small red stains and a small stone box and of course the ax.

Waldgrave looked out of his window so that he didn’t have to look at what was on the seat next to him. He watched the Harbor Gorge fill with unnaturally blue moonlight and he knew the air outside the car was turning fetid and humid. It always did on execution nights. He asked “ My neck, you know what will happen if you break my neck before you execute me. “

“ That’s the idea.”

“ But I didn’t commit those murders, Danvers did. The very most I’m guilty of is demonic possession and that wouldn’t even get me life in Sawajinn. You could even have my sentence commuted to Fallen. Why are you doing this? “

The Sheriff slammed the brakes on and before the vehicle was at a full stop she was outside of the Jeep and throwing open the back door. She reached in for Waldgrave and pulled him out and threw him up against the car hard enough to shatter the bulletproof window. “ Do you honestly want me to believe that a demon clever enough, strong enough to hide in the same body for over 100 years was powerless to stop a mortal, a flesh and blood mortal from killing 98 people? Its bull and you know it Waldgrave.”

“ It’s the truth Sarah. It’s the truth!” He tried to pull his face away from Sarah’s teeth and when he did his neck came close to Sarah’s mouth. He almost saved her the trouble of execution when that happened because his heart nearly exploded in his chest.

“ They’re mortal Sarah, they’re not stupid and they’re much stronger then any of us give them credit for. You’re executing me because you’re afraid. You all are. Because if one psychotic human could best me that means all of you…all of us aren’t as safe as we’d like to think we are here in Duwamish Bay. Killing me won’t change that. “

Then the Sheriff reached through the open door, grabbed the ax and swung it down.

It was Waldgrave and Waldgrave alone who finished the ride to Fallen Penitentiary that foggy night.

When Sarah looked into her rearview mirror the face that looked back at her from the back seat wasn’t a twisted demonic face, it didn’t have horns or red skin or a forked tongue.

Waldgrave Dahaka looked middle aged and ordinary and he had very straight white teeth. Of course his eyes were blood red and when he talked the air seemed to chill slightly but in Duwamish Bay it wasn’t polite to point things like that out.

So Sarah didn’t.

“I’ve decided Sawajinn isn’t appropriate for you in this case” Sarah heard Waldgrave catch his breath and she could hear him saying something, or was he crying? It was hard to tell. She’d never heard a Demon make a sound like that before.

“ It’s 500 years in Fallen Waldgrave and that’s firm. You’ve been convicted of the Crime of Demonic Possession. I took off 100 as time served.”

“ Thank you Sheriff, thank you.” Waldgrave told her.

As they drove up to the darkened barred windows of Fallen and the dark figures of the Wardens walked towards the car Sarah told Waldgrave, “ I’m sending Danver’s heart to Sawajinn, it’s the most I can do for you and it’s the best I can do for his victims. I mean he’s going to rot in a prison designed for, well, the kind of people that live in Duwamish Bay. You couldn’t pay me enough to watch what’s going to happen to him there. Still it’s 98 dead, but if you wouldn’t have been there…who knows how much worse it could have been.”

Then Sarah asked and you could hear that she probably already knew what Waldgrave was going to say “answer me this Waldgrave, was Danvers human?”

“ I’m sure of it.”

Sarah grimaced and Waldgrave wasn’t sure if she was reacting to the Wardens or what he said.

Waldgrave leaned back and nodded. “ I’m afraid” the Demon told the Sheriff as the Wardens came for him.

Sarah was looking far away into the darkness and she thought of that dark human heart that shouldn’t exist being taken to the dark Prison at the end of the world and she said, “ we all are Waldgrave, we all are.”

DIARY OF DELIRIUM

2006-03-19T08:23:00.000-08:00

The strange history of Riversleigh Manor can be found in letters tied together with ribbon and human hair. It’s been written in bold and spidery script in diaries that were hidden between floorboards. It has also been found in the paintings hanging on its walls and in boxes and trunks in the attics and basements.

In some cases the history of the Dark Manor has been captured in the cemetery located behind the Chapel and in the Catacombs hidden beneath the Manor.

So have a seat, lock your doors, turn up the lights and check under your bed. This is the Diary of Delirium...or The Strange History of Riversleigh Manor.

Page from a Diary used as a bookmark in an atlas:

I found this diary in the rooms that the Residents of Riversleigh call “ The School Room”
They said the woman who stayed up there was Mad…or that’s what happened to her in the end.
Interesting Reading

January 6, 1906

I've left my home, which is dark and full of secrets and treasures to stay here at Riversleigh Manor where it is just dark.

No matter what you do it's always so dark.

I found the basements comforting and I've found the attics...well they found me the night I arrived.

We’ve become friends.

I think the Attics were once used as schoolrooms but I wonder at what the students were being taught here; I wonder why the doors have locks and door handles on the outsides of the doors and none on the inside.

I wonder why it is the windows are barred and why the fireplace is always warm despite the fact it is choked full of dust and weeds and spider’s webs.

I wonder what it is I hear between the floorboards and inside the walls. I wonder why the shadows have to many arms and legs and heads.

Yes I wonder…and I think I’m going to like it here, I do believe I’ll make myself at home.

I think I belong here.

I think I have no choice.
GHM

The other Residents have told me that Riversleigh is a "warm and fuzzy place" (my quote)so of course I made no friends when I asked if that's true then why is it set so far apart from the rest of the world? And what on Earth happened to the Woman in the Attics? I’ve noticed no one refers to her in the past tense. It’s like she’s still up there.

Strange Strange Place.
amm

Midnight Conversation in Riversleigh Manor

There’s something buried in the Gardener’s Shed and why would someone bury something that wasn’t dead yet?

The thing in the shed isn’t buried very deep, so if you were to crawl over the dead fall in front of the door and were able to push your way through he matted cobwebs and you didn’t mind the smell of rotting leaves and small unburied creatures you’d see there under the window a slightly raised mound of earth.

Were you to look at the raised mound long enough and the light somehow managed to find it’s way through the little panes of glass covered with dust and dirt you’d think someone was lying there on their side with one arm cradling their cheek and the other laying comfortably on their side.

Wouldn’t you?

If you brought a flashlight and the beam was bright you might think you could see something wrong with the entire left side of the sleeping figure’s face. You might think that maybe that the face was gone, smashed in by something like that shovel in the corner.

Isn’t that right?

They might wonder what you were doing back there in a rotting shed behind the Manor House in the dead of Night, they might see you take the shovel and try to smooth and pound that little raised mound of Earth flat.

That’s what they’d see wouldn’t they?

So I must ask you again, why would you bury something that is not dead yet? Go ahead you can tell me. Just keep your hands were I can see them.

A LITTLE NIGHT MADNESS FROM RIVERSLEIGH

Do you know what’s buried under Riversleigh Manor? Do you know why it gets so dark there at night even when the lights are on and blazing?

All you have to do is follow the shadows.

Just don’t let them know you’re watching.

At nightfall the shadows break away from the corners and come from under the beds and out of the closets and they creep and crawl and hiss along the cold hardwood floors. They pass over sleeping faces and pull at hands and feet silly enough to stray from under heavy blankets and quilts sewn by women dead for over a hundred years.

They search the attics and basements and linger over places like the front hall where Mrs. Undercroft was found dead and cold with small purple flowers clutched in one hand and more of them falling from her lips.

They pass quietly over the desk where Mr Undercroft took the life of his daughter Elizabeth. He crushed the back of her skull with a small stone gargoyle carved from marble and he held it against her wound as it fed.

Then the shadows move to the attics where Mrs. Undercrofts daughter Bedelia was kept. The darkness liked Bedelia Undercroft and spent hours with her as she gave reading and math and music lessons to children born from Bedelia’s insane and unstable mind.

There were no children with Bedelia in that room.

That’s what the residents of Riversleigh would say; there were no children up there with Bedelia.

They’d cover their ears and chant over and over “ there are no children up there, there are no children up there”. They said that louder when they heard the laughing and chuckling and small voices dutifully repeating Bedelia’s lessons.

Bedelia gave art lessons to her Phantom school children and their dark and twisted images of screaming faces and twisted bodies with to many or not enough limbs were tacked to the walls under little green tiles decorated with the alphabet and ducks.

But the darkness knew those little students that attended Bedelia’s classes, and it was the darkness that took the students away when their lessons were done. Even the Manor’s soon to be gardener Mr Eramus Undercroft (at the time he was simply known as Uncle Eramus) would stop by and watch Bedelia teach her little pupils about bones and hearts and curses and poisons and fear.

Mr Eramus Undercroft who took lives and souls for the pure pleasure of the act (and he knew several dark acts) was stunned and humbled by the wealth of knowledge Miss Bedelia had at her fingertips.

And then one day after giving a long and difficult lesson in something Bedelia called
Sin Eating the carpet under her feet began to buckle and twist and she was pulled down through floors and then the ceilings over and over again until she reached the foundation of Riversleigh.

“ Bedelia, Bedelia teach me what you know,” something said into her ear.

Bedelia couldn’t really answer because her mouth was full of sour dark earth. But she opened her mouth and from the back of her throat she hissed, “ yesss… I'd love too.”

And she taught Riversleigh everything she knew.

She hasn't stopped teaching Riversleigh and she never will.

So now you know what’s buried under Riversleigh and that’s why it’s so dark there no matter how many lights are blazing.

Aren't you glad you asked?

MORE CONVERSATIONS BY MOONLIGHT

I came to the Gardens of Riversleigh with the Shadows.

I’ve brought a present for this place.

Look here….

In my hand I hold these seeds.

I robbed them from Corpses and Witches, Ghouls and Ghosts. I’ve sailed cursed ships and traveled through airless catacombs to find them.

They are mine and I’ve traveled to dark, dark places to find them…to bring back each one.

It wouldn’t be fun to keep them all to myself. I’ve brought them back here to share.

I’ve come a long way to share them all.

The Nightshade and Wolfsbane, Mandrake and Thistles and Weeds. The inspire me, they speak to me they are beautiful to me. I want to make them all live. Each and every one of them.

TEA TIME IN RIVERSLEIGH

Riversleigh Manor isn’t just a house and it isn’t named for the River that runs below it that dried up and died years ago.

It was named for a family called Riversleigh.

The person who know this story best is named Acantha Deverell
and she takes her tea at Riversleigh Manor by Moonlight. If you’re really curious about Riversleigh and most of the guests here are you could join her and ask her about the Riversleigh Family.

Acantha is always dressed in black and she sits alone in the library
every night as she sips her hot poisonous drink and nibbles on her deadly dessert and admires the little fine bone china cup crafted by her own hand at her Father’s request.

The request came one dark winter many years ago on the night Mr Riversleigh rode out to Deverell Hall and demanded to see Mr Albido Deverell.

Mr Riversleigh stood in the Great Hall and called out over and over again until Albido appeared right behind him where he was warming his hands over a cold dark fire in the massive marble fireplace.

“ Mr Riversleigh what on earth would bring you out on night like this? What am I saying? What on Earth could get you to leave the Manor at all?”

Faxon Riversleigh could barely speak, “ you know why I’m here and I want you to do something about it. That new Sheriff from that town down the river in Duwamish Bay, she’s the reason I’m here. She knows about us and she’s coming for us all.”

Albido Deverell smiled, and Faxon backed up and away from those jagged pointed teeth “ she’s from the Sawajinn Family and my friend there is no getting away from them. Not for people like us. “

“ I don’t care what family she’s from, get rid of her.”

“ And why should I bring the Law and the Warden of Sawajinn into my house Riversleigh when you’re the one with the bodies. My heavens man they’re in the walls and below the floorboards and the River…how on Earth did you manage to kill that?”

“ I did it for you Deverell, I fed you and this nest of creatures you have as a family. “

“ And in return Riversleigh…oh the things you’ve received in return have you forgotten them? You handed me flesh and bone and in return
I handed you gold and jewels and art and immortality Riversleigh. Don’t forget that my friend… the immortality. Nothing can kill you, you and yours will never die.”

“ Oh thank you so much for that, my insane children, my wife has
turned into a living corpse that spends her time in the catacombs
below my home thanks you so much for that. “

“ You’re welcome. I’ve always liked Elizabeth.”

Riversleigh would have liked to twist Deverell’s head right off of his shoulders and he would have if he thought it would have made a difference.

“ The Warden only comes for things that bring attention to Duwamish Bay. She’s ready to take us all to Sawajinn and I have to say, I’m not anxious to go back there. So I’ve made a deal of sorts with her” Deverell sounded very pleased with himself.

“ With the Warden?”

Deverell wasn’t smiling now “ a most unpleasant creature to deal with. She was no sport at all. We’ve come to an arrangement.”

“ What’s going to happen to us? “

“ She wants assurance that you and your family never leave Riversleigh. If I can keep my end of the bargain she won’t take me back to Sawajinn. That foul beast assured me she would take me back piece by piece and to prove her point she killed my wives and staff right in front of me.” Deverell actually choked up and cried out in agony “Do you have any idea Riversleigh how hard it is to find good help now days? “

Riversleigh knew it was pointless to yell or run or beg so he just asked, “ are you going to kill us Deverell?”

“ The deal Riversleigh is to keep you in your house and I think I’ve found a way to do that, in fact I’ve started already.”

There was a mound of ash at least four feet high in the massive stone fireplace and Riversleigh saw scattered around the fireplace lttle gold and silver buttons and small bits of bone.

“ My daughter Acantha is a talented artist Riversleigh and she’s been away learning a new craft. I must say I found it a bit unappetizing but we do what we can to support those we love. Don’t we? She’s learned to make something called Bone China. Have you heard of it?”

Riversleigh shook his head and the floor dropped from beneath his feet.

“Go down to the basement where she works Riversleigh I think you’re going to be amazed at what you can create from a little ash and sand.”

Three months later Acantha brought a set of beautiful bone china teacups and a lovely teapot to Riversleigh Manor. Mrs. Clark, the housekeeper, allowed Acantha into the Manor and she watched as the young woman carefully set the table for tea.

“ It’s a shame Mrs. Riversleigh isn’t here to see this, I don’t know where the family is. You know how they are Miss Deverell, they said they’d never leave this place.”

The delicate cups sat in a ring around the teapot and Mrs. Clark saw that there was one for each member of the family. They were painted with small purple flowers and little raised bumps that looked like eyes rimmed the saucers.

They were strange little things but all the same the Housekeeper felt her hands twitch and she was about to reach for one of the cups when she thought she heard Mrs. Riversleigh calling out. Or could it have been one of the girls? How faint and at the same time how close their voices sounded!

Then the sounds were gone.

Acantha brought one of the little cups to her cheek and smiled “ They’re closer then you think Mrs. Clark. Would you care to join us for tea? “

STORIES FROM FARAWAY

2006-02-07T19:05:00.000-08:00

BEWARE OF FARAWAY

Hidden from the safe roads and safe streets and quiet parks and green forests and the sunlight is my hometown...its called Faraway and no one comes here on purpose.

Maybe it's because everything here is covered with dust...the people, houses buildings trees and plants. I guess it could be because no one speaks loudly here, no one is awake here. Faraway is the place where nightmares live and once you've been to Faraway you can never really belong anywhere else again.

So what do we do here, Faraway from the rest of the world?

When the sunsets we like to go out to the Middle of the Desert where the Wells of Angra Lei are and we drop stones down into them and listen to them fall and fall and fall and sometimes we swear you can hear them hit the bottom...but of course that's not true.

These Wells have never held water and they are out here, away from anything alive for a reason.

The air that comes up from the Wells of Angra are so poisonous one whiff could melt your heart in your chest and your poor eyes would run like rivers down your cheeks. Nothing has ever come up from those wells except for Death...and why should that surprise you?

It has to come from somewhere...Death you see comes from Faraway.

My Mother use to visit the Wells during the daylight, she would lean over the sides and whisper things down into the Wells and sometimes she would laugh and sometimes she would curse but she did it by daylight.

She was also very, very insane.

She was you see, from Faraway and nothing here is familiar or safe. Nothing Faraway is what you think it is.

Living in Faraway will change you.

Being from Faraway will damn you.

Like it did to my Mother…and what it did to me.

And what it will do to you, if you’re not careful of Faraway.

FARAWAY AT MIDNIGHT

There is a woman who is voiceless from wailing and wasted from weeping and Death visits her from Faraway at Midnight.

Death finds her in her Garden, her long dead garden tending to weeds and thorns and sticker bushes and poisonous plants and as she harvests and picks and adds each deadly plant to her basket woven from human hair Death shudders and hides in the Shadows and is grateful the Woman can’t see him.

All the same she knows Death is there and when she senses it, she reaches into her basket and lifts one of the plants to her lips and pushes it into her mouth. She chews and swallows and screeches into the darkness, “ Where are you? Why isn’t these working…someone tell me why this isn’t working! “

Death would squeeze it’s eyes shut if it had eyes, so instead it raises it’s pale cold hand to it’s empty eye sockets and covers it’s face the best it can. It’s fingers press against it’s mouth and it does this to keep from calling out, from screaming because the Woman who is voiceless from wailing and wasted from weeping is a corpse and a shell and once long ago she murdered a man.

He was the Husband of a Woman who came from a place called Sawajinn, a place that Time and Death and Life avoided at all costs, because a visit there would cost the traveler everything.

Everything.

The former resident of Sawajinn cursed the woman over her husband’s poisoned body and her curse was simple and horrible.

The Weeping Woman would never die; she would never meet her own Death.

Instead she was cursed to meet her victim’s Death.

His Death comes from Faraway every night at Midnight and watches her from the upper branches of a dead twisted oak tree. Of course his Death can’t take her, it only visits her and then it leaves her at each sunrise.

Before it leaves Death shows her something it carries in its left hand.

It shows her a small bottle of white powder and it holds it up and the Woman sees it. She knows what it is, the little bottle once belonged to her, after all.

She puts her hands out and calls, “ Please, please give it to me, take me with you. I can’t live like this anymore! “

Death can see her in the half light and it can see the maggots and flies tangled in her hair, crawling from the corners of her eyes. It can smell her flesh rotting on her bones and it can hear the skin on her legs and back splitting apart.

I’m not your death. But I’ll visit you, I’ll never stop visiting you.”

“ I can’t” it sighs.

And as the Sunlight works it’s way into the shadows cast by deadly sweet blossoms and fragrant green leaves dripping with deadly venom Death leaves for Faraway and the woman who is voiceless from wailing and wasted from weeping begins her wait for Death to visit at Midnight.

NIGHTFALL FROM FARAWAY

In my hometown, which is a place called Faraway, a man named Mr. Nightfall stands under a pear tree full of light green poisonous fruit and waits for the Sun to set.

Mr. Nightfall is my neighbor and our streets, like all the other streets in Faraway are lined with deadly fruit trees and deadly gardens. All these dark shady places are kept and tended by people with pale faces and empty eyes and here in our town Faraway no one is Sane and no one really lives because no one is really alive.

When Mr. Nightfall comes from Faraway sometimes he brings storms and in that wildness all you'll see, all you'll hear is Mr. Nightfall. You'll know he's coming and worst of all you won't be able to stop him.

When Mr. Nightfall crosses your path and he settles over your town you'll know he's there because your skin will start to feel to tight and you won't be able to pull air into your lungs.

Everything will seem...very Faraway.

That' when you'll know Mr. Nightfall is close enough to put out his cold, dark hand and lay it over your shoulder.

Once I followed Mr. Nightfall to a city with stores and cars and a coffee stand where the woman who served me wore a picture on her chest of a creature with stars in her hair. I asked if the creature in the picture was from the Well of Angra Lei and the Woman squeezed the cup of coffee so tight at the sound of my voice that the top popped off and the scalding hot coffee filled her eyes and mouth and she didn't cry out. Not even a little

The woman had turned to stone, her face was frozen into a mask and her eyes had rolled up into her head and I could hear her someplace deep inside screaming and screaming and screaming and she will never stop.

They never do when they are taken Faraway.

Mr. Nightfall didn' come back for me, he never turns back but he did call out to me and I followed him through the town and the entire time he cursed and spat and hissed like one of the cats that' not really a cat from back home in Faraway and he said, "They know I'm coming."

"Of course they know you're coming Mr. Nightfall, don’t they always?"

"No, not like this they haven't known me like this for centuries I don't like this Miss Praecox. No I don't like it at all."

This time the people in this little town by the sea knew Mr. Nightfall was coming. There were candles in windows and there wasn't a soul on the street. They were locked behind doors and the curtains where drawn and they knew they were very aware Nightfall was coming.

As Mr. Nightfall crossed the city I stopped here and there and looked in windows and when I could I found people and I touched them, carefully, quietly with my left hand and I told them my name and their minds stopped liked old clocks.

I could hear it loud as thunder as gears and cogs and wheels that turn their minds
ground to a halt and I could hear what they took with them to Faraway.

My name.

" Enjoying your visit Miss Praecox?"

" I always do Mr. Nightfall."

He reached out to pat me on the head and thought better of it, " Just like you're Mother, we were a team in our day to. We worked well together.

The Praecox have always done their best work with Nightfall."

" So what's happened here Mr. Nightfall, where is everyone?"

He held a newspaper up and showed it to me. I couldn't read it of course and he ran a cold dark finger under the headline and read it to me.

" Hurricane Force Winds Strike Seattle, Power Outages State Wide, locals ready for Nightfall and freezing temperatures. They were ready for me this time. Lord I hate the press"

" Killjoys" I said with feeling.

" Well, there's always tomorrow, isn't there Miss Demetia Praecox?"

I agreed because everyone knows Nightfall comes from Faraway and sometimes it brings madness with it and it always will.

a strange chapter from the strange history of Riversleigh Manor

Mr. Eramus Undercroft tends the cemetery in a place called Faraway.

He’s the Chief Gravedigger, the Lead Mortician and sometimes the Sole Mourner and Mr Undercroft smiles no matter what his duties are on any given day.

This is Mr Undercroft's Home and he always welcomes visitors.

So go ahead and take a walk down that little white gravel path that runs like an artery choked with blood through this dark place in Faraway and you will come to a chapel with no windows that sits in the back of Mr Undercroft’s Cemetery.

It's hidden among the nightshade and Wolfsbane and bright white flowers that smell faintly of smoke and no matter the time of day it's always Nightfall here.

After you've made your way this far go ahead and enter the vestibule and you might see a dark blue casket with bright silver handles sitting all alone in the center of the Windowless Chapel.

If you are feeling overly confident go inside the Chapel itself and look down into the the casket and laying there in his finest, blackest funeral wear is a tall thin man who’s pale thin hands are crossed over his narrow airless chest.

That man is Mr. Eramus Undercroft.

Let me prepare you; he will be smiling and his eyes are shut but you know he can see you all the same.

Once long ago before Mr. Eramus Undercroft came to Faraway he lived in a town called Riversleigh.

He tended the gardens at Riversleigh Manor until the day the Servants all disappeared and upon discovering “ something horrible in the Shed” the Riversleigh
Family was scared enough to leave their home in the darkness and by foot to the next town which was twenty miles away.

The only living thing they found was Mr Undercroft standing alone in his Gardener’s Shed smiling.

The headlines of the town’s newspaper declared:
" Where are the Servants of Riversleigh? "
The mysterious question has been answered by
Grisly Find in the Gardner's Shed...

“ What did you do to them Mr. Undercroft?” the Law had asked, “ What did you do to all 35 of those poor Souls?”

Mr. Undercroft opened his hand and dropped something onto the table and smiled his cadaverous smile and said, “ Why I sent them Faraway.”

On the table were teeth, 7 teeth and from then on for a very long time Riversleigh Manor was called “The House of the Seven Teeth” and no one locked the doors of Riversleigh
Because nobody would go near the house that went on living after everyone in it had died.

Eventually Mr. Undercroft went Faraway too, but before he left he stayed for a short time in a place called the Prefontaine Asylum for the Criminally Insane in a town called Ravenswood.

When the staff there disappeared and the Patients were found wandering the treacherous hillsides it was quickly noticed that all two hundred of them were all missing their left eye the people of Ravenswood decided it would be best to not go looking for Mr. Eramus Undercroft.

They hoped and hoped he was Faraway…and he was.

That was long ago and now in the shade and fog shrouded village of Faraway Mr. Eramus Undercroft drives a black hearse that is so dark it’s invisible when the sunsets and the sun always sets when it knows Mr. Undercroft is out. He digs graves and feasts on the poisonous fruits that grow in Faraway and when it rains the little droplets of water hiss against his skin.

Mr. Undercroft’s best friend is a man called Mr. Nightfall and when he’s lonely he calls on Miss Praecox and they picnic in the ruined Cemetery Mr. Undercroft calls home.

Across the street from the Cemetery is a little house painted light blue.

It looks empty and should be empty but of course it’s not.

It's the home Mr.Anthropophagite and Mr. Undercroft has admired Mr.Anthropophagite for a very long time. He just wishes that his pale friend wouldn't do his own special brand of gardening at the Cemetery.

When the Wardens of Sawajinn come to Faraway in search of Mr.Anthropophagite who lives there inside the Blue House of Shadows it’s Mr. Undercroft who sends them away with little cloth bags full of presents from Mr. Undercrofts days at Prefontaine.

Nowadays Mr. Eramus Undercroft rides out in his dark black hearse at Midnight and he looks for things to take Faraway.

When he brings them back he turns them loose in Faraway and sometimes he buries them and sometimes he feasts on them and the juices turn his teeth black and make his eyes
Water and the tears eat away at his face like acid.

Mr Eramus Undercroft is the Chief Gravedigger and Funeral Director in Faraway and he buries the things best forgotten, the things you hope are Faraway.

Only sometimes for fun and it amuses him every single time Mr Eramus Undercroft brings them back from Faraway.

When his passengers leave his car and swarm and ruin and corrupt everything in their paths you will hear in every storm, fire, war, and plague ridden town he visits...one sound above all the rest.

It’s screaming you'll hear, and if you listen close you will find it’s not many voices its always one voice and it is not screaming it's laughing.

That’s the sound of Mr Eramus Undercroft from Faraway.

The Wicked Midnight Garden

by Heather Blakey

Heart Of The Gravamina

2005-12-03T08:57:00.000-08:00

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

2005-11-09T18:44:00.000-08:00

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

2005-10-31T19:43:00.000-08:00

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

2005-10-28T20:43:00.000-07:00

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

2005-10-24T21:07:00.000-07:00

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

2005-10-20T14:16:00.000-07:00

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

2005-10-04T20:37:00.000-07:00

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

2005-10-02T12:41:00.000-07:00

[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

2005-09-20T07:24:00.000-07:00

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

2005-09-12T20:42:00.000-07:00

Weird Picture

2005-09-08T15:46:00.000-07:00

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

2005-09-06T19:59:00.000-07:00

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

2005-09-05T14:30:00.000-07:00

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

2005-09-04T17:29:00.000-07:00

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

2005-09-04T13:24:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-30T21:03:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-29T18:28:00.000-07:00

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

Melody At Sunset

2005-08-14T19:05:00.000-07:00

When I was a teenager we use to go out to a place called Lost Lake and walk around the cemetery out on it's North end at Sunset.

That's all that left of Preston Prison, which in it's day was such an awful place that no one in town would even admit to having known anyone who worked there, let alone say you had family or friends locked up behind it's bars.

Something about those walls changed people.

It changed their faces and voices and natures so much that most of the staff ended up living on the grounds because their own kin wouldn't let them back through their own front doors after they'd been working at Preston.

Check the staff records against the records of the dead at the Cemetery in Lost Lake. You'd be surprised how many of those names match.

Later after they pulled the prison down they actually buried the stones, the bricks and bars and furniture, papers, books, clothes kitchenware too. There's a grave marker of sorts over the sight. It simply says,

" Preston Penitentiary B. 1899 D. 1942 Dead By Our Hands "

People use to go up there to hear see the ghosts of the condemned wandering the ruined tombstones. They were unable to leave the cemetery and you could hear them begging for God or the Devil or anybody to help them, and they were all suppose to be doing the same thing.

They were trying to dig up the graves with their bare hands. People guessed they were still trying to escape that Prison.

I was about 18 the year my friends and I made our first trip up to Lost Lake.

We knew this ritual ( and we knew that’s what it was called ) wouldn't work at noon or dawn or at midnight; you had to be there at Sunset in black and ready to walk the borders of the small neglected cemetery as the sun came down. If you did the ritual wrong something bad happened...instead of being able to look in you let something out.

I grew up around stories where people were suppose to have tried this and we knew what happened if your timing was off or you left something out or wore the wrong color.

" Do you remember Kelly O'Hara's sister Laura? The one who walked the cemetery gates? She died from a drug overdose last week," or " Remember that bunch of seniors who walked the Cemetery Gates back in 1981? Those four guys who always use to hang out together? They all died in car accidents last week...yeah ACCIDENTS.... plural they all live in different places but they all died last Saturday..."

When we went up we did what you were told to do to the letter.

We wore black we walked backwards and we also stopped at the front and back entrances and faced the gates and mimicked locking the gates.

Then we finished and faced in and there they were, the condemned, on their hands and knees and it looked liked they were trying to dig down to their caskets with their bare hands.

Men, some women in the clothes they were buried or executed were on their knees helplessly trying to touch the earth they were no longer part of. They cried, some were screaming others just crouched there shaking their heads from side to side and they were laughing.

They were the worst.

It was the woman buried closest to the gates that I learned the secret of Lost Lake from, the Phantom that haunts me to this day and who's image I will take with me to my own grave.

She was down by her own grave making the same motions over and over in the dirt and pine needles; so I simply leaned over on my side of the gate and copied her a few times. Then I put my hands down into the dirt on my side of the fence and copied her movements: I wrote, " I killed Bobbie Green, December 25, 1925 gunshot. "

When I asked later I learned that Melody Green was the Warden's wife and she shot him Christmas Morning because he bought her a dress she didn't like, probably because the card attached had his girlfriend's name on it instead of her own. I wouldn't have liked the dress either, if you want to know the truth.

But I wouldn't have shot him for it in front of my entire family.

They hung her in his office at the prison and I guess it took her a long time to die.

Melody's dieing words were supposed to have been the Prison made her do it. But in the end she pulled the trigger...didn't she? I guess she realizes that now, I think they all realize it now up at the Lake.

You can't see the Prison Walls anymore but they are still there, and there's no leaving them.

Ever.
© anita marie moscoso 2005-text

Ghost Town

2005-08-10T20:43:00.000-07:00

Domino Wilton can't drive passed those empty looking towns, or roads that branch off from the highway without thinking about her family's home in a little town called Bronson Bluffs.

They rented a house there so Domino's Dad could go back to school for a year and then he could become a teacher.

That choice meant a loss of income and her Parents decided the best way to economize was to live cheap and you could do that on the Bluffs because it was practically a ghost town and the houses were dirt cheap.

It meant an over an hours commute for her Dad to get to school and her Mom to get to work but it wasn't a hard choice to make in the end because Domino's Dad couldn't spend another hour working in the slaughter house at MacKay’s.

So one day they packed up and left for their new home on Bronson Bluffs.

For the rest of her life Domino was convinced they were the only people living on the Bluffs. No one could change her mind. Not her Parents not her Counselors or Doctors or later her husband could change her mind.

Bronson Bluffs wasn't practically a ghost town; it WAS a ghost town.

Domino remembered how the streets would be empty, the stores would be open, maybe a bag of groceries and a checkbook would be on the counter but there was no one in the store; Domino was sure of that.

Then she would turn around and look again and there was Mrs. Greene and her daughter Kirsten and a half dozen other people looking at the shelves, talking in front of the vegetable bins or buying a soda at the fountain. Domino could hear them talking as she'd walk away and their voices would fade to whispers and she knew if she turned around they'd be gone again.

Nothing on the Bluffs felt solid to Domino.

Domino and her brothers hadn't started school yet, which was not something Domino was anxious to do on the Bluffs even though she hated spending day and night with her brothers.

She hated the way her brothers were always crying or fighting and coughing and sneezing.

Her little brothers, Derek and Miles were 3 and 2 at the time. She was almost six at the time and after all these years she remembers the dark heavy circles around their eyes. How skinny they were.

" It's not their fault they're always sick, they have trouble sleeping " she heard her Mom telling her Father as they forced cough medicine down Mile's throat " they're run down. I don't know what to do. "

Domino would have gladly taken that purple spicy medicine and been sick herself all of the time then to go that school and have to sit next to those rotten smelling kids. She as much said so herself one day as they drove by the school.

" Domino! " her Mother had snapped " That's an awful thing to say! "

" Well, they do stink, they smell like rotten eggs and they talk to themselves and make those weird faces..."

Her Mother had given her a good scolding and a lecture about saying mean things and Domino refused to back down because of what she'd see from the Park.

Half a block up and just around the corner, Domino use to love to play at the Park until she started to notice the kids at the school across the street.

During recess the little kids would come out single file and head for the monkey bars or rings and tether ball pole and instead of playing together they'd wander off and talk to themselves, and Domino could see their faces twist into grimaces and she could hear their teeth chatter and click in their mouths and sometimes they knew Domino was looking and they'd fly to the fence and hiss at her in words she couldn't understand.

The last time she had gone to the Park a little girl had climbed up the fence at the school and she was saying something to Domino only Domino wasn’t listening because on her way up the fence the little girl's wrist had caught in between the links and snapped. She pulled it free with a grunt and continued up the fence and she reminded Domino of a spider inching it's way up a wall.

" Domino, Domino, Domino come here and listen to me Domino. "

Domino was fascinated by the girl’s wrist, which was now almost shaped like a "C". The little girl pulled angrily at the fence and Domino looked up, " let us out, let us out, open the gates and let us ALL out. "

" Why don't you just walk out? " Domino had asked the little girl with the dark brown eyes; so dark it looked like she didn't any eyes in her head at all. " Just walk out why don't you. "

" Let us out Domino, let us all out! "

" No! " Domino had yelled, " you stay in there...you stay! " And as fast as she could Domino raced away from the school and the park. Why had she never noticed how dark that Park was? What were those things moving around in the trees? She kept looking over her shoulder at the school and she could hear the laughing and screeching that did sound like children playing, unless you really listened.

The sound was off key and wrong and it hurt Domino's ears just to listen to it for to long. Something wet was running down her neck and when she put her hand up to wipe it away she saw blood on her fingertips.

After that day Domino would cover her ears with her hands when she went by the school, even if she was in the car with her Parents.

There was a little Church; it looked like one that Domino had seen on a Christmas card once. It was white and had flowers out front and no windows. There was a heavy wooden beam nailed across the double doors and a little cemetery at it's back.

Domino’s family weren’t “ Church People “ and for the most part paid no attention to the sign out front inviting people to come and visit at 11:00 for Sunday Worship. In fact, it seemed that the entire town weren’t exactly “ Church People “ but Domino’s Mom did wonder why the door was nailed shut.

And why there were no windows.

They’d been living in the Bluffs for almost a month when Domino and her Dad had come home one day from a visit with Dad’s Mom, Grandma Carmen. There was a big Move-It truck in the front yard and her Mother was blindly throwing their things into the back of it.

Domino had never seen anything so wonderful in her life.

She ran around to the back of the truck and saw the bed was littered with furniture and pictures and pots and pans and if it was fragile it was broken because Domino’s Mom was tossing stuff in the back and she wasn’t obviously concerned with things like packing paper and boxes.

“ Jesus Katie, what are you doing? “ Domino’s Dad asked.

“ I’m moving us out Max, that’s what I’m doing. You can help or you can sit, but I suggest you help because if it’s not in this truck in the next 15 minutes it stays. That goes for you to by the way. “

“ Katie! Come on, why are you doing this? “

“ I went to sign Domino up for school today. “

“ Uh-oh “ Domino had said “ the Smelly kids? Did you see the smelly kids? “

Her Mom wasn’t listening, “ those things, those awful things were crawling up the walls…

“ Like Spiders? “ Domino asked.

Mom’s ears had been bleeding two little red lines ran down her neck and shoulders and she looked at Domino and said, “ just like Spiders. "

Domino's Dad was yelling now, yelling for Domino's Mom to stop it, stop this craziness of course they couldn't just take off and leave their house, leave everything behind.

" Oh yes we can, " Mom hissed, " Look behind you Max and tell me what you see. "

Domino could see it; Dad didn't want to turn around. " Why? " he asked

" You can feel it, can't you Max? So turn around, it's Mrs. Gunderson from across the street. Turn around Max and look at her. "

Domino looked around her Father's legs and then looked up at her Father and shook her head. There' were no words for her to describe Mrs. Gunderson because what Domino saw made no sense.

No sense at all.

" Don't turn around Daddy, " she said, " please don't turn around. "

But he did, Domino knew he would.

Mrs. Gunderson was walking by and she was smiling like the nice old lady she appeared to be. Only her feet weren't touching the ground and her head was lying over to one side. " Good afternoon " she said with a pleasant tight smile. Her eyes rolled back up into her head and she smiled brightly, " leaving us so soon? "

" Truck, " Domino's father said, " get in the truck Domino. "

Domino saw that Mrs. Gunderson's voice was coming out of her mouth, but her mouth wasn't moving her lips were parted slightly and Domino thought of a rag doll.

That's what Mrs. Gunderson looked like, a rag doll being shook and forced to move and makes sounds like a real girl.

Only of course a rag doll is just a doll and not a real girl.

And of course Mrs. Gunderson wasn't a real lady, she couldn't be.

Mrs. Gunderson crossed the street to her house and as she floated up the stairs to her front door Domino could hear the thump thump of her toes hitting against the steps.

The door opened for Mrs. Gunderson on it's own and slammed shut right after her.

" It's gets better Max, I drove by the Park on my way from the school and have you ever looked in the trees? "

" They're full of shoes. " Domino said with authority.

Her Mother looked down at her and her Mother asked her like she was a grown-up " Is that all you saw Domino? "

Domino nodded, " I played there a lot and I saw them...shoes, the trees are full of shoes "

" The trees Max" Domino's Mom said to her father without taking her eyes away from Domino " are full of people and they're hanging from the trees by their necks. Your daughter only saw their shoes. She played there Max, almost every single day we've lived here. "

" They don't bother me, not like the kids at the school or the people in the library or that man in the attic..."

" I can't listen to this anymore, " Mom said " get in the truck."

They left town that night and on the way out they saw the School Kids playing in the schoolyard and they watched the Children as they ran and twitched and whirled, caught up in a windstorm only they could be part of.

Domino saw the shoes in the trees dancing and kicking and all the while she could hear gurgling sounds and cries and everytime the shoes dropped they were yanked back up into the dark tree tops again.

They ended up at Grandma's house and Domino heard her Parents and Grandparents talking until sunrise.

They never talked to each other about the Bluffs again, but for years later they knew the others were thinking about Bronson because Domino or her Brothers or Parents would sometimes scream themselves awake from terrible nightmares and everyone would pretend they hadn't heard a thing.

Now days Domino Wilton can't drive passed those empty looking towns, or roads that branch off from the highway without thinking about her family's home in a little town called Bronson Bluffs and when she does pass them she pushes down hard on the gas pedal without realizing it and stares into her rearview mirror until she's sure those little towns and roads can't see her anymore.

At least she hopes they can't.
© anita marie moscoso 2005-text

Gone To Croatan

2005-07-30T12:44:00.000-07:00

GONE TO CROATAN
TEXT BY ANITA MOSCOSO
ILLUSTRATIONS BY HEATHER BLAKEY

Years ago, before they walked into oblivion someone turned back and left this message carved on a tree, " gone to Croatan ".

Now it's my turn, tonight I'm going to Croatan; I'm going to Croatan to avenge my own murder.

My name Is Livia Cotard and once I owned a little bookshop at the Marina on the Duwamish Bay.

In the front of my shop you would find books sought after by collectors from all over the world. Rare first editions, bound sets, atlases, maps, and a variety of other books that were prized by collectors for their illustrations.

The front of my store is separated from the back by a large imposing oak door. Its hinges are leather and its locks and tumblers are made of wood.

The Imposing Oak Door by Heather Blakey

This is where my real store is; this is where I conduct my real trade.

The room behind this door is a very comfortable library. The walls lined ceiling to floor bookcases. One case has a glass door, the second had an iron gate and others were left open.

Each case held over 100 volumes.

The books were crafted by an unusual group of Authors and had been written for a very exotic group of clients. These were famous one of a kind horror stories among this group of readers and they would spare no expense in collecting them.

The Authors by Heather Blakey

This is how these little treasures were created.

If the Authors were to arrive at a home for a story they always came hours before a funeral and they were never turned away. After a small ceremony involving salt and scented oils they were left alone with the Dead and their work would begin. The Authors would take blank sheets of parchment; sometimes strips of linen or thin sheets of copper, gold and in later years paper and place them over the chest of a dead person. Then the Author would place their hand over the corpse's stilled heart and the story would be recorded.

Authors at Work by Heather Blakey

It was said you could hear the scratching sounds of what was assumed to be pen to parchment and that no matter how much you were tempted that you should never try to catch one of these Authors at work. Not unless you wanted to end up bound in one of those books too.

When they were finished what was recorded on these pages were all the sins and evil that the dead person ever committed. Page after page would hold horrible dark stories and horrific illustrations. Brought forward by the Author's skilled hand, images and words and flashes of smell and sound would be captured then interpreted by the Author and burned onto the pages.

The Authors always left a gift for the stories. Sometimes they left gold or jewels, potions in bottles and sometimes money.

The Croatan Treasury by Heather Blakey

After they left these homes the Authors would take these pages and bind them, and place them in libraries in homes not fit for human habitation.

These books were not written to be read by human eyes.

Eyes accustomed to the dark and held by hands that pushed open caskets from the inside read them. They were cherished and prized by families whose bodies and very nature could be altered by the full Moon, by men and women whose bloodlines and family histories had been altered by curses and magic.

Owning these books and selling them wasn't where my trouble started, as you might assume. My family has been dealing in this trade since the Authors first turned up centuries ago. My problems started with a woman named Cynthia Kern.

I let her into my back room the day of my Murder, even though she was very much of this world because the book she held was already in her possession.

Cynthia was from the East Side and owned a large very traditional over priced antique shop. Her clients were as unique and demanding as my own and a few of them were well known art collectors. One of them, she told me had somehow gotten a hold of this most unusual book written about a woman who killed her own children and blamed the crime on a neighbor.

The neighbor was executed and the true murderess lived to a ripe old age and died childless because one tragedy after another struck at her new family. Her babies (five of them) who were born years after the death of her first family all met sad ends...unexplained illnesses, fires and another was drowned.

Instead of living under a dark cloud she was wrapped in the warmth of sympathy and kindness of her entire community.

There was of course no way to actually read this book because it was written in the language of a family named Benandanti. So, it was the artwork, the pictures that made these books famous and prized by the non-reader. Each illustration was a memory, which had been burned onto the pages

The stronger the memory the more vibrant and active the picture. It was like watching a movie.

The murdering woman in this story lovingly relived her crimes almost every moment of her day. Each memory had been captured on those pages with stunning detail and clarity. It was quite a find. I still don't know how this Kern woman came across the book but she brought it to me and asked if I could find more of them.

I told her this was an extremely rare series of books, created by request of the Benandanti family. Now days you'd call them true crime fans. At the time, I think the idea of infanticide intrigued a family who's children, poor little things, usually didn't live past the age of six.

Children were extremely important to them and the thought of killing one was, to the Benandanti, a true horror.

I didn't have any books from the Benandanti Collection.

The Venda Family I knew were avid collectors of the Benandanti book collections. If there had been any of these left to be found, the Vendas had no doubt acquired them ages ago.

Cynthia went through some of the other books on the shelves...and then she came to the Naemoor Collection, As she reached out and rested her hand against the glass case she asked me, would it be alright for her to look at these?

I saw no reason to say no. They weren't for sale though; they were part of my private collection. " They're blank " she said, confused as she turned the pages.

" They were for one of the Naemoor to use, when she became an Author, but she left the family and disappeared. Kids you know, they have minds of their own. "

" Why weren't they passed on? "

"It doesn't work that way, " I said taking the book and gently replacing it on the shelf and closing the door. " These pages were specially created for the Author, they won't...work right for anyone else."

Cynthia placed her hand with their long bony fingers, which had been over decorated with frosty dark pink nail polish, and many diamond rings against the glass. I recognized that look on her face. That volume was calling to her very soul...asking to be placed upon her heart. Begging to be allowed to capture her darkest secrets on its pages.

Strange to do that to a living person. Her heart I knew must be black and her soul darker yet. I must say I was intrigued by the way the book called to her.

No, not intrigued...mystified.

She tried again to persuade me to sell her the blank book bound in soft red leather and decorated with silver threads that are as delicate as a spider's web and I refused.

She tried to smile, make small talk and then she handed me her card. When her fingertips brushed the side of my hand my lip curled and I tried to not look repulsed. This woman was a husk; she was as decayed and foul as a corpse rotting in the hot sun.

It's not often you meet such a corrupted soul and her story would be valuable to any Author.

But that's not my trade, my trade is bookseller and for all these years I've been content to do that.

Until my Shop was robbed...and I was murdered.

It was my friend Ignancia Guzman who owns the Curio Shop six doors down from me who discovered my store had been broken into. She came down to my houseboat and got me, reassuring me that whatever happened, she would help me.

The shelf with the blank Naemoor Volumes had been struck at the side with an axe and one of the blank volumes... a black book decorated with gold leaf and edged with small blue stones, had been nearly hacked in half. The books don't like to be separated and the hack job was needed to get to the Red Volume out of the case and away from the other books.

Ignancia pulled the broken axe out of the shelf and threw it across the room. She carefully examined each book and found that it had bee the black one that had not been as damaged as the others and she asked me for a towel and some salt.

" It's gonna be alright, here sit down. " Then she carefully set the book down, and shook the towel open and held it up to the light. She laid the towel flat and sprinkled the salt on it and set the book in the middle. Then as careful as a surgeon she started to fold the towel around the book.

" It's the best I can do " Ignancia voice was angry but her eyes were bright...she wasn't the type of woman who cried or showed her feelings easily and I was moved, honored to know I mattered so much to her.

" I know, and I appreciate everything you've done. " I assured her.

She nodded and looked away and pushed the bound book into my hands. " Go, go ' she told me very crisp and businesslike.

I reached for the book and it crashed to the floor, I hadn't dropped it. It had passed through my fingers. I tried to concentrate harder and this time I was able to grasp the book and lift it.

I didn't look into Ignancia' s face. She was as I've said, a dignified person and I wanted to spare her the embarrassment of my seeing the pain on her face that I knew was there and she couldn't help but to feel.

I don't know what possessed me to leave the message on my door that I wrote on the back of my closed sign. It was very important for me to leave something behind, something personal and all I could think to say was " Gone to Croatan "

Croatan is home of the lost, safe harbor to ships that sail in permanent twilight and the place where people like me return to in the end.

The train that left the station just outside of Leaning Birch Cemetery was a special train. It only ran once a day and it didn't cost anything to ride. The Conductor was a tall thin cadaverous looking gentleman and when he saw me waiting at the stop he looked very surprised.

" I almost didn't see you there Mrs. Cotard, " he said.

" I'm glad to say it's not your eyes Mr. Inverness, I'm afraid it's me. I've...I've had a misfortune. I haven't much time. I was wondering if you could help me. "

" Certainly Mrs. Cotard. What can I do for you? "

" I can't travel in my, well, condition. I need a ride and I thought that perhaps your train would work for me. "

He looked at my poor fading hands and smiled, then he stepped aside.

As I boarded I handed him a very old gold coin. It was Roman and the design would mean something to Mr. Inverness who had spent a lot of time in that part of the world. It was a gift not a token and he accepted it.

The train turned out to be more animal then machine and the engine sounded more like a heart beat then anything mechanical. It felt as if it were breathing. I took a window seat as the train lurched and moved forward. Nothing I saw through the windows looked familiar, the landscape at times was foreign the seasons changed in seconds and the sun and moon sailed across the sky.

The train reared back and stopped and we were in front of a house in the suburbs. The house was Tudor in design with bright yellow roses lining the drive up to the house.

Mr. Inverness smiled as I stepped down, " Take your time Mrs. Cotard, we'll hold the train. "

" That's not necessary " I replied

Then he said almost under his breath " Just saving myself the trip Mrs. Cotard. "

I enjoyed my walk up to the door, I enjoyed turning my plan over and over in my head, walking around it and admiring it from different angles in my mind's eye.

It was going to be a work of art.

When I arrived I didn't knock at the door, it wasn't there for me anymore. Entire parts of my world seemed to be disappearing. I saw the floor in the hall but not the walls on one side of the room, I saw paintings but within the paintings little images were gone, I saw people walk by with no faces, missing limbs, some looked as if they had been neatly split down the middle.

What I saw looked like an incomplete puzzle...almost there but missing pieces in odd shapes and sizes. Making things more difficult for me to find my way was my failing vision. I felt as if I were looking down a long tunnel with fog banks creeping towards me...or perhaps from me.

Regardless, somehow I found Cynthia's room and my Red Book.

My last surviving book held all that was left of my soul. It was desperately calling out to what was left of me and it's sister, my poor damaged book. Which I had been holding close to my heart since my journey began.

It was now almost full.

That book I placed under her bed and I heard it thump as it opened itself. A dark fog crept cautiously from under the bed and then my anger and grief swarmed out like angry bees from the book and clung to my fading image before they flew from the room and burrowed into every dark soul they could find...and in this house there were many of those.

My nightmares would become their reality and soon they wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two.

I crept to Cynthia's bedside and watched her sleeping, my red book on her nightstand in agony because what it wanted most was just out of reach.

I had lied to Cynthia about the red book because it was my own and I had authored it myself years ago. It wasn't a blank book; it was full, bursting with dark terrible tales. The only person who could have actually seen the printed pages was a Naemoor, our language was the language of Authors and you don't learn our language you are born to it.

Those pages were full of words and images that only my family could decipher.

This was my proudest possession because I had turned the world upside down for this story and what I did to get it would be, how would you term it, be considered justifiable homicide.

That's what I told myself and my family after the deed was done.

We Authors only took stories from the dead...except for myself. Which was why I ended up selling books instead of writing them. My family was horrified I would take a story from a living soul because by taking a story from a living person you trapped them in paper and ink for all eternity.

You see in my younger days certain topics fascinated me, and one in particular fascinated me most of all. Cannibals...I collected story after story about Cannibals...and 200 of those dark tales paled in comparison to my Gentleman.

He was a butcher and a fiend and he called himself Jack.

I placed the red book on Cynthia's chest and held it down over her heart and because it was full I knew what it wanted was to speak to Cynthia...it was romantic in a morbid way. This dark book caged in a hidden room had called out to this woman's dark heart and she had answered.

So I gave them to each other and they became one for a moment. Then she was no more and someone else opened her eyes and blinked and squinted and sat up.

She was so hungry she couldn't stand it.

Then from down the hall came voices, relaxed unassuming voices and Cynthia rose delicately from her bed and went down to the kitchen to see about breakfast.

© anita marie moscoso 2005-text
© Heather Blakey 2005-illustrations

Deadwood Farm

2005-07-09T17:38:00.000-07:00

There are two brothers who live in a farmhouse at the edge of a town called Mercer.

No one knows how long they've lived there or where their family was from or if there had ever been anyone living up there besides the two brothers. They could have been ten brothers or no brothers or maybe there never was a house up there.

However, rest assured, there is a house up there.

It's called Deadwood Farm.

Things like Deadwood have always existed right alongside the paths and roads that we travel everyday. If you're lucky, you'll never notice them, you'll never follow them and you'll never find what's at the end of them.

If you're lucky.

When the town of Mercer was established in 1902 the Bronson family were already living just outside of town on the farm. There was the Mother Ernestine the Father Yesler and the boys, the Deadwood Brothers.

Their names may have been Yesler Jr. and Ernest Jr. Only no one ever seemed to refer to the boys by these names, not even by the family name. They were always called after their home and nobody knew why.

No one ever asked.

It's not that there weren't questions in Mercer about the Deadwood Brothers; questions like why their limbs where so misshapen. Each brother had one long arm and one short with a twisted left hand. Their heads seemed to be mashed slightly flat on their right and both for as long as anyone could remember had both been bald.

They always wore old fashion clothes, very proper looking suits with bright brass buttons and top hats. They dressed that way all the way up to modern times. Their clothing style never changed and neither did the Deadwood Brothers.

The Deadwoods may have looked comical out there in the Pacific Northwest Mountains of Washington state in their Victorian era clothes, but no one ever laughed at those brothers. Laugh at them from a mile away and you just knew they could see you. They would know you were out there laughing at them and then most awful thing of all would happen... they would look at you.

Their eyes were a terrible shade of white with the faintest tinge of blue in them and though no one ever really got close to the brothers their eyes those awful eyes could reach out and touch you all the same.

And the feeling was far from pleasant.

In every town, every village there's always someone who knew someone else that once saw something strange...but you'd never hear stories like that about the Deadwood Brothers or their Farm.

Stories like the shadows on the trees.

The shadows are scorch marks that have been burned onto some of the trees. There are always two figures, misshapen figures of two men with what could be top hats on their heads. Each has a long and short arm with a claw like hand.

Sometimes the burn marks are of just images of a head, an arm or what looks like brush marks from a paintbrush. It looks as if the moving shadow was frozen into the tree's trunk. But the same types of marks have turned up on rocks and cliff sides and even on some of the buildings in Mercer.

No one ever questioned why you could hear a train up at the Deadwood Farm, never pointed out there were no tracks leading up there or anywhere close to the house. When people down in Mercer heard the whistle and could hear the trains engines work as it pulled the train up into those hills they'd flinch a little and talk loud enough to drown out the sounds.

They also never, ever talked about the missing families from the hills around Deadwood Farm.

The Jackson’s, the Newton’s, the Gunderson’s, the Terry's, the Greens, The Kline’s...in all there are almost a dozen families gone. Their houses are still up there empty of people but full of furnishings and clothes and food rotting in cellars and on tables and in pantries.

Sometimes families went missing from Mercer itself and that was always the hardest to ignore. The hardest not to mention.

But in the end that's exactly what happened.

Nothing even remotely connected to the Deadwood Brothers was really ever talked about.

It had something to do with those eyes.

So if you care to, step behind those eyes for a minute and see for yourself the real Deadwood Farm.

First thing you’ll see are the doors, window frames, floors all made from Deadwood....

The Deadwood was taken from gallows and torture racks and wheels used to break backs and bones. The frames from guillotines and old wooden surgery tables and coffins unearthed all across the world are in this house too.

All found and carefully reshaped in the hands of Mr. Yesler Bronson.

Now take a look at either side of the walkway leading up to the front porch.

This is where Yesler and Ernestine are buried. They’ve been there since the day the Deadwood Brothers were born.

Ernestine found the twin boys, each in a wooden cradle in her sewing room one hot summer evening. She heard babies crying and assumed that it must have been cats fighting. There were no children in the Bronson Household. No reason for her to hear crying babies.

She went in and looked into the cradles and wasn't taken back by the children's odd appearances or the fact they were even there to begin with. She looked around the room and asked it, " What have you done now? "

" Yesler! " she yelled, " Yesler! "

In the library downstairs Yesler closed his book. Looked up and mumbled, " now what " and then he got up and went to his wife.

Her face was twisted, her eyes were cold hard specks of blue ice, " I've stood by you Yesler, and your...how can I put it, your new dietary habits and views on religion. Even allowed you to build this place from deadwood and put I've put up with the mischief this house gets to on it's own and as for you! I've helped you Yesler and I've enjoyed every moment of it. But this, now this house...look! It's had children Yesler, how is that possible? "

He looked down into the cradle and shook his head, " I hope you don't think I...."

" Well, of course not! What do we do with them Yesler? "

" They're deadwood Ernestine...we'll do what we always do with Deadwood " and then he reached into one of the cradles and the bedroom door slammed shut and the screaming....

It went on for hours.

It's still going on up there, and if you try really hard you can ignore it.

Just ask the people of Mercer.
© anita marie moscoso 2005-text only

Gravesway and Associates

2005-06-12T22:02:00.000-07:00

Darwin Chubrough once spent an entire summer in the abandoned mining town of Gravesway with nothing except the cold and dust and the dead for company.

He had gone alone to Gravesway to photograph and draw the abandoned houses, stores, church, saloons and a little brick schoolhouse. He had spent an eventful week exploring the graveyard and one morning tried to follow the railroad tracks that wound their way up Cavanaugh Mountain.

He was forced back by deadfall and rock slides after a freak rainstorm.

He didn't know the devastation from the slides were much worse in the valley. It wasn't until later he realized that he was trapped in this place where nothing lived...and nothing died.

Ever.

Darwin met Mr. Gravesway and his Associates the day after the storm. He was staying in the abandoned Saloon, because it had a good roof and the rooms though dusty were dry and very livable despite having been standing empty of almost 100 years.

One day Darwin heard the doors downstairs open then shut and footsteps coming up the stairs to his room.

He heard snatches of conversation and he even heard someone sniff then sneeze.

Then there was a knock on his door and it swung open slowly and a good natured looking man who looked as if he enjoyed more then one trip to the bottom of the occasional bottle of hard liquor said " hello there Sir. I was wondering if you'd care to join my friends and me downstairs for a drink or two. "

That was Mr. Gravesway, the first dead person Darwin ever met.

And he wouldn't be the last.

" Well give you a moment. " The Gentleman said and then he was gone and the door was pulled slowly shut.

Darwin was rooted to the spot, unable to move because his mind was to busy having a conversation with itself and had no time to respond to the little voice that was Darwin begging his legs to move or run or for his voice to work enough to scream just a little.

" I just saw a dead man, a pale shade of a man I could almost see through invite me downstairs for a drink. Isn't that the darndest thing Darwin? I mean did you see that? "

RUN! The little voice was yelling.

" I don't think he was alone, that's the bad part. I don't mean just bad I mean you are so screwed BAD. So what should I do? "

" I think I should get the Hell out of here!" his voice screamed back to his brain out loud.

From downstairs someone cleared their throat and called up cordial and nice as you please, " Everything okay up their Sir?"

Darwin stood in the middle of his room, his face as pale and drained of blood and life as the man who'd just been upstairs to talk to him and he called back, " just a second! "

And then he fainted.

Mr. Gravesway and his Associates were looking down at the man on the floor. He had a round pleasant face and he wore wire-rimmed glasses. His hair was dark and curly and he was in need of a shave.

" Poor fellow, " said a voice with no body to house it, " I thought this might be to much for him. Really Gravesway, couldn't you have been a little less obvious? "

" What would you like to do? That business where we write in the dust? Talk into his tape recorder when he's not here? Go into his head when he sleeps and let him dream us? Parlor tricks for ghosts and we're not Ghosts. Remember that ladies and gentleman, we're not ghosts. "

" That's our problem, isn't it? " said a little girl holding a china doll in a blue dress.

Mr. Gravesway nodded. " Yes it is Tanith, that's our problem alright. "

" Do you think he can help us? " the little girl asked.

Mr. Gravesway peered into the round friendly face of Darwin Chubrough and saw he wasn't completely passed out. He said firmly and happily " Yes I think he can ".

When Darwin came to, Mr. Gravesway was sitting on the sun-seat and he stood in alarm as Darwin's eyes began to roll back into his head. " Oh, don't do that again young man. That can't be good for you to keep fainting like that. Look, I'm all alone and I'm going to sit right here and not do anything...unpredictable. But I am going to tell you a story and when I'm done I'm hoping you can help my Associates and myself. If not, it doesn't matter we're still going to help you find your way out of Gravesway..."

" Road..." Darwin croaked.

" Oh, that's gone I'm afraid. Buried under a mountain of landslide. But there are other ways. Tunnels and the like. We'll help you Mr...

" My name is Darwin Chubrough "

" Mr Chubrough..."

" Darwin, call me Darwin " he said as he sat up.

Gravesway extended his hand and Darwin stood to shake it and their hands passed right through each other. Gravesway held his hand up to the sunlight and his good-natured face suddenly looked sad and he started to remember...

" The sickness came the day we started mining over in 64. She was a treacherous mine. She collapsed, sent up rotten air that made people sick for days. That was just the beginning.
Once we got her working the suicides started, the sicknesses started and people started to fade..."

" Die you mean? " Darwin asked quietly.

" Not all of them "

" Excuse me? Some people lived? "

" No, I mean only parts of us died. This sickness only took parts of us. "

Darwin was puzzled and he before he could ask Mr Gravesway seemed to wake up and he said, " It was as strange illness Darwin. You see, it killed our souls and left the rest of us behind to fade like old photographs. "

" I guess Mr Chubrough, you'd call us Zombies. "

From below the window Darwin thought he heard voices passing by, maybe a dog or two barking and even an echo of laughter. They were everyday sounds. He looked over Mr Gravesway's shoulder into the empty street below and asked, " Do they know, do they know they're different now? "

" Some of them, poor wretches. You know, they can't tell if they're dreaming or awake. Most of them thank God, think they're just dreaming...things you see look very unreal to them. " Gravesway stood and joined Darwin as he looked out the window. " I see my town, alive as it was the day I took ill and became this. In a moment I'll see something that happened a year ago, two days ago or a year from now. I might find myself in my office or riding my horse into the hills "

" After a while you just fade and fade till youÂre an echo. Then you go crazy and we think, we think we go into the mines. "

Gravesway echoed to him self sadly; " we go into the mines forever. "

Darwin looked into GraveswayÂ s fading face and understood. " It's happening to you now, isn't it? "

" Once it does you know, well the others...they're young folk for the most part, they'll be young and left alone to face this. It's a terrible thing Darwin for a young person to look into oblivion alone. "

" I guess I'm asking you Darwin, to help me figure a way out of this. I can't believe there's nothing we can do. "

And that's Darwin learned later is why Mr. Gravesway outlived most of his Associates.

He simply refused to let go.

Darwin was alone in his room that night and from his window he heard the town of Gravesway come to life. He heard music from the Saloons, he heard wives scolding husbands, he heard horses and mining equipment being worked. He could hear some fighting and in the distance a gunshot or two.

Then he picked up his notebook and aimlessly wrote, " Tanith, maybe aged eight. Doll with a blue dress. Wise beyond her years. I think she was like that...before. " And then he wrote, " Only heard a voice, no image. Older man Irish accent..."

The crying from the rooms downstairs was soul wrenching, " Mr. Gravesway, MR GRAVESWAY! My Tanith is GONE, oh God... the Mines she's gone into the mines. Mr. Gravesway please help me find my Tanith! "

Darwin raced down the stairs and saw a woman as solid as himself crying onto the shoulder of the fading Mr. Gravesway. He didn't startle at the sight of Mr. Gravesway empty eye sockets. It would have been ungentlemanly to do so and even though he doubted she could feel it, he rested a comforting hand on the shoulder of Tanith's heartbroken Mother.

Later in the evening Darwin was standing at the Bar, tended by a very lively man by the name of Leo. " Sorry I can't offer you a drink there Darwin...but..."

" It's okay. So tell me Leo. How are you, you know feeling. "

" Lost my Granddad this morning. At least, I think it was this morning. Maybe it was a month ago...you know how it goes around here."

Darwin let that pass because Leo's grief was at the moment very real to the both of them.

" He knew all these great songs and stories from the old country. Could keep us laughing and crying for hours. "

" Old country? "

" Ireland, he was from Ireland. " Leo said with pride but Darwin was all ready halfway up the stairs to his room and pulling his notebook from his backpack and screaming for Mr. Gravesway before Leo was even finished speaking his sentence.

Darwin spent the rest of that summer with the People of Gravesway. He wrote down their stories and drew pictures of things they told him they could see and with each memory they left with Darwin they were able to leave Gravesway.

Not by the mines, according to Mr. Gravesway, but by train.

Mr. Gravesway hung on until the end, or tried to.

One morning he told Darwin it was done. Everyone in Gravesway was gone...almost.

So through that morning Mr. Gravesway worked with Darwin on maps, detailed maps Darwin would become famous for. These maps detailed lost mines and hidden cities far beneath the earth and a way for Darwin to leave the valley.

It wasn't until Gravesway time had come that Darwin realized the extra details were a gift from Gravesway... a fate altering gift.

Within a few years Darwin's family would become wealthy and well known for the discoveries they would make because of what was on these maps.

And above all they would be all known for their good hearts and generosity.

As the last detail was drawn in Darwin realized Mr. Gravesway was gone... most likely he was on his way to the Mines he feared so much and was willing to face for his friends and Associates. Darwin cried onto his journal, hoping with each stroke of his pen that he wasn't to late: Mr. Gravesway was my good friend and a good man.

Darwin didn't know if that was enough, he hoped with all his heart it was.

Across the street in the Station Darwin was unable to see, Mr. Gravesway boarded his train. As it took him out of Gravesway he wished he could have told Darwin that thought was more then enough.

And one day he had no doubt he'd be able to tell Darwin himself.
© anita marie moscoso 2005-text

The Gravedigger's Daughter

2005-06-12T19:42:00.000-07:00

Percy Reilly became the Chief Groundskeeper and Gravedigger at the Cemetery outside the town of Resolution on his 20th birthday.

He moved into the Caretaker's Cottage and turned it into a very respectable home in a short amount of time. One year after moving in he brought home a wife and they had a daughter they named Frieda.

Frieda’s childhood was spent in the cemetery among the stone angels and marble lambs and gray tombstones and it was probably best she had no desire to travel past the cemetery gates and down the road into the small town of Resolution because on
The day Frieda was born a terrible thing happened in the town of Resolution.

That was the day the small cemetery outside of the town's only church was desecrated. The Pioneers Cemetery was ripped apart, graves plundered and dry brittle bones and shrouds and things long buried where scattered from one end of the grounds to the other.

That's what happened the day Frieda was born and no one ever believed the two things weren't connected.

And they were right.

In the following years in the town of Resolution the young people and some of the older residents, their resolve strengthened by alcohol or outright bullying on each others part would dare each other up into the hills of Resolution and to the Cemetery at the end of the aptly named Coffin Road.

The idea of the trip was to find the Gravedigger's Daughter, who for the past 50 years still lived in the caretaker's cottage.

If you could stand the voice that came from that throat and slithered into your ear you'd learn your future. She knew how you would die and if you could prevent it. She could hear the whispers from the ghosts who walk among the living and sometimes she knew where all sorts of things had been hidden or buried.

And Frieda was never wrong.

All you had to do was look her in the eye as she tells you your fortune.

Another thing you had to be sure of was that you didn't go mad just looking into that face; and the Asylum in the next town over held at least a dozen living former residents of Resolution who weren't able to hold their own in the face of Frieda Reilly.

One day Baxter and Everett, two local boys, met Frieda just before sunset last November. They went up to the cemetery to find the Gravedigger's Daughter to ask her
her to tell one of them their fortune.

They dared each other to see who could stare into her face and learn their own fates.

Everett took the bet and up to the cemetery they went.

All the way up into the hills Baxter reminded Everett the bet was off if he didn't actually look into Frieda’s face when she answered. If he shut his eyes, screamed out or turned back that 100.00 bet was as good as spent in Town that night and Everett could just stand there and watch him spend it all.

On the way up to the Cemetery on Coffin road, they passed an abandoned farmhouse surrounded by a dead apple orchard, they cut through a field coated with dust and walked down into a ravine choked with plants they'd never seen anywhere around town.

The flowers were dry and brittle and the leaves gave off a sharp pungent odor. Maybe it was only a trick of the light but the small blossoms seemed to glow with their own light in the coming twilight.

Then they found a set off steps carved from granite followed them up to an unused but well cared for path and then they were at the gates of the cemetery.

Everett heard it first.

Laughing.

A child's thin high voice traveled down to them and passed around them like a soft breeze and was gone.

Baxter grabbed the gate and pulled it open. Everett stepped inside and looked back at Baxter. " I don't want to do this. I really don't want to do this " he told his friend mournfully.

The laughter came back and both men, without realizing it wiped their faces with the cuffs of their sleeves.

" Bet's a bet man, " Baxter said. Then he pulled the gate shut.

Everett wandered around the cemetery for a while. In the setting sunlight he finally saw the Caretaker's Cottage on a little Hill in the west corner of the graveyard surrounded by dead black trees and the skeletal remains of shrubs and bushes.

" Frieda! " he called " Frieda Reilly, are you home?"

The door to the cottage swung open and a blast of stale dried air crawled out of that dark place and slid and twisted it's way to Everett and wrapped itself around his legs and before it could crawl up to his face he brushed himself off and backed away from the house.

Then he saw the shadows in the doorway separate and reach out towards him and before he could shut his eyes, before he could scream he saw a little girl standing in the doorway.

She was an ordinary little girl and Everett thought, Sunflowers. She reminds me of sunflowers. Who on earth would plant sunflowers up here?

" What do you want? " that little girl said with a child's voice in Everett's ear, but in Everett's mind the voice was old, old and corrupt and rotten.

Poor Everett was past the point where his mind was able to make sense out of anything anymore.

" I'm here for Frieda Reilly, I'm here to learn my future. "

" Will you stay for awhile and keep me company? I get very lonely here. The dead are mad at me again and they won't talk to me. Just because I hurt them..."

" Hurt them? " Everett felt dizzy, his own voice sounded very far away and he was cold, so very cold. " Why would you hurt the dead? "

" Because I get hungry, " the little Sunflower said soulfully. " That's all, I just get so hungry. "

" I'll give you something to eat, if you tell me where Frieda is. "

" Promise " said the Sunflower

" I promise. " said Everett.

" Okay, here I am! " the Sunflower cried happily.

And then Everett didn't see Sunflowers he saw Frieda Reilly.

He saw the semblance of a six year old girl; he saw a twisted elfin face engulfed by milky green eyes with no pupils, her ears were pale and leathery and pointed and her mouth was too wide for her small face and full of sharp white teeth.

Frieda’s hair was bright and golden and glistened alive with it's own warmth in the moonlight. Just like a sunflower.

" I'm here to learn my future Frieda Riley. " he said in a whisper, his voice was far away and his mind following it.

His eyes were locked onto that terrible face and he wished to God he could at least see those Sunflowers. Even if they weren't really there. “Please, oh please, I just want to see the sun…” his poor tortured soul was screaming

" Oh that's easy Everett Halsey, you're going to die here. That's your future! Now keep your promise. "

He did keep his promise. He held out his hand and then he was pulled down for a very long time and terrible pains crawled up his arm to his shoulder and then to his neck and then the darkness took him.

Across the cemetery near the gate Baxter reached through the wrought iron fence and picked up a little cloth bag full of coins.

Very old and valuable coins.

He looked into the bag sadly and then started that long walk down into Resolution.
© anita marie moscoso 2005-text

Composition

2005-05-28T01:31:00.000-07:00

Gregarious maggot masses
Armed with mouth hooks
Prepare to rake over the
Black bitter heart
The decaying flesh
Of a lifeless writer
Slumped over a desk littered
With recent rejection slips

The haunting eyes of Anubis,
Watch silently as the skilled embalmer
Works through the night, her fingers
Caressing the artery reverently, impregnating
The lifeless writer with aromatic substances
Masking the decomposition
repelling the maggot masses

The embalmers composition lies complete
With just a hint of sandalwood in the still air
Accompanied by his embalmer, hia wife
The dead writer dressed in formal day suit
Awaits Christian love and forgiveness
For the eulogy to be
Tenderly spoken
For the ceremonials to begin

A cell phone’s ring tone breaks the silence
As the writer’s wife
Plans a merry weekend with
A gregarious editor who
Having agreed to publish
The writer’s retrospective
Prepares to rake in royalties

The Death of Leaning Birches and Company

2005-05-27T13:40:00.000-07:00

I'm from a town called Leaning Birches; it grew up seemingly overnight around a single mining a camp.

Like any other town there’s a church, a saloon a school, a jail and shanties. There were houses on the ridges and even a cemetery. A train comes through now and then to take away the gold, sometimes the dead and it brings supplies too.

In the town of Leaning Birches men have wasted away to nothing working in the mines, they don't think about food or drink or even women when they hit those veins. No one there can remember their life before the mines, it just isn’t as important as what is under their feet.

In Leaning Birches in one way or another the Mines have claimed or spawned what's now above ground.

Once I was lost in the Mines, it was only for a little while though. I'm not sure why but I took my time walking through the darkness to the entrance. I thought I saw Miners down there, laboring, fighting, working, dieing. Only they where nothing more then shadows and whispers.

Ghosts I suppose.

Along my way I also saw carvings on the walls, in parts of the caves the miners had ventured into and then abandoned. The figure was always the same, a woman with arrows clutched in her hands. Corpses at her feet and a sly smile painted across her lips. She had no eyes and a veil of long black hair. Sometimes the figure was painted and sometimes carved. Sometimes it was life sized and at other times she was no bigger then the palm of my hand.

image courtesy of Heather Blakey

I don't know how long I walked before I found my way out; I walked towards vaporous figures that became more solid as I approached. Their voice became solid and real too, not whispers or hints of sound.

" Christ almighty, " one said as I approached " what the hell is down there? "

" Rats, " another answered " dead rats and they must be waist deep in that one enclave, I ain't going in there again the smell is God awful "

" You're sure Amory? They were all dead? How can that be? We were just down there yesterday and everything was fine.

" " Listen Del, I’m telling you that cave is full of them. They all went recent too, they're still, you know, fresh"

The voices retreated, and now I stood near the entrance, I placed my hand against the hall and my fingers danced...like spiders when they spin a web and when I took my hand away the woman with the arrows in her hands was there.

And now, so was I.

I crossed the threshold and I was topside. The town was very much alive, but I saw the shadows everywhere.

These shadows weren't shadows cast from the Sun, they were cast from the darkness and they moved liked predators stalking prey. They slid up and crossed the faces of men, women, children, livestock and they nested there.

As the shadows become darker the figures under them seemed to fade until nothing was left.

Sometimes they saw me through the Shadows. I saw traces of their faces and I also saw their fear, I saw their anger, I saw their regret. And sometimes I saw relief. They died very quickly.

The road to the cemetery was traveled almost hourly now, sometimes even at night. Later, when they all became sick the entire town turned into a cemetery and the dead were left to rest where they fell.

The town of Leaning Birches simply shut its eyes one evening just before sunset and drew one last long rattling breath and stopped.

It was done in less then 3 days.

That's how the town of Leaning Birches died. It was murdered by my hand and what I brought from the Mines with me. It was a Black Death that consumed them all. When I was done I retreated back to the mines.

I'm still down here, wandering the tunnels carved by the Miners and I still make my little drawings. Sometimes animal ventures in and I take it, sometimes it ventures back out alone and sometimes I go with it.

My little town is famous I've learned. There's a legend that over 500 souls disappeared from it without a trace over one night. The story says a surveyor came up and found food set out on tables, half filled glasses in the saloon. Money on the counter at the bank. He made it sound like all those people and their animals just got up and walked away into the hills.

Of course he lied, I know because I was there. As it would happen because I claim what is mine...no matter how far I have to travel, I found him years later in another country at another mine and I saw the look of regret on his face in the last few minutes of his life.

I didn't begrudge him his tall tale. He shouldn’t have and you shouldn't either.

He did come to the town and he sat on his horse on the ridge above the town and looked down into the ruins I had created. Bodies littered the street, the smell and silence and ugliness seemed to reach up from below and grab him by his throat.

The horseman didn't see the corpse of a ruined town; his mind simply refused to see it. I think he saw one corpse in that valley. Not, buildings or bodies or decay. A single ruined corpse.

"Somebody killed this town,” he said to himself " as surely as if they put a rifle to it's head and pulled the trigger."

Then he felt me. His hand went to the back of his neck and he saw the hairs standing up on his arms on that hot summer day. He nearly fell off his horse as he felt me approach from the bluff below. His mind slammed a door shut so hard in his own head that even I heard it.

Then I was next to him.

He couldn't see me, but he felt me. His head snapped from left to right, he turned in his saddle and his eyes were bright, defiant. I admired him very much. Which is why I didn't take him that day.

Then his horse reared and threw him to the ground. " Not here, Jesus Not here...Christ those poor people...God, God in the streets like runned over dogs...God..." he was saying from the ground. He was on all fours for a moment and then he was on his feet and his horse tried to gallop away, but I put my hand on it and it screamed in terror and stood still. It's eyes rolled and its sides heaved but it would not move past me.

I'm not sure who showed him Mercy that day but when he looked back down into the town he really saw the tale he told all those years later. He didn't see death and decay. He saw nothing except dust and empty buildings.

The town was completely abandoned by the world once it heard about the sickness there. That tale didn't come from the horseman, it came from a woman who escaped my attention entirely and I'm not sure to this day how she managed that.

So the world never came back, my presence you see...after all of this time you can feel it. You can see it in the trees and grass that don't seem to be as green and alive as the trees and grasses that grow on the opposite side of the river. The air here is still fetid and dank.

The way it is in the mines.

Still, the explores come. They try to stand in the places where buildings once stood and never seem to venture very far down what was once the main street. They don't go to the cemetery because, they tell each other, it's flat and there's nothing to see. They don't even realize it is a cemetery as all the markers were wood and when the Blackness came for them the Miners and townspeople stopped using markers at all.

But there's plenty to hear and if you can't hear it you can feel it.

That cemetery is never quiet and nothing sleeps up there. Sometimes hikers happen by and so do the hunters and the lost. But nothing stays here. The wind won't even travel these streets and sunlight doesn't come any closer then it has too.

But I walk these hills and valleys and sometimes I travel far away from this place.

But I'm from this valley and from these Mines and I am always here; I will always be here.

Waiting.
© anita marie moscoso 2005-text