At the Hollow of the World

This Week’s Prompt:130. N.E. region call’d “Witches’ Hollow”—along course of a river. Rumours of witches’ sabbaths and Indian powwows on a broad mound rising out of the level where some old hemlocks and beeches formed a dark grove or daemon-temple. Legends hard to account for. Holmes—Guardian Angel.

The Prior Research:Witches’ Hollow and Devils Den

Martin Alexander was an unwelcome sight in the town of Fairbrook. Now, the people of Fairbrook considered themselves hospitable and properly so, offering food and shelter to those in need—often without question of why they found themselves in need. But Martin’s story was known to them already—had been for months now. Maritn had been involved in some unfortunate business down river, and set out on his own rather than make peace about the matter.

As he had no kin in town, and little money, he had been a lingering shadow over the town for months. He helped where he could—he repaired roofs, he carried parcels, that sort of thing. Martin had never planned on staying in Fairbrook long. It was close to home, which meant people knew him. But it was close to home, and people knew of him. So once he had some money saved up, he left town with his dog. He had all he needed to try and raise his own farm out of town some.

Back then there wasn’t as much worry about buying deeds to land or the like. That happened, sure, but not everywhere—plenty of places that if you asked the law, no one lived on and never had. Martin made his way to one of these places, in the shade of a large hill. He figured, rightly, the hill would give some clouds pause, making sure it rained around his farm.

He built himself a house near that forested hill—the trees on the hill where thick, and he considred if they’d make for good timber. But something about the blackened bark and heavy shade convinced Martin that it was best they were left where they were.

*

Often we talk about places in that way, with regards to how they are changed by people. This is especially true of natural places—great mountains are mined, forests cleared, fields furrowed. We talk of places explored, and settled, and shaped. We deny places the power they have, the material’s capacity to shape the maker.

Martin’s dog, Darling, started barking one late autumn night. It stirred the lonely exile from his sleep, groggy and irritable. But the dog would not cease her warnings until Martin stood and came to the door. She scratched and whined and he cursed and swore. When that did nothing he lit his lantern, to see past moonlight, and opened the door. Out she shot, and Martin took in the serene and chilling autumn air.

And on the hill, he saw the trees sway—great storm winds from the sea pressing against their darkened timbers, the spear like tips bending about. The clouds over head passed and stalled over the moon as he looked—and faintly he saw dancing lights in the shadowed depths. Mostly he saw Darling rush and bark at the trees some, before trotting back proudly to the door.

“Did you get it?” Martin teased, staring into the black where Darling barked. Darling wagged her tail and sat at the door, ready with ears to defend the house hold. And the night passed, with only the thundering disturbances of a storm—the clouds over the hill having swelled.

*

The exception we make is when those places have persons in them. When a friend returns home, they return to old habits, old thoughts, and old patterns. We notice, when we see them again—they have their old accent for a time, their old way of moving and holding themselves. It is a part of humanity, not only to adapt our surroundings to our needs, but to adapt to our surroundings. To be both shaper and shaped, like a sculptor made of clay.

*

The next day, Martin decided to climb the old hollow. The lights last night were strange to him—he had heard tale of will-o-wisp and ghost light and others, but paid those story little attention as years went on. More worrying was the idea of strangers nearby. Conspiracy or other shapes in the woods were never good, and he wanted to know if there was something he should forget.

Darling came along, sticking close to Martin’s feet, ears down and pressing ahead. She growled at the occasional squirrel or other small rodent in the roots and branches, barked at a bird sitting on a dying branch. Martin scratched her head every now and then as his feet crushed grass and leaves. The orange and red strew across the floor, whipped by the wind, looked like a paper inferno.

At last, Martin found the spot—a pair of rocks rising like walls. Behind them, the top of the hill opened up—and down into yet greater depths. Martin stood at the edge and gazed down—into a deep pit that reminded him of a frog’s gaping mouth. Darling circled round, tail pressed down as she barked into the dark. The sound echoed down and down and down.

As he stepped closer, the ground cracked like glass—and looking down he saw a dried puddle of glass and white ash.  The sunlight that trailed down into the dark shimmered against other strange drops.

Now Martin was not an educated man, but his mother had raised him to be smarter than most. And he knew not to meddle in things he didn’t understand. Things he didn’t grasp where best left to other folk. Despite Darling’s barking, he went down the hill and shook his head. Some damn party or something, nothing else. Probably just lamps in the storm.

*

But when discussing the shaping of man, we leave out his non-human counterparts. Or at least, in part. We talk often about how a pet might help one recover from grief, how surrounding ourselves with plants makes us more relaxed. If it is something we invite in, we accept that it could have sway over us, influence us. If we return somewhere, it may change us.

Martin’s first harvest was hard work—he was alone on his farm, except for Darling. He didn’t have the cash to hire out help, nor did he want it. The people of Fairbrook and him kept at something of a distance—he would come and buy or sell as he needed, and they’d oblige him. Sometimes they’d send for him, if there was some old job he’d done once that needed doing again.

Fall came with its storms shortly after. And again, a year past the strange lanterns, Martin foundhimself stirred from slumber—not by the barking of Darling, but by the roar and crash of thunder. It rumbled and rolled—rain danced on the roof, crackling on the wood and ready to slip in if it could find a crack. The wind was too heavy, the rain too strong, for Martin to consider again venturing out. The darkness and howling was overwhelming.

Martin had heard stories of locusts—buzzing masses of insects over a farm land. He had seen dogs as a boy, tame and wild, that roamed free in fields. He’d seem them hunt and chase, barking after a rabbit or raccoon. Martin didn’t know what had the wind so hungry as it howled, so enraged as it buzzed and battered about. He hoped it wasn’t him.

What roused Martin out of the comfort of clinging to his bead, staring at the ceiling as the storm shook the entire world around him, was something comparatively small. A knock at the door. Three quick and heavy knocks. His mother had raised Martin right—that in desperate times, you should help those around you. And anyone out in the storm, well, they would certainly need some help.

Now, Martin didn’t mingle much with the high society, such as it was in Fairbrooks. He knew a man and woman of no small means, however. They had layers of fine clothes, and the man took off his beaver cap and smiled at Martin.

*

Far less freely comes the acknowledgement of how those surroundings, still wild, still unkept, might shape us. How the mountains and forests might imprint upon a man certain dispositions. How even the patterns of wind and rain might shape the mind. These we exclude in the modern age—we embrace them only when we discuss the material forces accepted into culture. The way one gathers food, this we permit to shape us. The shape of the river itself, we are loathe to admit.

*

“I hope not to intrude too much, good man.” The man at the door said, his arm around the young lady, helping her stay steady. Martin glanced at them, his hand still on the door. “But we have had a most unforuntae accident. We need a place to stay, only for the night.”

Darling, at his side, growled at the two. She did not like there smell, it smelled of rotting things to the old dog.

“I’d love to, I would really love to sir, but I’ve only got the one bed. We don’t get many guests out here at any time of the year.” He said, scratching his head and opening the door some so they could see the small size of his little cabin.

The man waved his hand aside.

“We need only a night—only a night, good sir, until the storm passes. Can you spare a blanket for the lady, and a store room to sleep in?” He made his way in, Martin stepping aside out of some reflexive politeness.

Despite himself, Martin couldn’t deny he had a floor and some blankets. And if they were really out in the storm, at this hour, this desperate, he couldn’t in good conscience turn them away. The storm was dreadful outside, and Fairbrooks was a fair bit away.  So he showed them to his store room, offering the two a blanket he had. The man thanked him.

When he went back to bed, Martin thought on that some. It was strange that the woman never said a word to him. Didn’t even look at him.

Stroking his beard and scratching Darling’s ears—the poor girl was nervous with strangers, and the thunder had her on edge. Eventually, they managed to get some sleep—though Martin fastened the door shut. He wasn’t sure he trusted those two quite yet.

*

Yet can we deny that the regular flow of the Nile, its floods every year so predictable that one can mark a clock by it, shaped the divine images of the Egyptians? Can we not see how the turbulent  Euphrates and Tigris gave rise to equally petty gods in Ur, unpredictable and ravenous? We are not metal shaping clay, we are clay shaping clay, and shaped by it in turn.

Martin never saw the man and woman leave. He woke when it was past noon, Darling’s barking hoarse. The two of them had left, that was certain—nothing but the blanket was in the store room. The blanket and a small bag, tied tight. He lifted it and felt its weight—heavy for its side, and full of something soft like sand—and something heavy in the middle, bout as round as his thumb.

Martin shrugged off the strangers departure, after checking that nothing of his had been stolen. Not that he had much to steal. As he stepped out onto the grass to begin his day, he heard the familiar crack of ash-white glass beneath his feet.

---

So this story is one where I ran into the deadline fairly quickly. I hope I captured something uncanny here, a feeling of wrongness instead of just horror. I could see turning this into a proper novel or longer form story at least—there are ideas I wanted to play with that simply didn’t have the time to examine. Next time, we’ll be going back to strange lights in the night—the faux fires that flicker in the woods! See you then!

The Valley and the Modern Men

This Week’s Prompt:  129. Marble Faun p. 346—strange and prehistorick Italian city of stone.

The Prior Research: Between Man and Beast

Oak trees and chestnut branches ran overhead, as the band of four hunters entered the forest.  Careful to step over the roots, they pushed through the underbrush—off the barren beaten path, deeper into the forest than any of them were familiar with. Well, than three of them were familiar with. The fourth, a local boy—Antonio? Americo? They hadn’t cared to keep his name straight—was of this place. His features were, to these modern men, the same as many rustics—dark hair, an almost innocent youth that seemed yet unaware of the mysteries of the world.

The three of them had debated even bothering with such a guide.

“Ah, see here sir, you can have a wonderous view of the rivers!” He said, pointing down at the nestled cataracts that ran through the base of the river—each splitting off from its mother, down and down through the place. Canals of clear water, the snow having just melted, swelled them beyond their normal shores.

“Ah, yes, we’ve seen much of it.” Marcelle, the youngest of the three guests said. He looked over and smiled at the rivers. “There is a simple charm to it, no?”

“It is simply beautiful.” The guide said.  Alessandro, the eldest member of the train sighed as he caught up. He was batting away perceived insects, and scratching at sores that weren’t there.

“It is. Simple.” He panted, looking over everything. “I suppose even such…wastes are prone to a sort of beauty. From a…particular perspective.”

Alessandro had been the most outspokenly opposed to the guide. They had maps of the region—fairly reliable ones, from aerial photographs and other sources. They had no need to waste money on some illiterate peasant boy.

“Oh, come now Alessandro.” The final member of the triumvirate, Luca, said with a laugh. “You can’t simply look at the Valley of Painters and wave off all of its wonder.”

“A painter’s eye renders even the battlefield beautiful.” Alessandro said. “We would not call such things the case anymore, except with regards the most decadent and degraded of art forms.”

For his part, the local boy had lost interest in the conversation and begun the descent deeper into the wood. The modern men were not here for beauty, and while the boy was always in wonder of the woods, he found their talk tiresome. He did not quite understand their purpose on this expedition—it was some matter of state that brought them here, and the boy cared little of affairs of state.

Still, they had good coin and he was fond of wondering in the woods when he had the chance, away from chores and lessons. He could tolerate bickering for that. And of course, he led them through paths in the woods that were…well, no difficulty for him. But for these tired men, the river seemed far less friendly. The ivy more worrisome. The moss and stones slippery. They grumbled and shook, and Alessandro himself swore a few times.

Were their easier paths to the old stones? Perhaps. But the boy saw no reason to use them. They were less fun.

The stones themselves rose from the trees and undergrowth like huge marble teeth. Marcelle took a moment to circle the first set of these stones—laid one next to another, each twice his height. Ivy had scaled them, and small moss grew from the cracks between the cyclopean bricks.

“Well. Perhaps not so precisely laid as we were told.” Luca said, walking in front of the wall segment. “Impressive, but not…well, they aren’t the pyramids, no?”

“The pyramids…” Alessandro grumbled as he ran his hand along the stone…and walked over to the other side. “Have the notable advantage of being in a desert, where neither man nor god would seek to wear them down.”[1]

“And they are plainer than this.” Alessandro continued from across the side, gesturing at the images carved into the stone. There, in the marble, where the lines to mark a scene—separating an upper portion of the wall that displayed trees rising through. There were legs of horses along the bottom, and scant lines that Alessandro insisted marked a procession. Here, Marcelle pointed, where cracks that meant torches. Surely, they agreed, this was not a mere happenstance. And of course, then they turned to see the rest of the stones.

The city, as they had called it in the library, extended over a portion of the valley. Part of the dispute, from the powers that be, was whether it was a city or simply the caste off stones, worn down into strange shapes. An ancient and primeval city was a matter of historical and national interest—the noble ancient past of Italy, the Powers That Be made clear, could not be simply allowed to decay. Such a place would no doubt serve as the gathering site for all manner of undesirable parts of the populace.

So the men had been set out to ascertain the nature of the city, and further to tell if some community had hidden away there yet. For this endeavor, and to satisfy their own curiousity, they endured the train rides and hikes and even the young boy who seemed uninterested in the stones. The boy had seen the stones before, a hundred times. They were another wonder of the wood, a mystery that one day he may solve.

Nevertheless, the three older men insisted they go in deeper—they had daylight yet, and more than enough time to make it back to the village if need be. Marcelle even pointed back to what he thought was a quicker route, advising the boy that next time, they need not spend so long dallying about. The boy pretend to care, and marveled politely at the insights into the forest he knew better than his prayers.

The three went down then, following what they took for an old avenue—Alessandro took the lead now, methodically searching for signs of habitation that had tarnished the nobility of the marble. Here a stone was taken for the base of a great statue, worn down by the years. There, more walls and stately homes. Could these regular lines mark an orchird?

There was little sign of habitation, the men found, at least of the outer portions of the city. It was a serene place—there was no bird song to bother their thoughts, and no serepents lying in wait beneath their feet. There was once, they thought, the sound of something in the bushes—but an investigation found nothing, save a few tracks. A deer or the like had no doubt found the city a safe haven—for there was no sign of predation in this place.

“Strange.” Alessandro said, as they surveyed. “The growth here, it is bare enough to discern the noble marble underneath…we can still see the outlines of this great city rendered out of the chaos.”

“Well, are we surprised marble and stone has prevailed where memory and words have not?” Luca said, looking around. “The sculptures art out lasts painting and posey, that’s no surprise. That the city planner outlast even him is only logical.”

“Yes, yes, but that is not the issue.” Alessandro said, looking deeper into the wood. “The strangeness is rather that…ought the interior be more free of such growths? Why, here…come here, gentleman—and boy, get here.” He said, beckoning to where he stood.

Before them was a large mass of moss over a boulder—and beyond it, the trees grew thick, casting shadows off the depths. The four watchers gathered round, and frowned at the rock.

“What of it? A cast off stone isn’t so strange.” Marcelle said, raising an eyebrow, and leaning down.

“Right, boy. Tell me, what do you imagine this to be.” Alessandro said, pointing an accusing figure at the mass.

“That’s moss, sir. It grows on rocks that don’t move.” The boy said innocently.

“And beneath it?” Alessandro continued as Marcelle examined the rock and moss, moving some aside.

“I figure a rock.” The boy said.

“One that doesn’t move.” He added after a brief pause.

Alessandro nodded, and gestured again at the rock.

“Ah, how the mystery thickens. See, this is how such wonders hide—this is not a mere rock. First, let us examine it’s shape. Look here.” He pointed at the base—and taking a small knife, revealed a flat bottom. “Here we see the touch of the mason—a perfectly flat bottom.”

“Rivers make flat stones, Alessandro, this is hardly an innovation.” Luca said, walking around the rock, and casting a gaze on the vast field of others leading deeper into the wood, where sunlight barely played on the shifting shadows.

“Rivers do, they do. Now let us consider the second point.” Alessandro said, continuing to cut the green away with a knife—and placing his finger on a thin, worn groove running down, and then cutting across. “Here, this is not the work of water—water does not make right turns, does it?”

And this was assented to.

“And the third—let us look over there. See, the walls we observed earlier—do you see any mark of disturbance in their foundations? Surely, a stone of this size could not be lifted into position by rivers—it must have rolled down, if it came here in the age of man. Yet, it was not removed by those who laid the outer ring!” Alessandro said ecstatically.

“Hm…all good points.” Marcelle said, nodding, and turning back to the rock. “Still…if that is the case…why is it more covered then the rest?”

“My question precisely! Ought not the forum and city center, where laid and sterile stone is the most prevalent, rot last? The fields are already barely contained, barely pulled from the grip of nature.” Alessandro pointed a finger at the darkening woods. “So why is it that where once the great palaces and temples would by all logic stand, nature has taken her greatest revenge?”

The three men stared into the forest of cast stones, some with tree roots splintering them, others bent with the weight of ivy, bushes grown rampant. The epicenter of this growth could not quite be seen from where they stood—only that the hill buckled at the top somewhat, a small crater. Still, the inference was clear. The might spears of nature, shooting out of the ground provided unexpected shade as they went deeper in to the depths.

“Of course, here we would expect such things to take their shelter.” Alessandro said, tilting his head to hear closely. “Listen, here that? Some goats lost by a shepherd boy. Do they beat such lazy boys still, boy?”

The boy nodded quickly at the remark.

“If a shepherd loses much of his flock, it’d be best for him to flee home than face his master,” He said, walking up a broken pillar to stare deeper into the woods. “Though, I’m not so sure sheep would like it here. They are not fond of the woods, and would probably be prey for wolves.”

“Ah yes, I suppose sheep should not wander far without a shepherd to guide them. The wolves are always waiting.” Marcelle nodded. “Such simple wisdom. Still, what harm is there if a goat follows us in?”

The three agreed that such a creature wasn’t a threat in the slightest, and move in deeper—although the boy lingered some, savoring the sights before moving. He also listened—and heard the gait of a goat, yes. But a strange one, which moved with some swiftness. His brothers had told him, the goats of the wood were not to be trusted—for they often made wolves their prey.

They arrived where the trees were as thick as storm clouds. No, thicker still—for as they came to the crude center of the crater, where only the faint slivers of light shone through. Here was the greatest of trees—a broken oak, smote by lighting long ago.

“Look how the roots grow—their impression is all that remains of the stones.” Alessandro said, pacing about.

“An echo of an echo…” Luca said, squinting to see anything in the darkness. “Look, is this a root or a stone…” He traced the roots, and felt the dead wood give way to the petrified remains of wood, long fused with the rubble and stone work.

“Struck by Zeus’s own thunder.” Marcelle said, marveling at it’s bent hollow and twisted shape, warped around where the bolt left a heavy gashing wound.

“Tell me boy, have you seen such—” Alessandro began…and realized the boy was gone. Perhaps lost, perhaps bored, perhaps afraid. Either way, the three stared off into the dark of the wood—the light hidden by the hill on all sides.

“Hm. Well, if the punishment for the loss of mere sheep is such a beating that a man would flee town than suffer it, we shall see what the penalty for abandoning officials is.” Alessandro said. His threat seemed all the more fearsome in darkness, when only his fellows could witness it. Yet it was almost ludicrous. Here in the hall of wood, where there was no one to see—what power could such a slight threat hold?

It was then they heard them again—the clicking of goat feet on the stones long buried. The tapping of wood on dead rock.

And there, the strange modern men who thought themselves in a dead land, found themselves surrounded by horns and beards that reached  down to the stones. Hundreds of eyes stared upon them, the three of them against the tree. And the old sages of the city set upon them.

*

The peasant boy heard pan flutes through the wood, the sweetest music he had heard—no doubt the wind playing on the hollows of the wood. He wondered as he went home if the three men he’d met today appreciated the music of the forests and valleys.

---

Playing with modernism, and the arrogance that comes with it, was the root of this idea. I couldn’t quite figure out how to transistion between the ruins and the inhabitants still there—the ending is rushed as a result, as I had to eventually give up on linking the two together. If I come back to this, I think that would be the part to adjust—a more solid conculsion would help give the entire piece more direction.

Next time, we discuss witch gatherings and spells in forgotten hills!

---

[1] This is of course patently false—the pyramids were looted, both within and without, many times.

Metamorphosis

This Week’s Prompt: 128. Individual, by some strange process, retraces the path of evolution and becomes amphibious.

The Prior Research: Back to Tadpoles

It started with my fingers. They’d swollen to about…I think two inches. No, that’s too big, isn’t it? That’d be…I’d have realized something was wrong a lot faster. I think.

But it started with my fingers, they got swollen and sweaty. It was hard to type. That made work hard, because even when I could type, it was not…the keys. I’d hit too many at once if I wasn’t careful, and they got gross. So I had to take breaks. I wore gloves, took my time. But it was annoying. It annoyed other people too.

And everything was itchy. I was really itchy, it was so dry. So dry. I took two or three showers a day and it was still…even when I took four, I was really itchy and dry.

I thought it was the shampoo, maybe. So I stopped that.

But then my hair started falling out. Lots of it. And my arms, it hurt to lift my arms—wait no, it hurt to lower my arms. To put my arms at my side. To bend them like…back, so that my hands were where my knees were. If that makes sense. It kept my hands on the keys, I’d press to many keys—no, no, past that.

My hair was falling out. I took pictures to prove it. We went to a doctor, asking about the aches, the hair. I remember being frustrated when he just…didn’t have much to say. He sent us to another doctor, I think a skin doctor. And he was confused, but said it shouldn’t be too bad.

“So that’s it? Just take some pain pills, rub some oil, hope it goes away?” I asked…someone. We were going down a road, home I think. They nodded, and said something about it passing. I want to remember how long they said it would take, for this to pass. How much longer until this passes.

That’s how my memories are. Little snippets, floating to the surface, dropping away. I don’t know how long, but I can feel…like ripples on a lake, when you drop a rock in. I can feel where the rock used to be. I wonder if it will come back up, skipping across. If I look down and check—if I dive down to find that rock could I tell it apart from the other rocks?

We got home and the oils helped, and medicine helped. In a way, I mean. I hurt less. I itched less. But my fingers were swollen, and my feet hurt. My knees ached, when I tired to get up—but not how my grandfathers, ached, where bending even a little made him groan. No, my legs…they wouldn’t go straight. They jerked a bit but…

“Its nothing. We’ll make an appointment…until then, just lean on me. Did you send those reports in?”

“I don’t think…their next to the laptop, just need to organize them.” I remember saying. My throat was so dry, I rasped and croaked more than spoke. Barefoot I sat down, hunched over my latop, breathing strained. I managed to get…stuff written. I got it done. I could get it done then, even if the gloves were strained.

That was the last one I remember. The last one I remember finishing. The light of the screen hurt my eyes, and my back—it wasn’t good for me. Being hunched over the whole time. It was making things worse, we were sure. We were pretty sure.

We did go to doctors. We used to go to doctors. Now doctors come to us. Or maybe I just…fall asleep when we go. It’s hard to say.

The second time, things were worse. There was shouting. There was confusion. The doctors put me in a heavy vest, in weird machines to take pictures of me. They held them in front of me, they had bones on them. I think they were my bones, all bent and fused and strange.

“You can’t be ser—there’s got to be something wrong with the machine.”

“—never seen anything like it, I don’t even know where to begin—”

We saw less doctors for a while. The ones we saw did poke me frequently. And we met with other people, usually by going to places with big crowds. The doctor, I think he was a doctor, would shout a bunch from his wooden hill. And everyone would shout with him.

There were other people on the wooden hill. They were sick too, I think, and then they were better. But we never went up there. She thought that would just…that would be a bad idea. Something bad would happen if we went on the wooden hill.

Instead, after everyone was leaving, we would go back behind it. We’d talk to people, and talk to other people—and then the doctor would hold his hands over me, and say something. Sometimes they asked me to say things back, but my ears were not as good.

I did my best to say the words back, the words that would fix everything.

Maybe I needed to say more things. Maybe I needed to try harder.

But it was hard. My tongue didn’t sit right, my teeth weren’t shaped write. My head was bent and squished—I think I used to have five fingers, now only four. My nose had nearly fallen off, and that made it—that made it harder to make the noises you need to make to say the things you want to say.

I had to be wheeled—I couldn’t sit right. She made me a bed on wheels, because sitting hurt my back worse than standing.

I don’t think I had a job anymore. I don’t remember the bright light of my computer that much around then. I didn’t type.

There was a part where I had a thing that made my words into lights and text. I could talk, with effort. I could write reports. I could write friends. I was getting used to that, when my voice gave out. I couldn’t speak…right, not for long enough.

Then it was my eye—somehow, I could use my eyes. I think. I’d move my eyes, this way and that, and it would make words appear. It took getting used to. But I managed. And I could do it still, with the box in front of me.

The problem was…the problem is, I think. I think it is a problem. The problem is my muscles ache and my thoughts are a muscle.

“Right here, see if you can—yeah, there you go. See, you can still…I mean, it’s a living right?” she said when we got the first piece and I managed to write…something. I can’t even remember what I wrote. It was important, wasn’t it?

“Okay, so lets try—the quick brown fox jumps…”

It was important, writing about that…fox wasn’t it? It must have been.

It must have been. I worked hard to write that sentence, two or three times. So many times. When did I forget why that sentence mattered?

When did I forget what those small dark spots on the white field meant? When did I forget? I remember, I remember—I drop rocks in a lack, hoping to drain it, to remember to remember, to see beneath the dark water. Is it deep? It is dark, it is wet, it is cold, it is still until a rock drops in it.

“The oil’s helping, yeah? So that’s a start. And hey, you don’t look too bad bald, if I—”

I drop a rock in the lake, I drop and hope it bounces back, it skips, it passes by the pond lilies, it moves, it builds an island. Build an island in the water.

“—she thinks we need a vet, not a doctor, but that’s not right that’s—”

A rock falls, it ripples, thing stir, scents and colors I can’t see. I can’t remember them all. It drops away, and maybe it will wash near me again. It’s gone.

“—okay—”

“Tomorrow we—”

“—at the end of the week—”

“Next month we—”

“—a year or so—”

“—twice—every other—three times—”

“Okay.”

The rock sits, a bit above the water. Stacked high and higher. One rock sits on the top, just above the water.

“Now can you write your name?”

Was it when I wrote with hands? When I could use my voice? My eyes?

It doesn’t matter. I cling to the rock in my head.

And don’t remember the answer.

---

The original version of this story was a bit…off target I felt, focusing too much on the ‘burden’ of care in a way that could be read as ableist. I rewrote it as such, and I still think I missed the mark–the sort of Kafkaesque story that it is attempting requires a more finely tuned bit of editing and revising than I had. Next time! We will discuss Fauns and Satyrs!

The Bird House

This Week’s Prompt: 127. Ancient and unknown ruins—strange and immortal bird who speaks in a language horrifying and revelatory to the explorers.

The Prior Research:Birds the Likes of Which God Hasn’t Seen

It was perched like a bloated dead spider on the hill, waiting for its children to well up and devour it. Sprawling gardens and forgotten mazes, hedges long dead and fountains over grown with mold and moss, formed its stone web. The baths that once bubbled with mineral spring water were now entirely consumed. Even the wolves gave it distance.

The only wholesome thing we saw, walking up in the night with our flashlights, were the birds. Nests of birds across the abandoned rooves and long collapsed balconies. Well, wholesome might be the wrong word. There were sparrows and robins and such, birds that sang in the morning and all that. I never was good with telling birds apart without bright colors. But I know ravens and crows, and the sound of owls in the night.

Place was full of vermin—mice, rats, insects, all of them flocked to its walls. Course they lured in birds. And in a few years, when the ceiling gave way, the bird’s lure in something bigger. What, I don’t know.

“My uncle says grandpa use to come here.” Jordan said, shining his light through the front gate. There is flicker of a fox moving away from the light. Had something with feathers in its mouth.

“Yeah? Like as a butler or something?” I said, looking around. The trees were full of dead leaves. Jordan’s clipers break the rusty lock.

“Nah, before that.” He said, pushing open the gate. “When, yeah, some rich guy owned it—that guy who always watered down his food? Apparenlty apart from running workshops and stuff, he opened up a bunch of baths. Cured every sort of ache.”

“Huh. You’d think that sorta business would’ve kept it open.” I said, as we walked down the broken cobblestones. You could still see the baths, rising in rows down the path to the backdoor. What had been a pool of water was both dead and oh so alive, the water mostly sunken into the very bottom, but moss and mold growing up the walls. Only the uplifted hand of the statue was visible. A confused crow was pecking at it.

Renovating a new wing onto the manor took time. During the day, the dolorous toll of hammers and cranes drove all life from the place. Even the owner, Gerald Copperson, retreated upward  and away, in an isolated study from the clamor. There he studied heavy books and answered letters as his designs for the building were carried out. It was only at night, when silence fell over the structure like a curtain, that Gerald ventured out to survey the work.

Slowly, the new wing was rising—by summers end, it would be finished. A whole new set of rooms, including a parlor for entertaining more properly. A spare kitchen perhaps. He walked along the currently bare walls—ones that would be filled with engravings to memorialize the effort. He had even found the perfect statue in an Italian graveyard—once the purchase was finalized, the Renaissance marble.

On such a nightly walk, in the warmth of a summer night around the bubbling fountain with its angel statue, that Gerald felt the chill of a passing shadow. The owls of the surrounding wood sometimes came to pass over his well lit home, and as an avid bird watcher, Gerald instinctively turned to catch a glimpse. And sure enough, there was a bird—but not an owl of any kind he’d seen. It had wide wings like a condor, with thin feathers flayed out, and a heavy tail as it descended down. It circled for a moment before affixing itself to the lance at the top of the roof. The knightly statue, placed over where one day his children would slumber, seemed to sag ever so slightly with the weight of the bird.

*

Each of the baths had been an effort to make.

“We should be able to get six baths.” Sheryl muttered, drawing out the locations on the map under the gaslight. “It’s not exactly the Hanging Gardens or Bath, but its more than enough I think.”

“I was hoping to get some of the water to the gardens.” Yohan sighed. “But there isn’t a convient spring—not with those minerals.”

“The water and the vegetables might not mix well anyway.” Sheryl said tapping her chin. “I mean, whats good for the outside isn’t always good for the inside.”

The aquafir beneath their feet went into a number of local springs—with some effort and piping, the water was funneled into baths and fountains. A rare, dare Yohan say it, unique mixture of minerals was just beneath the surface—fed by rain water and underground rivers, the aquifers water was bountiful. It worked wonders on illness…or it should. Similair chemicals had been found down river—not the same, but similar. Bottles had been kept as household cures for a while now.

“Still, six baths for now. Maybe we can make more later.” Yohan said, rolling up the plans. “With a field for exercises, and a vegetable garden—I think we might be onto something here. The sort of thing people really need.”

The inside of the building wasn’t any better than the outside. The wallpaper had peeled and cracked—the cheerful pink flowers faded away. Gashes and grafitti covered walls as we went down the alls. Doors ripped off the hinges. I’d say by some crazed monster, but probably by some idiot drunk teens. The smell of piss and the sexual history documented on the wall seemed more their work than Bigfoot’s.

Chunks of the upper floor had given in—rain broke the way for wind.

“You’d think, but you know—after  a bit, fads fall out of fashion, people stop having the money to go to a health club to get told they need to eat nuts and wear sackcloth.” Jordan said with a shrug as he stepped over some rubble. “Then you can’t make rent, and no one can buy it because you know. It’s a building this big, what are you going to do with it?”

“Make  a hotel?” I said, looking around, light catching on a nest of cobwebs. “Or maybe…like…a business park?”

“For who?” Jordan said, pushing open the door. “No one’s buying that sort of thing when there’s no money to go around. And by the time there is…well.” He flashed a light at nearest example of spreading mold, a cancerous growth along the walls.

“Anyway, its this way I think. Up the stairs, shouldn’t be too hard to spot.” He muttered, as we entered into the lobby, the dome over head as dark as the night—darker, because not a single light shone down.

*

Copperton was a simple man. He considered himself an appreiator of nature. He even enjoyed bird watching on occasion. But the nosies that came from the knight, whenever that strange bird arrived, were unbearable. A warbling song filled the room, and disturbed his dreams—dreams that once had been of fields and boyhood dreams where now stained with a familiar red.

He did not like his rifle. That was perhaps a peculiar thing to say, when the tool had been his most constant companion. Even when family faded, and friends perished, his rifle was ready at his side. It’s bayonet able to be fixed. His hands knew it’s shape and grooves better than his kitchen tools. Still. He did not like his rifle, as he took it outside in the dark of the night, stalking again through the bushes.

The Bird was there again—how had he known, this night of all nights? It had no rhythmn, it had no pattern he understood—but it descended down regardless. And then, as he raised his rifle—one shot, to frighten it off, one shot to get some sleep, one shot above those majestic wings—

*

“It has to be some sort of…Rodent?” Yohan said, examining small, but noticeable scratches on the top of the bath houses. “Right? Like, I guess a bat or owl might, but these look a bit big for that.”

“Well, whatever it is, we should try and stake out for it.” Sarah said, looking off into the woods. “Its scaring off the guests, making some sort of noise.”

“Are we sure that’s not exhaustion? Steam maybe?” Yohan said, stepping down the ladder. Sarah shook her head.

“Probably not. But even if it is, it’d be better knowing what is causing the steam to screech out of the baths. Figure out how to stop it, calm everyone down.”

“That’s fair, we don’t want them stressed here.” Yohan sighed. “That would defeat the purpose of our institution.”

So the two of them made plans, lantern in hand and with a bat ready. If it was just a large bird, some stones or the like should keep it away. Yohan brought a looking glass as well, to get a better glimpse of what was happening on the roofs that caused such a strange and disturbing noise.

The moon was high, when the shadow first moved across the ground. Wings spread wide, feathers trailing—the air shimmering as it spun into the world. The stars flickered as the bird danced down to the top of the bath—steam that rose from the spring wrapping around it, woven into dense bits of rain. In the veil of droplets, Yohan could make out the long neck of an ostrich rising from the plumage—plumage that became sharp under the light of the lanterns. And before he could cast his stone, it began to sing.

The stairs were creaky, walking all the way up to the office. The stairs were rotten as we walked up to the office. The stairs spiralled up and around and around the spine of the building, that nearly touched the concrete cranium, the dome overhead. And then the stairs stopped at the top, at the office.

The door wasn’t that broken. It’s hinges were rusty, it squeaked loudly as we opened it, but all things considered, it was in good condition. It was still a door that could be closed. There were the remains of papers on the floor, bureaucracy coating everything. The ceiling of the office had collapsed in, under god knows what weight—maybe nothing more than rain.

 I rested my crowbar on my back, looking around.

“How do you know its still here even?” I asked, shining on the walls. Graffiti was absent, but there was a crumbling corkboard. You could faintly see where paintings had been removed, where furniture had once been. The desk was gone, but there was still a chair sitting there. Apparently no one wanted it.

“Just trust me, I checked. Just need an extra hand getting it out.” Jordan said, walking to the wall and tapping along for a moment—the wood seeming to recoil from his touch until at last he hit upon something. He put down his sack and took out his hammer, striking away at dry wall. It was after the third whack that a shadow past over head—a vast shape plunging the room into darkness for a moment. And when it passed, we were no longer alonge.

There it sat, atop the chair, a grotesque parody of a bird. Its entire body was covered in knife like spines, crackling as it cut the air in it’s motions. Its long neck ended in a hardened beak, with holes running up the neck. And as I started back, and Jordan turned, it raised its beak and began to sing.

*

It sang and the walls fell away.

It sang and what we saw was rot and life, healing and hurt. We saw a thousand fold this building, this roost that it sang on once, but many times. We saw vibrance of life here, a rainbow that washed over the world. The stars, they no longer seemed so far. We saw each other—felt the rifle in our hands, felt the stone, the lantern, the crowbar, the fear, the joy, the brilliance, the memories of trenches, the memories of hospitals, the desperation, the smell of unfamiliar shores, things collapsed together as it sang. Its notes stiched across time and space, all at once, were we all speaking and seeing each other or was it a messenger bringing with it all those touched before? Was it here or there?

It sang it sang and the air vibrated with its song, refracted and spread and folded in on itself. It sang and then it was gone.

And we were left, unsure what parts were us and what parts were other.

---

This was along time coming. I found the idea of a song as the uniting element of revelation made sense–songs are after all a means of connection that, in theory, transcend language. I apologize for the recent delays, my burn out spat ran long than I expected. Still, I think this is a good story to come back to. If anything, I can think of ways to expand on this idea–drifting the stories together more at the point of impact, reflecting after the song has ended.

Next week: We discuss frogs and royalty.

Baqi and the Golden Fruit

This Week’s Prompt: 126. Castaways on island eat unknown vegetation and become strangely transformed

The Prior Research:Fruit of the Sea

The Sea Dane would tell this sailor’s tale, both in the humble halls he washed ashore in, and in the ruby lit halls of Dahut. He had heard it himself at a port of call in Iberia, from a sailor named Baqi. Baqi had traveled many seas, from the city of Caesars to the west coast of Africa to the seas about Arabia. He had many tales of strange ports and stranger things he had seen—but this story was the strangest.

Baqi and his crew were sailing towards the Pillars of Hercules, the great white cliffs that rose into the heavens. They had brought a fine hall from the coasts, to markets in the Mediterranean. Spices and ivory and gold from the coast of Africa—but as they sailed, a terrible storm rose from the great sea in the west. The ship was sturdy, but the darkness and wind overcame them, unseen stones cutting the hull to pieces, and casting them into the waves.

They awoke on an island with shores of golden sand and emerald trees. Of the crew, maybe a dozen survived. The wreckage that floated ashore was naught but drift wood and some rations for their journey. Baqi and his men gave thanks for surviving the storm—they prepared to burn the driftwood for warmth at night, and salvage what they could, bury those who had perished. And Baqi took his first mate, Alaric, to see what life might persist on this island.

They traveled sometime, before they found the center of the island. A lake, clear and placid, surrounded by large trees. And upon the trees grew a strange fruit, like an olive perhaps but as big as a man’s head.

“Do you think we can eat those?” Alaric said, scratch is head. Baqi frowned and considered.

“Who’s to say? It might be a dreadful poison.” He said turning to the lake and looking down at the fish that swam in it’s depths. “We have fish, though, and some supplies. We have wood a plenty.” He gestured around him. “We’ll wait to eat the strange plants until we have no better option.”

And so the crew set up shelter on the shores of that lake—the water pure and fresh and sweet, and the driftwood burned easy. The wind was calming and soothing in the night, as the moon came over head—except when it shifted direction. Then it made a terrible rustling, like a great cloud of locusts was going to rise from the branches and consume them all. It made it hard to sleep.

*

They ran out of provisions before they finished cutting trees for their ship. The great fire they lit on the shore lured none to harbor—although perhaps it was simply not seen. Only once did the nightwatchmen spy a ship passing over the horizon, and even that was from a great distance—and the sounds at night made many question his health.

The crew split in two on the matter—one group went out, armed with what weapons they had to repel pirates to hunt boar or other animals of the island. The others would draw lots, and see who would try the new fruit. Boar or berry might claim one or two, but might sustain them longer.

Thus, Alaric  climbed a great tree and cut free one of the sweet fruits and Baqui went out into the forest with spear in hand. It was on this venture, moving far from the lake, that Baqui found strange sights. He found piles of stones, aligned as if great walls—but within their borders, he found naught but more trees. Before he lingered long on that outcropping, he and his men spotted a small deer—and the chase resumed.

When they returned, they found the rest of the crew seated in a circle, observing the young man who drew the shortest lot. There was a fruit in front of him, with a sliver cut from it by his knife—the flesh of the fruit seemed to be a shinning white like an apple’s interior.

“It’s sweet…savory too. Like cattle made of honey.” He said, cutting another slice and eating it. Alaric looked over at the arriving hunters, with their own catch—a pair of small deer they had found. Baqi chuckled.

“Well, if it tastes better and is easier to find…how much has he eaten?” He asked his first mate.

“This is the second fruit—nothing strange has come over him yet.” Alaric said. “We’ve watched closely—not even the slightest sign…”

“Then it seems safe enough for now.” Baqi said—although later he regrated his eagerness. “We can hunt and build, but this will make good reserves. Plant some of the seeds, and perhaps we will be rich from them when we return to friendly and familiar shores.”

*

They did find, in time, that there was good timber for building boats—but there was little eagerness to leave the quaint island. For the lake and fruit kept them fulfilled, and each found their own entertainment. It was like a paradise, and they told themselves surely the wind was still foul and the waves still treacherous. They had best give it a season or so before trying the waters.

Alas, Baqi mourned that time—when the gates were open for any to leave. And he recalled to the Sea Dane, the night they were closed forever. For one night, not even two weeks past when the first fruit was eaten, a man woke the whole camp. He had seen a shape moving past the fire. It looked much like a man, but without a head and with long limbs. The sailor was convinced that they were not alone on the island—that this was the source of the rustling sounds at night and other strange things.

Now, it is no secret that sailors are superstitious folk. Any who rely on the vagaries of wind and wave are prone to beliefs in all manner of fortunes. So they made plans that night—they stayed together, and appointed their bravest, including Baqi, to keep an eye out for the strange shape the next day.

That night, the wind rattled the leaves worse than before, filling the night with hoarse laughter. Baqi, days staying on the island, was still unused to the sounds of the nightly winds. He stood about with his fire, watching the darkness for any strange sights or shadows.  Any wild dogs or deer, as he privately thought the shapes must have been.

And then the arm darted across the tree line.

He and the men instantly rose up, and moved quickly, silently as they could—the shape was large, like a bear but walking on all fours. It fled from them, quick as a deer—but they were used to hunting deer. At last, they chased it to the shore of the sea. AS they drew close it turned—two golden eyes like a great lions shown in the moon light. Baqi felt a primal terror come over him as those eyes stayed fix as the head rotated away—and the beast leapt into the sea.

*

They built walls of wood to keep the beast at bay. They made wind chimes and trap wires—for they did not know what the beast desired, but it seemed fearsome and ill tempered. They sharpened spears for their defense, and laid  pointed sticks around the places they planted new fruit trees, hoping to keep the creatures away from their prized plants.

They did this in vain.

*

They did not wait until night to descend upon the camp of the sailors—oily scaled skin and eyes like a lion. They came with a roar that sounded of death and put fear into every man’s heart, sending them fleeing from the walls they crudely made—carrying only a dozen or so of the golden fruits. They came and a mist of darkness swallowed the land behind them, as if the sea rose up.

The sailors fled up the island, behind the stone walls Baqi found long ago—where it seemed the strange beasts were loathe to go.  They lit torches, and as night fell they stationed guards to see that the strange beasts did not overwhelm them.

“We cannot hold for long.” Baqi said as he walked in front of the flames. “At any moment, they might come upon us—and they are far more numerous then us. Still—we have trees in these walls, ones that might be of use. We can build a raft in the night, and flee before they come upon us stronger.”

“Flee? While they hold our gold?” Alaric said, standing up. “No, no, they cannot be allowed to keep it. We have arms—stones and slings we can make, and strike them down from this fortress, recoup our losses, and take back that grove!”

His response was met with cheers of the others among the grovesmen, although the hunters remained unsure.

“We have tools for hunting deer, Alaric, not for killing beasts bigger than a man.” Baqi countered. “We have a few spears and knives—”

“We have courage and will—and fire!” He said, gesturing at the bonfire. “And those can more than startle and scare away monsters of the night! If we aim true and with care, we can do so without our gold igniting!”

“Who cares for the fruit, our lives are on the line!” Baqi shouted. And when Alaric looked at him with rage, Baqi saw his eyes had taken on a gold shine.  He did not remember what Alaric said, with those leonid eyes. But he felt them call to his blood—to the fruit he had consumed.

And then he knew he must flee in the night, or he too would be consumed.

“Do what you will.” Baqi said, stepping back, cutting through the haze of Alaric’s speech. “And I do what I.”

*

Baqi confessed he didn’t stay for the fight—he gathered those who were sane, and as the others heated spears and stones to make tools of war, they built something like a ship. Some drifted away from their work—eyes taking on a bronze or gold hue whenever they left.

As Baqi set the raft to shore, he turned to his fellows.

“If any of us are gripped by that madness, we must tie him to the raft and hope for the best.”  He said solemnly. And then he inhaled sharply and sighed, and confided to the Sea Dane—he was the first to lose himself to that golden sound. It was like a great bell resonating in his ears. It was a thirst that couldn’t be slaked, a fire in his stomach that threatened to boil through his skin. His comrades restrained him, bound him to the crude mast.

At last, they came to friendly shores. And there, he told the Sea Dane, he began to recover—but the fire never really ended, and still he dreams of those stone walls and strange beasts.

---

I decided to tie this story in with the prior one (here) slightly, as a framing device. The story concept I think could be fleshed out much more, and I probably took on a longer narrative then needed. Next time! We return to the birds!

The Sea Dane

This Week’s Prompt: 125. Man abandon’d by ship—swimming in sea—pickt up hours later with strange story of undersea region he has visited—mad??

The Prior Research:Under the Sea

The fishermen did not know what to do, when they pulled their strange haul onto the deck. For it was not often that a man in mail and byrnie. He took ragged breaths as he came to on the ship, his fingers gripped tight around a well worn key of finest gold, his beard so long it reached down to his waist. It was only after some effort he managed to stand and speak at all. And all he would ask is if the sun was still in the sky.

The Dane of the Sea, as the Bretons called him when he was out of earshot, was taken in to gather warmth and wits that day. His dress gave him away as a man a viking, but his state was strange for one—for he had no sword or axe or spear, and while he had rings to pay his stay, they had a strange cast about them of green-gold. What drew him, more than the strangeness of his voyage.

The Dane of the Sea was one of many who had sailed along the coasts of the mainland, laying pillage to the abandoned fortresses of Romans and cloisters of monasteries by river and sea passage. It was after ransacking one such monastery that the storm came.

The waters churned and the waves crashed against the long ships, the sky as dark as night. It had come with such speed that the crew did not have time to go to shore until it was upon them. They turned and rowed with the waves towards the shore, aiming away from rocky coasts—but misfortune had more in store for the Dane of the Sea than just the surface could offer.

No instead, the waves battered on and on—and some great force pulled down at his legs and arms, the darkness coming over his vision, fearing he died a drowning death as he struggled. Something coiled about him and down he plunged.

The Sea Dane awoke in a room with heavy furs and a crackling fire. He was on a great bed with heavy wools.  A window covered by animal hides, although what he saw seemed to be the glimmering scales of fish as big as a hand. As he stirred, he door opened and a maid greeted the Sea Dane.

“Ah, the good sir yet lives.” She said, in her hands a wooden tray with a cup of painted peach wood and a meal on a platter, a  smoked fish mixed with rice and pasta and strange fruits.

“Do I? And where, pray chance, do I live?” The Sea Dane asked the maid as she laid his meal before him. The maid smiled as she stood.  “Last I recall, I was embraced by dread waves and soon to be nothing more than memory.”

“You are on the Isle of Ker Is, in the hall of the great lady Dahut. She will tell you more, when you have the strength to see her in her hall.”

The Hall of Lady Dahut was bedecked with perfumed candles. The Sea Dane was struck at once by the lanterns hanging from the ceiling and the candelabras that lined the walls and were born by youths and maidens around the hall, light dancing on the dark blue tapestries. The play of light and shadow gave the serpents and warriors and boats a life of their own. Most impressive was the singular ruby that hung on a chain of iron above the high seat, for it gave off a red light like the sun as it set over the sea.

And beneath this crimson light sat the Lady Dahut herself, a woman of beauty that surpassed any woman the Sea Dane had seen. Her hair appeared like fire in the red light, the straw blonde playing against the piercing red of the ruby as she shifted. A cloak of dark blue wraped around her dress, a crown of studded silver rested on her brow, intertwined serpents of gold worked across it. The light caught on the crown and spread over the hall, illuminating every shadow the candles and ruby did not reach with it’s radiance.

And her voice, as she greeted him, was like a radiant song.

“We see you have recovered from the worst of the sea, stranger. We had worried you slipped through to the land of the dead.” She said with a smile.

The Sea Dane bowed and greeted her in turn.

“If it were not for your blessed isle, I perhaps would.” He said as he rose. “I admit, the sea took quite a bit from me.”

“We would be remiss to turn a guest from our home while they are still groggy from the depths—although, we do object to calling our isle blessed.” She said, rising from her seat and walking down the hall, beckoning the Sea Dane. As stepped out from the crimson light, he saw the carved rings on her fingers, coated with gems—and she lowered from her hair a vail of emeralds  the size of raindrops. She went down, taking a candelabra where each branch was a carved warrior, their spear rising out of the candle and purple smoke rising from the tips of their weapons.

And he beheld a great city of stonework, paved roads like the romans laid and towers rising with gilded rooves. The riches of the city were cast in night, illuminated only by lanterns—and at a gesture to the sky, the Lady Duhat told him why.

“Our Isle is far from blessed—Ker Is was, when I was young, cursed.” She said, and the Sea Dane saw the heavens darker than the night—for there were no stars or moon, nor the subtle shades of clouds. An endless dark rising forever up, an abyss without end. And distant from the city, it came down to earth. There were great whirling shapes, winds of horrific might that snarled light itself as the swirled.

“A lecherous priest came to our land, and tried to persuade my father to wed him despite my will. When I rejected his proposal, in his spite he cursed our isle to never see the sun again. And so, a storm has assaulted our shores in the years since. We survive by means of my wisidom, and many scholars who know how to yet draw life from the ground and fish from the waves and storms.”

At the time, the Sea Dane believed the curse was nothing but storms and winds—he did not see the churning mass that the so called winds pushed. He did not at the time wonder how seamless the sky overhead was, without fault in the clouds—except when some vast shape seemed to shift and churn close at hand.

“Well, when I regain my strength, perhaps I can set myself to finding a wiser man to lift the curse.” The Sea Dane said, stroking his beard. And here perhaps the audience would jeer some, that Lady Dahut’s beauty was what drove him—and not, as he protested, his hospitable nature. For when one is taken in from near death, offering a service seems only fair.

“Perhaps, when your strength is yours again. But there is no need to rush things—the sea and storm will wait for any man.” She said with a smile. “And it has been long since we have entertained a guest from afar—surely you have tales to tell.”

And so the Sea Dane spent his days in the halls of Lady Dahut and her court. He was provided a harp, and played it well as he sung the songs he knew. At this point in his tale, the Sea Dane told the people of the Bay a different story every time—and how Lady Dahut adored it, and her court applauded the tales he wove. Often they were of family and feuding and oaths and tragedy. And this was the bulk of the difference in each telling, that story the Sea Dane told Lady Dahut in her cursed city.

Each time he told the tale, the Sea Dane would sigh and say he told many more than he had time that night, and that the true matter was yet at hand. For the Sea Dane had spent many nights—or he took them for nights—in the halls of Lady Dahut, and yet he felt none the stronger. He suspected something was amiss.

One night, when all else went to sleep, he slipped from his chamber—hoping in the deeper darkness to find some clue to his predictiment. He moved with practiced skill, out into the halls—he avoided the guardsmen with their fish-tailed helms, making his way out of the hall and into the streets.

The city was full of riches, palaces of pearl and coral. There were large stone works, like the churches of Romans he had heard of but not yet seen—or perhaps those of Greeks, farther afield, and the old temples they once worshipped in. These were well lit, although the carved faces on their insides were unfamiliar to the Sea Dane.

But it was when he approach the storm that he grew suspect—for here was a line of those candles commonly held in the palace. Around the so-called storm, there were rocky walls that had been smothed over, and clouds of incense rising upward and back. The winds must be terrible, the Sea Dane thought—but he was curious. So he reached forth and put his hand against the wind—and felt the rush of water, the freezing cold of the bottomless deep.

Starting back, he stared upward and saw, for the first time, the shape of a dread leviathan against the waters. A serpent, a vast one as long as two boats from tail to head, that coiled in the water and watched him with golden eyes. The Sea Dane was a brave man, but the sight of such a creature—drawing close, lowering it’s head through the waters into the air, chilled his soul.

It’s jaws opened, revealing teeth like knives, and out poured gold and jewels, vomited forth in front of the Sea Dane. And as it withdrew, the Sea Dane looked down at the green marked gold. And no longer did he wonder at how the nobles lived so richly here, with so little visits from the world above.

It was on the return to the palace, however, that the Sea Dane learned the truth of his imprisonment. For it was while skulking through the courtyards that he found the Lady Dahut and her maid walking in the darkness.

“Why let him live much longer, your grace? He is of those that in the past we made prey of—if we had but said the word, serpents would have dragged down the whole of plunder from that ship, and we would yet rejoice.” The maid said, as her mistress walked ahead. Lady Dahut hummed as she examined a thorny rose bush that grew at the base of an apple tree—both nourished by unseen powers.

“A few more gilded trophies would bore us swiftly.” Lady Dahut said, examining the apple before plucking it. “And none of that haughty priest’s bones were aboard the vessels—whatever magic his kind have learned that so enscroll their bodies with immortality, it was out of our reach. So, instead, we have now an exotic pet. And he is not so harsh to look upon, nor is his voice unpleasant.”

“Still, do you not fear he will grow restless? He was a wanderer.”

“Let him.” Lady Dahut waved her hand. “If we bore of him, he will drink an enchanted Draught and become a new man, forgetting all else. And we have not had a new member of our court in some time.”

The Lady produced a dagger from her dress, shaped like a snake’s fang. She dug it into the apple, slicing it carefully and handing it to her maid.

“Be certain he eats three of these—any less, and he may find strength to swim away from our shores into the abyss.”

---

And there we must cut off the Sea Dane’s tale. It is late on Tuesday evening, and I wanted to  ensure this part at least was finished. The idea of a gothic horror series struck me with stories of mermaids beneath the waves and a reversal of the normal animal bride affair—not an entirely original notion, but I thought one that was potentially horrific and fitting the genre. We might return to the Sea Danes tale next time, as we come now to stranger islands and the rare flora that grows on them—perhaps the Sea Dane encountered other places before washing into the fishermen’s nets!

Or perhaps his escape from Lady Dahut’s clutches will wait until a later date. We will see. See you next week, with more research at the ready!

A Lost Limb

This Week’s Prompt: 124. Hideous secret assemblage at night in antique alley—disperse furtively one by one—one seen to drop something—a human hand—

The Prior Research:Left Hand Left Behind

Michel Donner rarely set foot outside his home in the wee hours of the morning. Even the small lights of dawn seared his eyes and made him break out in sweats. A pleasant sensation at sunset, when the intensity was fading, but in the morning it merely exaggerated his exhaustion. Still, last nights…peculiar gathering had forced him out into the light.

He paced down the alley, a one eyed stray hissing at him as he approached. Michel bought him off with a small bit of fish, tossed carelessly aside. They had been mostly silent, the strange men. He now could see, clearly, the strange symbols spray painted onto the walls of the alley. Circles and geometry patterns from school. Strange, kids these days. He amused himself at the dress up occultists of the day, before his attention was drawn by the familiar glimmer of gold on the asphalt.

It was a small band, pushing free of packaging paper. A ring, simple band—and it was as he lifted the package that Michel realized it was still attached to a hand.

Michel paused for a moment as he lifted the package, feeling the dense muscle and bone beneath it’s paper layer of skin. He hefted it for a moment, inhaling sharply.

And returned without a word to his home.

The Donner house was an abandoned building before its current owner, Michel, had arrived. It was secluded among the mostly forgotten old town buildings. There were people, but none that would be bothered by his activity in the depts of the night. None who asked many strange questsions or invited him away.

Michel carefully placed the hand on the kitchedn table, unwrapping it delicatel. It was a pale left hand, with a golden ring still on its ring finger. There was a red tattooed flower on the wrist, the edge of the stem with the letters “hen” in cursive on it. Michel retrieved a pair of tweazers and carefully removed the ring, examining it slowly. On the inside, good fortune had delievered him a name.

“Dorthoy Windsor.” He said slowly, placing the ring down and continuing his examination. “Assuming this isn’t pawned.”

A name was all he really had. Nails painted red, no blood or the like under them. There were…splotches of blood elsewhere. Sadly, she had not perished with her wallet or an identification card in her grip. Unsurprising.

That left examining the wound. Now, removing a hand is not the easiest of tasks. The tendons at the wrist had been severed, but the wound was not…clean. There were marks of hacking on either side of the incision—but the wounds were clean. She had passed before her finger hand was cut, although of hat was hard to say with merely a hand.

Someone might have advised Michel to call the authorities, and report such an atrocity in his own backyard. But Mr. Donner was a very private man, even without his condition. He never enjoyed when officers were involved in his affairs. So instead, he consulted the white pages—being one of the few to still regularly receive those tomes.

The name Windsor was luckily relatively rare. Locally, anyway.

Michel hated driving during the day. The bright light overhead were distracting—and it gave him such an awful headache. Still, he knew better than to ask for a private meeting in the late hours of evening. Such pains could be endured, with proper pills. They had been before, they would be again.

The Windsor house, unlike the Donner house, had a healthy and verdant lawn surrounding it. Even dandelions poked through the pavement on the way to the door. Michel had pried the ring free of the hand, leaving the gruesome trophy in the back of his car. Explaining that he found a gold ring was better.

Or would be, perhaps, if there had been an answer to his persistent knocking. After twenty minutes of silence, Michel took it upon himself to find the inhabitants of the home—or, judging by the contents of his car, the remains of them.

The lock to the backdoor was of poor quality. It was very expressive—the sign of someone who cared deeply about the appearance of security, but lacked the knowledge to appreciate actual security procedures. Michel’s method for opening such locks was not exceptional—any number of odd books on hobbies could uncover them. After about a moment, the backyard was open to him.

*

He was apprehensive at first, as he walked over the grass. The bright light of the sun was especially bad, reflecting off a pool below as well as from the sky above. There was a large tree, previously hidden by the house, branches hanging down over disturbed ground. It drew his eye, how the grass was so thin in this one spot.  

Lucikly for Michel, there was a shed nearby. Dorothy had been a gardener, and had a fine enough trowel and set of gloves. Her shovel was rusted and the nails holding it to the shaft were loose—well used, perhaps a handy me down. Still. It would suffice later on.

Gloves in hand, he surveyed the rest of the yard,straining to see in the bright light.  Nothing peculiar. Dog house, but no dog. A doll house being painted on the table. Or maybe a diorama. Regardless, Michel made his way to the back door—and found the lock already opened. Not just opened—the bolt, upon opening the door, had been removed.

Michel sighed with relief as he entered the Windsor home. The room closest to the back yard was a kitchen with a tile floor…and a shag carpeting floor adjacent to it, for a couch and living room.  Michel never understood the appeal of carpeting, it seemed all the harder to clean.

The kitchen was missing a few knives. That was something Michel checked on impulse these days—the exact number of knives present. Steak knives were missing, nothing terribly exotic. They made decent enough weapons.

The living room had a leather couch, and a pair of…connected seats. A couch for people afraid of appearing intimate, perhaps. Playing with a lever on the side, Michel ascertained they were recliners. Nothing stuffed in them.

Moving through the home, absent mindedly, he did notice a picture slightly ajar. A normal man or woman, or even child, would have passed it by without thought. But Michel was gripped by the paranoia of the night deprived. He removed it carefully, with gloved hands, looking to see what caused the slight change in weight. And there, presed on the frame, was a small rectangular piece of lead. Engraved on it was an eye, and characters unfamiliar to him at this hour. Characters and shapes he recalled dimly, like the writing one sees in a dream.

He stole that cursed tablet of lead. And he continued in the home that wasn’t his home.

*

There was a second floor to the Windsor home, a large loft and several rooms. Nothing of note, which itself was suprising. Michel was under no illusion he was the first to trespass here. No blood, no stains. No one had died here.

There was an office upstairs. He found a collection of business cards, Dorothy Windsor, private therapist. A number, an address for her office. He pocketed it. A list of patients. He took a photo of that, a small camera he had with him at all times in his jacket.

A through search, however, found a few other business cards. Intended to be discarded, it seemed. These had two names printed. Stephen and Dorothy Windsor. The office was the same, but of course a second number was printed. A lead then. He noted the pattern of a rose on this old card. The tattoo.

With that all gathered, he looked down at the yard from the office. The strange patch remained.

*

Michel was exhausted even before he began digging. He dug a few feet, until the metal of his shovel struck wood. A box, about ten inches by eleven inches. There was a loose chain around the lid, and a small lock. Lifting it out, Michel saw there were two—one lock on the chain, and one lock on the lid proper—a combination lock.

After placing the dirt back in the hole, Michel placed the box in the trunk, next to the box with the hand.  He’d have supplies to break it open at home. And he could use the rest. It took all his power to get home, and secure the boxes before collapsing onto the bed.

---

This story was difficult, and ends I think at the end of the first act. I had some personal issues crop up while writing this, and ended up scrapping an earlier draft that featured the hand at the midpoint. I think expanding on this story will be easy in the future—Michel’s strange condition and behavior is a bit of a joy to write.

A Night At The Museum

This Weeks Prompt: 123. Dried-up man living for centuries in cataleptic state in ancient tomb.

The Prior Research:On Display

Fisk locked the museum door behind him. The curator had placed a notice outside, that do to a recent incident, the museum was closed for the day. The News reported an ongoing investigation into a robbery.  Of course, to Fisks’s chagrin, they mentioned that the exact items stolen were not disclosed—meaning speculation ran rampant.

“Last thing this place needs, a new round of theorists.” Franklin said as Fisk passed him a coffee.

“To be fair, Frank, this is a new kind of problem.” Fisk said, as they walked back to the Lost Treasures exhibit. The two of them looked over the crime scene, such as it was. The case for the new exhibit was open, sarcophagus closed. There was another body, the mystery mummy, fallen on its back near the door.

Well, mummy was a bit much.

“Look, I hear cocaine rots you inside out. Maybe he’s on some new shit?” Fisk said, scratching his head as he walked around the body. The body was wearing a black t-shirt, a light jacket, some gloves to stay warm and a hankerchief. The baseball cap that was a foot away—knocked over when the body fell over—was probably his too. The problem was  the body itself looked like someone freeze dried an entire person. The skin was stretched tight over bones and muscles were atrophied, eyes shut against the floor, hands crumpled where they’d hit the ground.

“Right okay.” Franklin said, walkinga round the body and up to the open exhibit case. He pointed at the carefully opened plexiglass latch. “So, this—this seems like someone tried to lift the thing out of here. Right? Opening the case at night, and cameras all bugged out.”

Fisk walked over to the rotating security cam. It was a cheap thing.  Probably didn’t actually get good image anyway.

“That adds up.” Fisk said, waving at the security guard.

“So he breaks into the museum, comes in to lift some stuff and then…what? Suddenly paralysis?”

“Heart attack?” Fisk said, walking back to the body. “I mean he can’t have been in good health, looking like that.  Here’s a cat or something, and bam!” Fisk clapped his hands together. “Drops dead. No exit wound, nothing.”

“…seems strange, just dropping dead like that.”

Not that there was much such gentlemen of the law could say. They took their notes, and had the body sent away to men who’s work was dealing with the dead instead of creting them. Morticians are well versed in the art of preservation and decay, to determine and ascertain the most probable cause of the end of their fellow man. And Douglas considered himself one of the finest in such a regard.

Which made the mystery of the exterior exceptionally frustrating. As the police had suspected, not a singular exit wound was left in place. Nor entrance wound. There were some scratches made by nails, but they seemed like the itches made by fidgeting not struggling. The fingers were brusied, and their tips were even smashed—but that was due to the other, frustrating fact that Douglas struggled to explain.

Douglas, before working as a coroner, had spent some time as a mortician. And he would never imagine such a well preserved body would exist outside such professional circumstances. The skin was dried, the insides had long lost their moisture as well. Which was unusual during a cold, wet winter season.  Perhaps, Douglas considered, the man had taken some preparations for his demise. Or maybe it was the result of a freak diet.

It made the incision somewhat more difficult process—the skin being tough and leathery, instead of smooth and easy to cut. The mysteries of the surface could be solved by going underneath…he thought. Until he found the organs.

He almost admired the handy work. It took skill to preserve them this way. Perfectly still, resembling dried fruits stuffed into a leather bag. Even their flaws were there—the mar of regular smoking on the flattened lungs, the build up around the heart valves. It was like the entire body was filled with fermaldhyde.

That was one thing, however, that felt even more out of place. The smell. There was a certain smell corpses have. Rot, decay, even preservered they smelled disquieting. This one, this one smelled sweet. Almost like lavender or honey.  Douglas did take a sample of a strange, light golden substance forming around the throat—perhaps a toxin—and wrote off the strange smell to that.

As he scraped the maerial into a vial, he felt the first twitch. The spiderweb of nervs around the neck twitched back—muscle long too stiff to respond to the pulsing attempt at movement. As Douglas sat upright, he saw it again. Another twitch, a flicker of light down into the arm. It wouldn’t be until the afternoon that he confirmed it—despite all odds and sense, there was something alive on his desk.

A museum at night is a particularly eerie place. A home has familiar shapes in the darkness—chairs, couches, moonlit windows. But a museum lives on the unusual silleuhette. On the strange shape that even a child can tell is not of this time. In a normal home. Finding such a compression of history would be alarming. In the halls of the Geogrestown museum, stepping through a doorway and finding yourself back a century is part of the appeal.

It isn’t exactly a hard to place to get into. You’ll see movies, with laser tripwires and pressure sensors and people rappelling down from the ceiling. Its all very fancy, very expensive to film, has room for tension and comedy all of that. And there’s some museums that can drop enough cash to actually install those things. Really, it’s a locked door—which exists to make things a modicum more difficult—a security guard—granted, they don’t let folks who signed up day of cover night shift—and a trip alarm. Maybe a motion sensor near the big exhibit. Some cameras for the guard at the control desk.

No, what stops most robberies at museums is probably the logistics. Its pretty hard to get an ancient bronze shield out of a building without anyone noticing—not because there’s tons of eyes on it, but because we sadly don’t live in an age where you can walk around with a giant bronze disk and not get asked strange questions.

The other added layer is what is actually on display. A lot of what you see these days are replicas—specifically to prevent people like me from reaching in, grabbing something, and ducking out.  Which, well, sucks because your stuck with a cheap copy of something you can’t even really sell unless you find a dumb as hell pawn shop owner. Not that those are exactly in short supply but…

Luckily, the odds of the Georgestown Museum faking an entire mummy are rather low. I mean they could, but I’m pretty sure no part of town has enough money for that on a dime. I put my duffle bag on the floor and looked over the body. The security had, I admit, been a bit of a hassle to work around.  A cruder sort would’ve just conked him hard on the head. A smarter sort might have hacked the cameras or something.

Me? I just dropped something in his drink, let it run its course. Walked in, turned off the cameras, walked out. Kept my mask on just in case I show up on the news.

It was cold, probably an extra layer of preservative or something. The sarcophagus looked small on the news—it wasn’t like any that I’d seen before. It was only about four feet long, two feet wide, looked like some sort of big egg. Unscrewing the top of the glass took some special tools—and that wasn’t accounting for clicking the motion alarm underneath.

I figured the thing was pretty solid, pretty heavy. I’d considered trying to pop it open and moving just the mummy—but probably that’d break in the bag. Still. I had to check, before I made off with it—if the sarcophagus was just an empty box, well. That would be bad for any follow up work or pay.

The lid was a thinner than I expected—but I got a good grip on the cold stone, and with some scratching managed to lift it up. And there he was—curled up like a babe, thin as a chicken. His hands were clasping…something close to his chest.

It was shiny, whatever it was. Looked like some sort of…emerald maybe. I leaned down to get a better look at it. That’s when I realized it was looking at me.  Empty eyes, staring at me.

***

This story hit the actual drama towards the end. I realized too late that something like the Autopsy of Jane Doe—a film I forgot until writing this—would actual serve much better than a crime procedural.  If or when I rewrite this, that’s probably the direction I’ll lean into more. Next time, we delve into secret gatherings seen at night—and what they might leave behind!

The Foundations

This Week’s Prompt: 122. Horrible things whispered in the lines of Gauthier de Metz (13th cen.) “Image du Monde”

The Prior Research:Mapping the World

The lady at the front desk looks at me funny when I hand her some cash instead of a card. Probably waiting for my nightly company to show up or something, but she doesn’t say a word about it. Wonder if the scuffed suitcase helps.

I pop it open on the desk and start sifting through the papers, setting up my own little computer lab as best I can. Being faceless if not nameless has become a necessity in my work. You see the world-famous detectives fall off the wagon or off a bridge enough times, you learn to leave justice blind. That said, this isn’t anything quite as big. Right now anyway.

Juan Albert. Went missing near a new construction site—the latest, biggest exhibition of Andrew Doyle. Doyle building another eyesore in the middle of fuck off nowhere wasn’t that weird—state money ended up in his projects, the projects made cheap and quick. Never worked, never turned a profit, but Doyle tended to walk off with a cool pay out.

Of course, things get shady all the time with Doyle. People go missing, yeah. Regulations get flouted, people get hurt in construction, unions get busted by private investigators who are looking for a paycheck. Probably living more comfortably. Striking back costs your face, first, then your name. Then probably your life.

Juan’s family, though, caught me on step two—my name got passed along to them as someone who wasn’t too worried about consequences of tussling with rich men’s guard dogs.  After looking over everything, I pack up. I place a few small recording devices under the bed and desk, in case it’s searched. It’s never been searched yet.

And I head out, to have a word about what’s gone wrong around this town.

Juan’s sister doesn’t meet me at her home address. Town like this, everyone knows everyone. And while some gossip might start about talking to an out of towner, worse would come up if I was seen at her house. Plenty new people coming in to build Doyle’s new structure—a review of the project calls it some sort of broadcast station or something. No one bothered explaining why it was in the middle of the desert, about an hour even from here.

So she met me at a mostly abandoned mom-and-pop café. It smelled more like tobacco than coffee, and that tainted a bit of the taste, I won’t lie.

“Never talked about any trouble at work.” She said. She looked exhausted, and given the weird hours, this was probably a between jobs meeting. “You know, normal ‘wish got paid more’ and ‘working long hours’ stuff.”

“No one outside of work who might have…taken an opportunity?” I said, tapping my chin. “Any fights before or people who might have a grudge?”

“Not that he talked about.” She said, shaking her head and stirring the sugar in her coffee. “I mean, I guess I never know right?”

I nodded and looked over the notes again.

“Did he talk about…hm. How to say this…” I said tapping my chin. “Did he stay out late or talk about meeting someone? Things can go bad after hours, especially in construction work.”

She thought for a moment after that. Took a sip of her coffee—it’d gone cold already.

“There was a meeting or two he went to. Apparently they were organizing a soccer thing after work or something. Blow off steam you know, there’s always someone pushing for everyone at the office to be a team.” She said, looking at the cup a bit more.  “I don’t think he’d get killed over that though. I mean, folks get heated over that stuff but like. Not that heated right?”

It probably wasn’t soccer. I mean, they might have played soccer, but if there was a meeting that got him murdered, it wasn’t a soccer league. Murders like that, they happened yeah. But there wasn’t a clean cover up, and usually there was a bit more pissing and moaning. If I wanted to get to the heart of the matter, it was time to take a look around the last place he was seen.

The concrete monument rises about an hour outside town. Hexagonal rooms jut out form the side, the wall not yet wrapped around them. It was like looking at the cracked core of a giant bee hive, all around the pale concrete bone of some giant. The sky was dark grey, the clouds dimming even the bright lights of the sunset.

I had tried figuring out what this was, before I set out to poke around. But even parking my car and looking over it—guards mostly gone for the day—I still had no idea. It was supposed to be offices, but this many offices in the middle of the desert was nonsense. More likely, Mr. Doyle had placed some research or monitoring out here. Something that needed peace and quiet.

I walked in through the back, moving through the unfinished skeleton. Passed the iron fence, there were deep pits into the ground—given the iron girders that spiderwebbed in them.  I peaked down a few and well. They were weird. All pointing inward, not cross hatching at all. Looked like a giant iron toothed worm had died trying to escape the ground.

I’m not an architect, but I don’t think those are meant to be like that. The lack of any sort of…anything really to stop someone from just falling in felt off. Yeah, OSHA was a joke when it came to men like Doyle—that wasn’t news, he probably had an automatic withdraw to pay the fines when they came up. But this seemed dangerous, wasteful, and weird—usually you only get two out of three.

That said, no body, no bloodshed, nothing that seemed out of the ordinary. So, clicking my flash light on and tapping my camera, down into the deep I went. Past the silent mixers and looming crane, past the packed up drills and machines, scanning the shadows for any signs of life or light. It had been days. There wasn’t likely to be much here. But you have to check…just in case someone missed something.

The insides weren’t finished, although they were far enough along that you could see the outlines of familiar places. Front desk, elevator shafts bare and open, restrooms without doors or toliets but shaped like restrooms. It was all mundane, all the same as you’d find in a hundred other business parks.

It made the center stand out.

There was a wide hole in the center of the room, around the bare concrete and tiling. It was lipped, probably to hold some corporate seal. But there was wooden 2X4s over the thing…and tapping it, it rang hollow.

Ripping up the floor of a building under construction is…well, it’s the sort of thing that blows your cover wide open. I paced around the edge, looking for any bits that were loose enough—until I realized the easy option. The elevator.

Now climbing down an elevator shaft at night is not safe. Climbing down an unfinished one is even less safe. Climbing down an unfinished one in hopes you’ll find something incriminating is down right dangerous. Still, down I went.

It was a long climb, down past the unfinished parking lot and storage areas—all empty, identical rooms, the elevator doors not even put in. No, the first set of closed doors was all the way at the bottom—and crowbarring those open took some work. Still, I got into the long and empty room beneath the seal.

It was some sort of office, or workshop. Lots of measuring equipment, papers pinned to walls—papers I took a quick pick of, circles and measurements and so on. There was some…well, weird equipment too. Scalpels and gem cutting tools, a set of microscopes and magnifying glasses at the center. Sheets of gold leaf and silver and copper. Some weird coins hanging from the ceiling.

I took pictures of all of it, as close as I could. And it was in the flashes that something else caught my eye. It was the reflected flash in a ruby—a ruby set in a pushed aside model, of a city surrounded by a circle.

---

---

So this took forever, and not because it was good nor because the story in question was particularly hard to work with. It’s been sometime since I worked on a mystery, and frankly it was a bit too ambitous and placed in the wrong point in a story to work in 1500 words. That and the holiday season really extended this much longer than it needed to.

I will see you next Wednesday for the last bit of research for the year!

Seeking Wisdom

This Week’s Prompt: 121. Photius tells of a (lost) writer named Damascius, who wrote “Incredible Fictions,” “Tales of Daemons,” “Marvellous Stories of Appearances from the Dead”.

The Prior Research:The Last of His Kind

Oil lamps illuminated the faces of the Muses, painted eyes watching over the scrolls of lore. It was my honor to attend to such texts—the Imperial archives, surviving riot and war, time and time again.  Sophia smiled on us still, we her sacred stewards under the Aquilla. Still, even among such scholars, neophytes whisper. There are old texts here, of course. There are texts that were penned by ancient men, in times of light amongst the dark.

But the stories that linger around men of learning. The common folk say we peddle in secrets that can cure warts, that can send misfortune on our enemies, that can alter the fate of princes. We do know many things, lost to most—collections of lore on the body, how the stars can effect the fates of persons upon birth, the histories and philosophies of leadership. But there is nothing wicked about such knowledge, rightly gained and earned.

Still, such stories color ones mind, when a man enters the hall, his hood pulled over his veiled face, hand covered by a falconers glove. In the light of the oil lamps, his white robe caught the shadows—it looked pockmarked. Something about his gait alarmed me—my eyes went around his robe, looking for signs of grease, catching a feather caught at the bottom of his robe and dust stains lining the edge. Repulsive.

Still, he approached. When he drew close, I saw that beneath his veil was a mask—a mask of well-worn ivory, with carved carnelian lips. His voice was weak, like the wind moving through the reeds of the river.

“Honored master, I have traveled far and long.” He said in practiced tones, stumbling slightly in his Greek. “I am seeking wisdom that I have heard is in your house. I ask for some sanctuary, that I might cultivate in myself better virtue.”

Practiced words, practiced pleas. Hollow and rotten from over use, no doubt. No, no there was something wrong with his manner, his gesture. No, he was here for some other reason. An ill wind followed him in. But it would not behoove a man of learning to dismiss a man without reason. So I drew up my conviction and waved my hand to brush aside his request.

“I am afraid, supplicant, that this honored library is in need of more than sophistry. We cannot permit you entry on such grounds.” I said. The man’s left hand shook at his side—a strange convulsion, but sinister.  He bowed his head and stepped back slightly.

“I see, I see. I shall return then; I shall return with more promising requests.” He bowed slightly, turning to leave. Even his gait, staggered and creaking like a broken automaton, was unsettling. I gave a brief prayer, and returned, hoping to forget his visage by morning.

It was alarming, then, when he returned the next day. This time he came, shambling mass, with a scroll in his hand. I took it quickly—and inside found a commendation from a scholar I spoke often of in Athens. The speed was surprising, until I saw the date so inscribed—this abhorrence had traveled far it seemed. That at least was not a lie.

“This is quite impressive, but we are not open to all—this place is under imperial aegis.” I said, shaking my head. The man inhaled sharply, hissing like a serpent as he stared at me through veil and mask.

“This is unreasonable, teacher. I wish to read only a tome, for my own understanding. Is that not the purpose of wisdom, to share it like the light of heaven?” he said—before coughing into his robe and glaring at me with hate. “If you fear I am here to make off with your scrolls, you may attend me—even a man such as you would be able to over power me in this wretched state.”

This…was true. His form seemed light, robes hanging from his frame like they would from a dying oak. And unobserved, he might make off with some texts for some distant Persian. I sighed and nodded.

“Very well. What wisdom drives you to such lengths?” I said, gesturing at the many, many shelves of scrolls. The man seemed contented, leaning back some.

“It is a text by Damascius of Athens, last of that pagan line. Marvelous stories of Demons is the title.” He said, scratching at his chest. I caught a glimpse at his wrist beneath his gloves—how many sores were on his arms. Some seemed to ooze pus and blood. Maybe it was the oil lamp.

“Well, I think I know that text.” I said, taking a moment to consult the inventory before leading him back, deeper and deeper. His steps followed, stilted and scrapping on the stone. Such a broken wretched shape—but he had come with commendation with Athens. And I could not turn him away, not yet for that.

But his coughing, his hacking and wheezing. It was stifling, and seemed to douse the lamps momentarily with the phlegm he spewed. At last, not to far from the entrance, but when we were alone, I turned to face him again.

“Sir, please, you must leave. You may be a scholar of good intent, and wisdom you do profess, but I cannot risk that you will riddle these halls with your misfortune. Plague and bile spews from your mouth—go now, before a black death comes to the wise and learned of this house!” I said, pointing out ward, my own lamp held high. He recoiled at the light—but in silence acquiesced. And gone he was, from this house of wisdom, even if the air of his presence remained.

Of course, he returned. Like the pestilence that clung to him, he returned. An old itch on a royal thigh, with a letter of health from many a doctor—many of repute, who attested not only his health, but that whatever illnesses and conditions he had, they were not present in the miasma. He had many herbs sewn into his cloak now, to keep the stagnant air at bay.

“Now, at last, may I seek my text?” He asked, his irritation clear. I acquiesced, biting my tongue. It seemed no matter the documents or proofs I needed, he would find them. So at last, we returned to those muse lined halls.

He coughed hacked, but no mucus was left in his wake. Perhaps there was something to the assertations that these outbursts were like the twitches of muscle memory. He staggered, he stumbled, he cursed. But this would get him free of my hair, so we sought his book.

“Here, the complete writings of Damascius.” I said, holding the lamp to the collection of scrolls. The man’s hands shot up like a coiled viper. Grabbing a scroll, he opened it swiftly, and placed it to the side. Another, another like a grotesque hundred limbed spider seizing flies.

In moment’s he had emptied the first shelf, and was panting with effort.

“There is no need for such strenuous—”

“I seek neither your opinion nor consul.” He said in a low growl, as he turned through another book. “Where is it, where is it? It must be amongst these, somewhere, somewhere.”

And he began to pull free the second set of scrolls—but in that moment his arm froze. His other hand gripped his chest and he panted. He swore in some alien tongue, his finger nails dragging on the wood as he collapsed before me. My heart, normally an open wound, felt nothing as he expired.

And then the next moment, alarm struck me. As man became corpse, before my eyes, fear struck me. There was a dead man in my house of knowledge! A man who died seeking my understanding! A morbid and frightful curiosity came over me, as I stood over what was once so wretched. I saw he had fallen, his mask knocked askew. And beneath, I saw something foul.

It was as if to stare into death itself. How had such a man, more miasma and malformed rot than flesh, survived to seek me? What had driven him, that this apparition of Hell did not stall or stop him?

I wrote a letter with this inquiry to my college in Athens, who spoke so highly of the man. It was my embarrassment to not know his name—nor did any of the doctors, who wanted him out of their offices as fast as they could.  But he was so striking, that I was sure my colleague would remember him and his miasma of rot. It rattled my brain, how my emotions were quickened when he expired. Should it not be the reverse?

Why should I feel more sorrow for a corpse than a man?

My friend’s missive came in its time, almost a year since the stranger’s passing. He was distraught at the death of his friend, a fellow he knew well—destined for the priesthood, he said, and a bright young philosopher. He had some accident in the woods of Macedonia, my friend said, and had been seeking cure to his affliction. Fate had turned her face from him, and the Devil had filled him with afflicitons.  

He had no known cure, and concluded that some spirit of the woods—perhaps some old phantom of a bygone age, still trapped here on its why to the beyond—was quarrelling with him. Especially as illness seemed to afflict him, and sleep fled him. He hoped that whatever affliction it was, it did not follow him still into the bosom of the Lord.

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I wanted to do another historical piece, and found the idea of a character seeking the work I myself couldn’t find appealing. This definitely drew more from ideas of misfortune bringing demons then anything else. I’m rather content with this one. If I rewrite it for Patreon, it will probably take a radical new direction–or expand on the ending, having the confused master of the library seeking what caused the illness. I also would have done more historical research on the actual running of an ancient library!

Next time, we will discuss a 11th century story of the fantastic! I will see you then!