Clay Tuesday: Arrest the Children

The Case of the Black-Eyed Children, First Instance

“Let me in.”

He wanted in. The man, with dirty blond hair, wanted in. He wasn’t overly charming, graceful, or particularly extraordinary in his looks. Sure he was handsome, but he was generically so. But he was new. So Miranda Fawson, slim and tall, let him in.

The young man, dripping wet from rain water, white tee shirt clinging to his skin, came in and closed the door. Thunder clapped outside. The young man tried to hide his shivering.

“You shouldn’t let strangers in so easily,” he pointed out. The way he said it wasn’t threatening, just matter of fact. Boring. Miranda would have preferred he been dangerous. But she shrugged it off. She would make him more interesting.

“Mr. Let-Me-In, you should be happy you have a dry place to stay.” Miranda leaned against the hallway wall, decorated with photo frames, smiling coyly.

“Adam.”

“Pardon?”

“My name’s Adam. Look, if I’ve pissed you off I’ll give you chocolate when Sebastian comes around.”

“I hate chocolate.”

This response made Adam, who was trying to hide his shivering, scrunch his face in utter confusion.

“What, are you serious? That can’t be right.” He mumbled. He pinched the bridge of his nose, pausing for a moment before going on. “I hate it when he does this to me.”

Miranda was starting to get curious. “I’ve always hated chocolate,” she noted. “But who’s Sebastian? Your boyfriend?”

Gallons, it looked like, of blood rushed to his pale cheeks. Miranda had been joking, but now she thought maybe she had struck a nerve. Adam looked like he might become a fun new plaything; she liked this.

“No,” he stuttered, his voice slipping into a southern drawl, “He’s my bro. Broseidon. Broseph. Sherlock Bromes. That kind of thing. He’s the one who told me where you live.”

Miranda moved from her spot on the wall and chose to shuffle through a basket of random belongings near her front door. She only listened half-heartedly, and was at this point more worried about finding her Polaroid camera and pushing the bits of her bleached hair that escaped her bandanna headband out of her face. “Why did you need to know where I live?”

“I had a dream about you and this place. Sebastian looked it up for me to make sure you existed, that this was a case we could take on. He’s supposed to be here, too.”

Miranda began paying attention more sincerely now. “You had a dream about me? I’m flattered.” She turned her head around briefly to look at how serious Adam was before going back to her searching.

“Yeah, it happens.”

“Why exactly are you here?”

“Because they’re coming.”

“Who?”

“The black-eyed children.”

“Say cheese!” Miranda had found her camera and whipped around to take a quick snapshot of Adam. He was caught off guard and rubbed his eyes for several seconds after the flash had gone off. Miranda shook the photograph that came out of the camera, knowing full well it would probably warp the image. “The what now? Sorry, you looked vaguely unique while you were trying to defend your heterosexuality. I had to capture the moment.”

Adam gave Miranda a frown, or at least she imagined he did. It was difficult to tell since his face had a continual countenance of unhappiness surrounding it.

“The black-eyed children. Sometimes they’re called black-eyed kids. The name itself is self-explanatory.”

“Well that’s nice. Do they at least do party tricks?”

“They make you feel miserable and stuff.”

“Oh, so that explains your personality. You must’ve run into one.”

Miranda assumed that he frowned again. She clapped her hands together, bending the polaroid photo.

“They ask to come inside, and if you say yes they’ll kill you, maybe turn you into one of them. But they have to be invited inside, sort of like vampires.” Adam rubbed his upper arms. He looked like he was shivering. Miranda didn’t much feel like offering him a towel.

“How do you know they’re coming here again? A dream?”

Adam picked up an old-looking letter on a stand by the door that Miranda had received earlier in the week. He took out the dated paper from the envelope; the note inside was blank.

“You got this,” Adam replied. “That’s how I know.”

Before Miranda could respond there came a soft knocking at the door. “Let me get that,” she said, reaching for the door. Adam grabbed her arm, which instantly pissed Miranda off. She held her tongue.

“Let me do it.” Letting go of Miranda’s arm, Adam went for the handle and opened the door slowly. With each inch that the door opened, Miranda could feel any sort of hope or good feeling seep out of her personage like helium escaping out of a balloon, deflating her soul. Standing there on the doorstep were two average looking teenagers, one boy and one girl, with eyes that looked like they were glazed over with midnight black nail polish.

“Can we come in? Our car broke down and we need to call a tow truck,” said the boy. His breath smelled like scum and Miranda could tell he was lying but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything.

“Please? It’s so cold outside,” the girl added almost as an afterthought.

Tilting his head, Adam looked like he was actually contemplating it. The hair on the back of Miranda’s neck was standing on end; she knew it was a bad idea, and she wanted to shout at the children to leave, yet she could feel her lips beginning to form the word yes. Before she could say anything, Adam responded to the request.

“No.” He slammed the door.

Snapping out of her daze, Miranda choked out a weak “What was that?”

“They’ll knock again. I just like it when they get pissy. It makes this more fun.”

Like a prophecy come true, there came another knock, rougher this time. Adam opened the door quickly. He asked them what they could possibly want.

“Let us in,” the girl said more forcefully, incessantly. “Our car broke.”

“Use your cell phone.” Adam slammed the door a second time, and once more there came a rapping at the door. He flung it open. This time the two teens propped themselves heavily against the door frame, leaning as far in as they could without actually being inside the house. To Miranda, it came off as looking like some force field prevented them from entering.

“Let us in.”

“I said no.” The southern twang in his voice was still present, but less so the more he spoke. “I don’t see your car anywhere.”

“It’s a few blocks over,” the boy replied. Good lord, Miranda thought, his breath stunk like spoiled eggs.

“Then you should’ve tried another house,” Adam expressed coldly.

“Let us in.” The girl tried leaning in farther. This seemed to upset Adam because in a sort of retaliation to her movement he grabbed her face. The black-eyed girl shrieked violently, inhumanly, forget-me-nots sprouting from her nostrils and eye sockets underneath Adam’s palm. The boy turned to run.

“What’s the matter? Don’t run.” Adam grabbed the back of the black-eyed boy’s shirt, pulling the demon into his chest and putting him in a head lock. Flowers instantly began growing from the points of contact between him and Adam, covering his body like they did the girl’s. “You two aren’t even wet. Really, try harder the next time you lie.”

The black-eyed kids were consumed by the forget-me-nots, vanishing underneath their blanket of white. The flowers, just as quickly as they had cropped up, shriveled and died away, leaving behind only a few petals and an eerie silence as evidence that anything had happened in the first place.

Miranda broke the silence. “Do you do this on a regular basis?” Something akin to joy began returning to her system with the absence of the demons.

“Maybe,” was all Adam responded with. He walked out the door, slamming it shut behind him.

Miranda laughed, awkwardly, wishing she had some sort of evidence that what had just happened wasn’t a dream. She looked down at the snapshot of Adam she had in her hand. Grinning mischievously, she walked to a drawer, rummaging through and pulling out a pen and a thumbtack. Using the tip of the thumbtack, she scratched out Adam’s eyes and roughly filled in the scratchings with the black ink from the pen. She hung the photo on the wall between some of the fancier, framed ones.



“Where were you?” Adam asked Sebastian. He leaned against a wall outside a coffee house named Teal Justice. He had no idea what the name had to do with anything. It wasn’t practical, unless the name had to do with the bold colors inside. Either way it kind of made Adam sick to look at.

Sebastian lit a match, and let burn until the flames licked his fingertips like the tongue of a hellhound before letting the crumbled matchstick fall to the ground. All the while Adam gazed in admiration at the light and shadows cast on Sebastian’s form from the tiny fire. Sebastian drew in a large gulp of air infused with the smell of smoke, taking his sweet time in answering.

“Sorry, I got new orders from the Horrorscope last-second. They wanted me to check out a sighting of shadow people at Teal Justice, but it turns out they meant the location in Plumfield, North Carolina.” As Sebastian answered, he kept an eye on Adam, watching carefully as he flinched at the mention of the town.

“Don’t mention that place,” Adam mumbled bitterly. He ruffled his wet hair and stared out at the rain coming down in a light sprinkle now over the town. A silent prayer was had in Adam’s heart for being under a canopy at that moment, as he had yet to grab a jacket.

Sebastian took a small box with a bow on it out of his inner suit pocket and tossed it in Adam’s general direction. With the swiftness and grace of a former jock, Adam skillfully caught the gift.

“What’s this?”

“Chocolate. For pissing you off and all.”

Adam was slack-jawed at the comment. It took him what seemed a full minute before he was able to pull himself together, opening the box to see five tiny assorted truffles.

“Thanks, I guess.” Adam stared at the chocolates a moment longer before placing the lid back on the box.

Clay Tuesday: Harmonious Tantrum

Clay Tuesday

Harmonious Tantrum



Part 01: Allow No Evil



Lawrence Caldwell had lived in five-thirty-two West End Road in Massachusetts for well over two hundred years. In the year 1801 he had suffered a fracture in his hip that he received from a terrible fall down a flight of stairs in his house and, unable to call for help, he died on the steps. Nobody found his body for weeks, and his spirit simply decided not to leave. His house, which he had built himself, was four stories tall and overshadowed many other residences that had once stood alongside his. Over the years, however, those other houses were torn down and new ones built up; new residents moved in to Lawrence’s house as well, and did all sorts of nonsensical things to it that Lawrence did not approve of. So he tried to put a stop to it.

There wasn’t much he could do at first; he could make the windows shake, and cause smaller objects to move a couple of inches any which way he desired. But as the years grew longer, his anger towards new residents, and thusly his powers as a ghost, grew much stronger. He made loud noises, caused objects disappear, shattered glass, and even gave residents a brief viewing of his rotting spiritual body. And, once, in 1986, he killed a mother of two because she had wanted to put up wallpaper in his house. Wallpaper. Lawrence was disgusted with the changes people made to his home over the years, and that, for some peculiar reason, was the last straw. The house remained abandoned for decades after that.

Until two young men moved in.

In the months prior to those two young men taking up residence, crews and come and gone tidying up the place, something that made Lawrence uneasy after having his house to himself again. A priest came and blessed the house, too, which made Lawrence scoff. By the time the two young men came around, he had built up more than enough rage to, he hoped, exile them from his house and prevent anyone from ever wanting to return.

The first day, he made the windows shake. The two men ignored it. The second day, Lawrence smashed windows. They covered them with bags and had the glass cleaned up and replaced that day. On the third day, deciding to go further, Lawrence made himself visible to the shorter of the two men; the brown-haired one who always wore sweats and a white tee. Lawrence’s spirit, by then, bore very little resemblance to the man when he had first died. His face was gaunter, chunks of what would have been skin peeling away to show bits of skull and large chunks of hair had vanished as well. His left eye even hung limply along his cheek stretching down to his chin. The young man, not surprised in the least by the vision of the spirit, actually smiled a little and walked closer to Lawrence, holding out his hand. He stepped forward once. Twice. Three times. Lawrence felt uneasy, stunned by the young man’s boldness, and vanished in a wisp of smoke.

For the next week Lawrence took to observing the two new residents of the house. They were very much an odd couple; Lawrence learned that Adam, the boy he had tried to frighten, was very cleanly and made sure everything in the house was in its proper place. When he wasn’t picking up after Sebastian, the taller man, he was watching sports and soap operas on the television.

Sebastian always wore three-piece suits, even while lounging around the house. He would explore every room thoroughly; taking notes every time Lawrence made any sort of noise- even the noises Lawrence didn’t make he took note of. Whenever Sebastian would undress, Lawrence would take note of the medallion he kept close to himself at all times and the bizarre tattoo on his forearm. Both made Lawrence feel uneasy, which in turn made him angrier. He had to get the men out of there. The house was Lawrence’s, and he would not share with anyone else. He would channel his anger and do something amazing.

One evening at three A.M. Lawrence made the walls bleed.

Full of two hundred years’ worth of bitter emotion, Lawrence cause each wall in the house to ooze out blood. He moaned and howled, shaking his house’s foundation. Sebastian the open the door to his room and stepped out. It was then that Lawrence made himself manifest once more, his eyes glowing a vile green. He started at the end of the hallway, cutting out and reappearing closer Sebastian over and over. Sebastian backed into a corner, afraid to touch the walls covered in blood. He shook violently and tried grabbing for the medallion around his neck, but he had taken it off before bed and forgotten to grab it when he left the room. He shrank down to the ground. Lawrence, now only a few feet from Sebastian, lowered his rotting face. He was about to open his mouth when from the corner of his good eye he saw little flowers, live flowers, covering the wall, his wall. Taking his time, Lawrence turned and focused on Adam at the end of the hallway, the flowers starting from where his hand was placed on the wall. Lawrence cut out and phased to stand in front of Adam, towering over him.

“I think Sebastian and I are going to have to leave,” he started. “Your hospitality has been lacking.”

With both hands Adam grabbed the aged jacket of the apparition’s form, spider lilies consuming Lawrence. Lawrence saw several lights, and he started following them, quickly, because they were getting away. In his mind he followed, and followed, and then, but misfortune or happenstance, the lights were gone and all Lawrence saw was a cracked ivory mask with a single eye painted on it. It belonged to a reddish man-looking creature with black spines erupting from its back and feathers in his hair. He, or it, stood a good two yards from Lawrence, a spear in its hand, the point piercing Lawrence. On the spear hung an antique metal, the tiny door of which creaked open, sucking Lawrence inside. The next thing he knew, they were gone.



Part 02: Think No Evil



“Have you heard about the Cult of No One, Wellington?”

Wellington Bradshaw, by nature always a little tense and withdrawn, visibly grew even tenser at the question. Rachel had no idea this was even possible, and was somewhat amused.

Smoothing down his unkempt bedhead hair, he replied “yes,” and continued placing tests on the desks in the empty room for Rachel’s next class. He felt the air grow colder, but thought nothing of it; he probably only had the chills thinking about the entity that had once possessed his body.

“Then you probably know why I took the job at this school.” Rachel looked up at Wellington, but he kept his back turned. She smiled warmly, and looked down at the notes she was shuffling through.

Roughly a year ago the residents of the creepy little house had helped Wellington, his cousin Isaac Bradshaw, Renee Engleking and Charles Taffner Yonts. They were dream walkers, able to enter the dreamscape, the world of dreams, every Wednesday at 11:11. However, they ran into rare demons that lived in and ate dreams- The Empties, former dreamers who had sold their souls to No One, king of The Empties. That was how they lost Charles.

“It’s, well, it’s not like, well, you know. I mean it’s a cult. I don’t see how I can be found. I hate large crowds, I teach piano, and I just barely started college at the age of twenty-two.” Wellington stood near the entrance of the room now, placing the last paper on the desk. He exhaled, and for a brief second he felt as though he could see his breath. Softly, he added, “I don’t even go into the dreamscape anymore.”

“Do you know where Isaac is?” Rachel waited for a reply, but all she got was silence. “Wellington, we’re here to make sure nothing happens to you.”

Wellington couldn’t deal with the stress. His whole life he couldn’t deal with it- he loathed being around large groups of people and could barely handle the dynamic of having Isaac, Renee and Charles around. He had finally gotten used to that, and then everything went to hell- Charles, in a moment of weakness, considered selling his soul and got killed. Wellington himself became possessed by an evil entity who only wished to devour and used Wellington’s body to strangle and nearly kill Isaac, who then became a new person altogether in the dreamscape. Renee had to deal with it all and save the day with the help of Kristjan, Rachel and Adam. Wellington still struggled with the thoughts of everything that happened, everything haunted him. Had he been able to dream the entire fiasco with No One and the Empties would have given him nightmares for life, but instead the thoughts alone kept him awake late into the night. He didn’t want help now; he just wanted to be left alone, to not have any of it brought up ever again. He wanted to move on, like he had promised the comatose Isaac before he had woken up and vanished.

Wellington focused his clear blue eyes on Rachel, his eyes that had changed to green then gray before his possession a year earlier. He opened his mouth to say, well, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say but he knew he wanted to say something. Before he got the chance he visibly saw his breath before his eyes, and the lights flickered. He winced. “I wasn’t the only reason you came, was I?”

A shriek reverberated through the now low-lit room, accompanied by a desk that was thrown too close to Wellington’s head for comfort but he stood his ground. This didn’t scare him a bit, he had been in truly terrifying situations in the dreamscape, inside of literal nightmares.

“This was the prize in the crackerjack box. I’m teaching folklore at a haunted school. A haunted school, Wellington. A lot of students plan on taking my class this semester.”

“I wouldn’t bother taking this prize to Tiffany’s and having it engraved.” Wellington walked towards Rachel, and the screaming stopped. As soon as it did, however, a pale, sunken-eyed young woman in black stood in Wellington’s path.

“She’s been trying to break me these past few days, scare me off, you know. I keep on saying that I can’t be broken. She can tell how negative you are, so she’s going to try and break you next.” Rachel sat down in her swivel chair, continuing to flip through papers.

“You haven’t gotten rid of her yet?” Wellington said with a twinge of sulphurousness to his tone.

“Why? She makes a great visual aid.”

“Now you’re just messing with me.”

“Is it working?”

Wellington’s fingers twitched at his side. He may have been special like Rachel, but she dealt with magic, the supernatural. All he could do was invade people’s dreams. He couldn’t even dream for himself.

Rachel finally looked up at Wellington and noticed his frown. “Alright, I’ll take care of it.”

She never got a chance to take care of it. Wellington saw her tense up, her eyes growing large like dollar coins. She pointed behind Wellington. He turned, a spear, wielded by a red-colored man in a mask, shot past his ear. Wellington’s head turned, he felt so dizzy now. The spear pierced the poltergeist girl, who hung from the ceiling. The birdcage attached to the spear opened up, and a thin mist rose from it, entangling the spirit and drawing her into the cage itself.

“Wellington, back!”

Wellington knew Rachel well enough to figure out that when her voice was that commanding, she was serious and he should obey. He fell back onto a desk, while a knife zoomed past where he had been, making its mark, sinking into the white mask that covered the red man’s face. It cracked, and the red man ripped out the blade, tossing it aside and vanishing.

“Wellington, are you-” Rachel started. Wellington interrupted.

“No. No. Don’t want to deal with this right now. This is why I hate being around people, crap like this happens. I’m going home.” Wellington walked out the door and came back in a few minutes later, grumbling. “You’re my ride.”



Part 03: Foretell No Evil



The first rule of any good stakeout was to always bring junk food. Kristjan Callier and Renee Engleking were not on a stakeout per-se, but Renee still craved something delicious and all around bad for her like a pizza or a burger. Renee felt she knew the enigmatic Kristjan well enough to assume he would even do something silly like try to coerce Renee into buying snacks for their outing once they had gotten there, and as such had even brought a little extra money with her just so they could get something good. But it was just not meant to be.

Renee crossed her ankles elegantly and smoothed out her white, layered skirt that went a little past her knees. She was sure the island of Plumfield had some wonderful places to eat or grab snacks; she honestly would have settled for a nice, healthy meal before they went out, or even requested Adam to make them a sack lunch. Instead, she was ultimately famished and bored just sitting on the bench across from Lady Barkhurst’s palm reading salon.

“You good?” Kristjan asked, not really bothering to look over at Renee. He sat leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees and chewing on a toothpick. Renee thought they looked so shady, she and him, just sitting there, loitering. She, of course, was wearing light colors, mostly whites and crèmes, while Kristjan wore his signature black that brought out his bright, styled hair.

“Dandy like a lion,” she replied, brushing a hand through her wavy rust-colored hair. She laughed a little on the inside; she had used Isaac’s favorite phrase. “I’d be dandier with some stakeout food.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right. You have to eat. Crazy kid.” Kristjan sat up and stretched out his arms. “I should’ve had Adam make us something to go.”

“So you can’t eat, either? That’s horrible.” Renee ignored the fact that Kristjan hadn’t thought of asking Adam. She’d save that for later and guilt him out of a much larger, fancier meal than they could have had waiting for Lady Barkhurst to open her shop. She figured she could even get a snack out of him right now as well if she played her cards right.

“Nah, I can still eat. I just don’t need to in order to survive. I thoroughly enjoy making Adam cook fancy meals for me.” He slouched back against the bench and moved his mouth back and forth along his face while shaking his knee. It looked like he was getting antsy. “Most people would call me lucky, you know. I have some aunts who would kill to never have to eat. They wouldn’t have to pay ridiculous amounts of money for personal trainers and for fancy diet plans. It’s not like they even need any of that. People in my family are just too focused on looks.”

Renee wondered how true that was for Kristjan, too. He always dressed very nicely and he was naturally handsome, objectively speaking of course. “No, definitely not lucky. You can’t sleep either. It’s not like you’re King Midas, but still.”

“Hey now, Midas had an awesome ability.” Kristjan and Renee both laughed, but she wondered how he kept from going crazy. Then she realized the answer was easy; he put all of his time into this job. He knew five languages, two of which he had learned since living in the creepy little house. He read grimoires, studied them really, and made sure he was rarely idle. This was probably the most idle he had been in a long while.

“I think I’d be dandier if I had a snack.”

“I’ll go grab us something tasty.” As soon as Kristjan stood up, the lights went on in Lady Barkhurst’s shop. Renee cursed her luck. “Rain check. Stakeout’s over.”

They crossed the street and entered the shop, the door chiming eerily and echoing in the empty room. Everything felt drab, soulless- it felt like a nightmare to Renee.

From behind a curtain emerged Lady Barkhurst, robed in a rouge gown that clung to her frame and jewels adorned her neck and fingers. Her raven hair full of curls was done up neatly, and her lips shone the same color as her dress. Renee thought it a bit much.

“Come, sit. You must want your fortune read, no? Would you like the tarot, a Ouija, or perhaps you would like me to tell your future through automatic writing?” Lady Barkhurst’s Eastern European accent came off as comically thick, Renee tried not to laugh. Lady Barkhurst signaled Kristjan and Renee to sit down before doing so herself.

“You’re playing the accent a little thick. It’s unprofessional, and a little insulting if you ask me. Thoughts, Renee?” Kristjan took his seat and rolled his shoulders back, loosening up.

“Honest to goodness I had to keep myself from giggling the moment you opened your mouth.” Renee remained standing, choosing instead to move around the room and examine all of the trinkets.

Lady Barkhurst paused, staring coldly at Kristjan. Slowly, she opened a drawer and brought out a deck of Tarot cards.

“Oh, I see. You plan on bringing out The Death without actually knowing what it means and saying something creepy about my upcoming demise,” Kristjan teased, folding his arms.

“No no, these are special cards, Kristjan Callier.” Lady Barkhurst’s accent became a natural French one as she shuffled the deck, dealing out five cards on the table. “You don’t even need to touch the cards- one of the gifts of being psychic, you see, much like Phillip Darwin Yeates. Now, let us see what we have here.”

Kristjan sat upright in a flash, grabbing Lady Barkhurst’s hand before she could flip over the first card.

“Kristjan, that’s rude.” Renee walked over to her blond-haired companion, placing a hand on his shoulder to calm him down. “I don’t believe we’ll have anything to worry about.”

“Thank you, Renee,” Lady Barkhurst replied softly, smoothly, slyly. She gave off an aura that made Renee feel insecure. Kristjan let go of her hand, and she flipped over the first card. It was a scarecrow; Renee wondered if it had anything to do with Kristjan’s nickname. She flipped over a second, and on it was a picture of a moon insignia, the card reading ‘The Dream Walker.’ Renee recognized it instantly as the symbol she saw every time she entered a dream; the symbol she would have to return to in order to exit from most dreams. Her grip tightened on Kristjan’s shoulder.

“Who are you, Madame Sosostris? These aren’t normal tarot cards,” Kristjan said, eyeing Lady Barkhurst carefully.

“I do not come from Ectabana, dear Scarecrow, but one day I shall reside in Astoria. Now let us continue.” She flipped over with a white crow on it, then another with a crude drawing of a man in brown on it. It read ‘The Listener.’ “Ah, yes. The Listener, your man in brown. It all makes sense, yes, I know who you are looking for, how you came to be.”

Kristjan grabbed Lady Barkhurst’s arm. “Who are you?”

“Kristjan, that’s not polite,” Renee grabbed Kristjan’s arm and tried forcing him to let go. She had never seen him so angry. He eventually did, allowing Lady Barkhurst to continue.

“You shouldn’t have let me finish.” Lady Barkhurst flipped over the final card; it was inversed, containing a crude drawing of a man in glasses with a scythe. It read ‘The Reaper.’

Gusts of wind picked up in the store, forcing Renee and Kristjan to brace themselves. The wind gathered itself in a small whirlwind next to Lady Barkhurst, culminating into the form of a large red man in a white mask carrying a spear. Two feathers were strung to his ragged black hair, and a birdcage hung from his weapon. On his chest was a small black heart.

Renee stared at the single eye drawn on the mask, mesmerized by it. It reminded her of the masks the Empties wore in the Dreamscape.

“This is my pet, Grimshaw. He was a Reaper once in the Afterlife, he may have even known your man in brown,” Lady Barkhurst explained coyly, her voice seeping into the air around them like smoke. It felt so omnipotent to Renee, it reminded her of the first time she had met Kristjan.

“So you do belong to the cult of No One,” Kristjan accused, standing up and pushing back his chair. Grimshaw’s wasted no time in thrusting his spear at Kristjan, cutting his arm. Kristjan shrunk back, holding his arm. Renee was curious to see if he could actually bleed, but before she could catch a real glance Kristjan had already grabbed her wrist and spun her around. “We’ve got to get out of here. I wasn’t prepared for a demon and a French harlot.”

Renee was sure Lady Barkhurst had allowed them to escape because Grimshaw did not chase after them as they went through the door a final time, down the street, around a corner and down yet another street. Before they had stopped they were near the campus of Plumfield University.

“I liked your T.S. Eliot reference,” Renee said after an awkward silence between her and Kristjan. She was in good enough shape to where the escape handed winded her, but Kristjan was still panting. This surprised her, and she inhaled sharply when she saw the bleeding wound on his arm.

“It ruined my favorite shirt,” Kristjan said through his light, hurried breathing.

“Didn’t you say that about the shirt you wore yesterday?” Renee tried touching Kristjan’s arm, but he only withdrew.

“That was new favorite, this is good ol’ favorite.” Kristjan finally allowed Renee to touch his injured arm. Blood got on her white clothes, but she barely noticed. “You know, when I was a kid I went to a palm reader with my aunt- The French Canadian one, of course- and I don’t remember her having a familiar spirit, or whatever that thing was. Ah-h-h, maybe you shouldn’t touch that. Why isn’t it healing?”

“Do you heal quickly?” Renee asked, tearing off a piece of her blood-stained skirt and wrapping it around the wound. Kristjan nodded in response.

“Very quickly. Almost instantly. I forgot I could bleed.” Kristjan slumped down on the curb of the sidewalk, underneath a street lamp, controlling his breathing so it would return to normal.

Renee joined him on the curb. “Sitting on the curb is a lost art,” She said. Kristjan laughed, and Renee slid her arm through his. “Well, before we head back to the house I think you should be a gentleman and escort me to a pizzeria, then we can discuss what happened. One should never discuss important things on an empty stomach.”

“As a Canadian gentleman king, I insist that my personal chef, dear Adam, cook you a homemade pizza instead.” Kristjan stood up, lifting Renee with him, and tried to look as dignified as he could.

“You had me at Canadian,” Renee said teasingly. Before they turned the corner she thought she heard someone call her name, and, turning around she caught a brief glimpse of a dog’s shadow receding from the glow of the old street lamp. She shrugged it off and walked with Kristjan down the street into the night.



Part 04: Fears That Come in Three



The creepy little house on the hill stared longingly at the blue-roofed duplex down the way. It had the perfect view of the building that looked like it had been crafted with such love and the creepy house wanted ever so terribly to meet it, for it got lonely from time to time while its residents were away. But the creepy little house knew better; the duplex could not love it back, for as far as the creepy house new, it was the only house in the world with a soul.

The house laughed silently at the thought; it, a creepy little house, had a soul that it had gained through a spell Joel Moomaw had cast when the house turned one hundred. It had heard Rachel talk of this before, how some cultures believed objects gained souls after a hundred years, but it made little sense to the creepy little house. The house wasn’t even sure Rachel, or anyone else for that matter, knew it had a soul. The things the house chose to pay attention to were the tender moments where the residents thought they were alone.

Some days the house would catch Rachel sitting on the porch playing guitar, just like Joel had taught her, pretending she was Holly Golightly. She sang the most beautiful songs, but they always left the house feeling sad; it was only when Adam joined in singing the harmony that Rachel seemed happy, and it made the house happy, too, reminding it of when they were children and their mother, Esther, would play guitar for them, teaching them how to harmonize. When she died Rachel didn’t touch the guitar for years, but Adam, usually in his underwear, would practice in secret in his room. When he got good enough he would sit in his windowsill and play for Rachel whenever she was down. It was his way of thanking her for always leading him by the hand when he was a child, keeping him safe from the crumbling world.

The house witnessed Adam knitting, cooking, cleaning, gardening, and recently the house even saw him studying grimoires so he could help Kristjan and Rachel. Adam took such good care of the house, and the house thought that if it could, it would do something kind for the boy. But, alas, all the house could do was to give him a place to live. It wanted to do so much more. The house was so happy when Adam had met Sebastian; Adam had gradually become stronger, less depressed. Sebastian was an answer to the house’s prayers for Adam.

When Kristjan arrived at the house, during those first few weeks, the house would hear him cry, and see him hugging his knees. He was so insecure, and still was, but would never let on how terrible his trials were to the Rachel and Adam, no matter how close he got to them. As time went on he cried less and less, but the house would still catch him swinging, deep in thought, looking rather melancholy. He would always lighten up when he saw Rachel.

The house chuckled silently, breaking away from its flirty glances to the duplex with its swimming pool and neatly trimmed garden. The house didn’t need the love of another building. No, the house was happy with what it had, and rest assured with the thought that it would never be lonely so long as it was blessed with its residents.

But perhaps it wouldn’t hurt if at least once the house could meet another building with a soul. It would have very much appreciated being able to talk to something- the squirrels that lived in the tree made terrible company while everyone was away.

Clay Tuesday: Inevitable Indecencies

The Case of the Shadow People


“Why me? Why does this have to happen to me?”

Adam, bitter and disheveled, sat on the cold, grungy ground of a dilapidated wood chapel. He sat with one leg extended, a blood-stained bone jutting out of the limb. Sprawled on the ground was the corpse of a black-haired young woman, pale and sickly with her head in Adam’s lap. He stroked her coarse hair absentmindedly, his breathing uneasy but every exhale chillingly visible.

A coal colored crow flew into a shattered stain-glassed window, perching on the sill. Its eyes, deep and endless, pierced Adam’s fragile state of mind. Candidly it spoke, cawing, “It’s happenstance.”

Adam’s eyes shot open, waking from his dream. His breathing was weighted, as though he had just been fighting off a horrid monster bent on devouring his sanity and had barely escaped by mere luck.

Or was it happenstance?

Slowly, Adam turned his stiff neck to the window where sunlight was peeking through. He was surprised to see Kristjan, in a black sweater and jeans despite the current heat wave, sitting in a chair with his hands folded across is lap. His eyes were thoughtfully closed, imitating sleep but Adam knew better. Kristjan didn’t need to sleep, not since his accident.

“You must like watching me sleep, you creeper. I thought hospitals gave you the wiggins,” Adam said in a half groan mixed with his southern accent, making him extremely difficult to understand.

“Sorry mon cher, I’m afraid you’re going to have to speak up. I didn’t quite catch that,” Kristjan replied playfully. Though his eyes were still locked shut, his smile opened up wide on his long, handsome face.

Adam cleared his throat, attempting to sit up. “Don’t say that,” he said scornfully. P. Darwin Yeates was the last thing he wanted to be reminded of.

“Sorry.” The tall blond man leaned forward, hands still clasped together. His green eyes looked Adam over from head to foot, lingering on the cast that wrapped the younger man’s right leg. Kristjan’s smile twitched for a split second, but Adam caught the faltering expression. Kristjan was actually worried about him. “I’ve been in here a while. Don’t you have a girlfriend? I haven’t seen-”

“How long did it take you two to get here?” Adam wanted to change the subject as quickly as possible, visibly wincing at the mention of his Lorelei, the girl that he once believed would always have his heart.

“The house brought us here right before Rachel got the call. She’s at the university right now seeing if she can set up a few guest lectures, that way we can stay as long as we need to.” Kristjan’s smile had become half of what it was at the start and Adam groaned at this news. He had tried so hard to escape from the house and his life only to be brought back into it; he knew that with his leg injury he would lose his football scholarship, he didn’t have a job, and with what Rachel made there was no way he could afford to stay at school. In one moment all his dreams went away, gobbled up, for once, by a monster that he couldn’t fight. Fate.

Kristjan snapped his fingers, getting Adam’s attention. “Before you go getting any crazy ideas, this wasn’t fate, or destiny. It was-”

“If you say happenstance I’m going to kick you in the diaphragm,” Adam spat out quickly. He didn’t want to feel like he was trapped in that life like Kristjan was.

“No, I was going to say hitsuzen.” Kristjan slumped back in the chair in a huff, shaking his head. He wasn’t terribly pleased with the way Adam was acting at the moment. Adam narrowed his gaze, waiting for Kristjan to look over and see that he didn’t understand the word he had used. When Kristjan finally did look back over at Adam, after a brief but stunningly awkward silence, he gave a frustrated shake of his head. “The inevitable. Your actions led you here.”

Adam clutched the sheets on his hospital bed to tight he tore them a little. His father used to say something like that to him and Rachel. Before he had died, in fact, he had said it was inevitable. His own actions led him to the gates of the afterlife. “I know guys aren’t big on comforting each other, but wow, Kristjan, you especially suck at this.” Kristjan propelled himself out of his chair, taking approximately two seconds in an otherwise five second trip to get to the door of the room. Adam continued shouting as Kristjan walked out, “and tell Rachel not to bother doing a lecture! I want to get the hell out of here!”

The room was quickly engulfed by a silence that left Adam feeling dreadfully empty and hopeless. Warm tears left trails down his cheeks and dotted the sheets on his bed. Morosely, he flung his body down and curled up in a ball.




One week earlier, on a dark and dingy Tuesday evening that looked as though it should have been made out of clay, Adam stood apprehensively outside of apartment door four where his girlfriend Lorelei resided. The weather, due to the town’s location on a small island in the eastern United States, was warm and humid. Adam had changed into a light pair of sweats and a white undershirt roughly five minutes ago, and he could already feel sweat causing his shirt to cling to his skin in the back. He uncomfortably clutched a grocery sack with chips, chocolate and avocadoes, wondering how the night would turn out; Lorelei, being a good girlfriend, had invited Adam to a girl’s night at her place so he wouldn’t have to spend his Friday night by himself watching badly dubbed foreign movies. Adam had a slightly difficult time enjoying himself around his roommates as he thought they were all videogame addicted idiots.

Gathering himself, Adam tapped on the door. It opened immediately, and Adam stared right into the golden eyes of Lorelei. She was about as tall as he was, and her hair fell in wavy brown strands around her face. She met her boyfriend with a toothy smile and a big peck on his lips. He could have melted on the spot, but refrained from doing so.

“You’re late, but I’ll forgive you because you remembered how much I love grocery bags. You know just how to woo me.” She tugged on Adam’s shirt, bringing him in to the air-conditioned room. On the couch sat four of Lorelei’s close friends, giggling about something or other, probably the fact that Adam was there. Lorelei took the bag from Adam and trifled through the contents. “Hey, you’re making- Girls, Adam’s going to be making guacamole for us!” This news was met with a few hoots and hollers. Lorelei continued, “What’s the chocolate for?”

“In case I piss one of you off.”

Lorelei gave Adam one of those ‘you’re weird which is why I love you’ looks and patted his stomach lightly with the back of her hand before setting the bag on the table. “Sit! Talk to the girls for a second and I’ll get what you need to make the guac.” Adam tried to insist on helping but Lorelei just shooed him towards the couch. He obliged begrudgingly.

Adam sat down in the middle of an extremely important conversation about which color of nail polish Ann should use, and Stacey was trying to steer her towards a nauseating pink that made Adam’s droopy eyes hurt.

“You know you want the pink. It’s called Flaming Pickle Pink, and it has green glitter! You cannot tell me that’s not awesome,” Stacey’s voice came across in such a way that nobody could tell if she was joking or serious. More than likely she was serious but trying to act like she was kidding unless anybody agreed with her, in which case she would have been totally serious the entire time. Bad memories flooded Adam’s mind, and as per usual he forgot to put up his filter before he spoke.

“That’s a stupid choice,” he said in a sharp tone. He had not meant for the comment to sound the way it had come out, but already Stacey was giving him the evil eye and Sasha was guffawing. Adam wanted to get up and grab the chocolate, something he didn’t think he’d need to use so soon, but he quickly thought of another way to diffuse what had happened. He grabbed another bottle of nail polish that was a teal color and held it up. “Teal Justice works better with what you’re wearing. And it matches your eyes. And stuff.”

The girls found this to be a perfectly acceptable response and by the time Lorelei had returned with the utensils and other such things Adam needed to make properly delicious guacamole, he was dispensing all sorts of advice to the girls such as which shoes to purchase, how to find good sales, telling Shannon that black eyeliner made her eyes look small, and insisting that Stacey start wearing slouch boots and long necklaces so she looked thinner. Lorelei started giggling, which was small at first, but it snowballed into a much larger fit which caught everyone’s attention.

“Who are you?” She teased, simultaneously trying to get air into her lungs. Adam’s face turned bright rouge.

“M-my sister Rachel…” He started, slipping into his southern accent. His girlfriend set the things she was carrying down and walked over to Adam so she could give him a hug.

“I wish you’d speak in your accent more. It’s cute.” She kissed him on mouth again and all the girls started hitting them with pillows and cushions. “Quit it!” Lorelei grabbed a pillow and started hitting back to defend herself while Adam went to take cover.




Long after Adam’s guacamole had been devoured and not so long after a game of truth or dare, the girls had started to run low on steam. Adam was considering leaving as it was a quarter to eleven and he hated staying up, but the sudden subject change made him stay put.

“Have you guys heard about shadow people?” Elena, a Hispanic girl Lorelei had apparently gone to high school with, said in a hushed tone. Everyone looked at her and about half the girls got wide grins on their faces.

“Elena likes telling spooky stories and urban legends. It’s fun, but it gets kind of creepy sometimes,” Lorelei whispered in Adam’s ear. Adam chewed on his lower lip; it probably got creepy because the longer anyone talked about the supernatural, the more they were opening themselves up for ghostly experiences and Adam knew that. He couldn’t very well come out and say that to everyone without sounding like a nutter, though. He had never told Lorelei what Rachel did for a living and lied about Kristjan, saying he was a family friend who was staying with them temporarily while he worked on some sort of project.

“The shadow people are always in the corner of your eye, you know? There’s the hooded figures and the hat men,” Elena continued. Sasha started making ‘ooh’ sounds and the girls laughed.

“How about the black eyed children?” Sasha said. Even Adam raised an eyebrow at this; he had never heard of them before. “They’re these kids with black eyes who knock on your doors and give you these terrible feelings. They ask if they can come in, but in the back of your mind you know that’s a bad idea.”

“What happens if someone invites them in?” Lorelei sounded intrigued, which caused Adam to mentally groan.

“Nobody knows.” Sasha replied.

“Boring. How about the gloomies? You guys heard about them?” Stacey seemed really excited to talk about yet another supernatural entity Adam didn’t know, and he was feeling like he was with Rachel and Kristjan again. The stories went on, and quickly Adam could feel the atmosphere changing; it was small at first but the escalation left him with chills. He wanted to get up and leave, however Lorelei kept a tight grip around his waist. He wasn’t sure if the girls were noticing the darkness as much as he was, and they probably weren’t since he was more sensitive to those types of things than they were, but he had to change the subject.

“I have to pee.” Adam mentally pounded his forehead against something sharp. He knew he was a little socially awkward with the things he said, but really? He had to pee? The only thing that saved him was Stacey talking right over him so nobody heard what he had said. She produced a Ouija board from her backpack.

“Ladies, are you in for some spirit communication?” Stacey sounded almost like a telemarketer in her pitch. All the girls readily agreed, and when Adam tried to speak out he found he couldn’t; a dark figure caught his attention from the corner of his eye. He turned his head to get a better look, but it was gone. When he turned his head back to the girls they had already set the board up and started asking questions.

A chill like a winter gale cut right through Adam’s soul, sending him into a shivering fit. Lorelei hugged Adam close to her. “Cold? Or are you just all shook up over me?” Adam tried to smile. He whispered to Lorelei that he had to go. “To the bathroom,” she responded, “because you really don’t need to tell me. I’d actually prefer it if you didn’t.” Adam rolled his eyes.

“Home. It’s late.”

“Right, I forget that you have a hard time staying up past nine. Stay safe and don’t talk to strangers.” She smoothed back Adam’s hair, giving him a slightly disappointed smile. Adam could tell Lorelei wished he would stay.

“I don’t even like talking to the people I know.” It took everything Lorelei had not to laugh at that comment.




Adam was back in his room quicker than he would have liked; he enjoyed being outside and watching the bugs in the late summer air, looking at the flowers, and swimming. He loved the island he went to college on, and to him it felt like the perfect place to study botany and ultimately live a supernatural free life. Adam had never been as skilled as his sister, but once his father had passed away being around everything he loved was painful to Adam. His father had never made Adam feel excluded in the work and he was a deeply passionate man. Rachel was passionate as well, but it wasn’t the same. She wasn’t dad. And Adam was too old now to want someone to teach and protect him, he had to make his own way in the world and he chose the normal, the mundane.

Lacklusterly, Adam turned on his back, pushing the white sheets off his bed. He stared at the blinking smoke detector in his room, wondering just what exactly he was doing with his life; was it really what he wanted? What his father would have wanted? The air around him felt heavier and he felt it getting more difficult to breath. He tried to think of happier things, but it didn’t help; the weight he felt grew heavier and darker.

There was pressure on his bed. Adam lifted himself up to see if one of his roommates had tried getting on, but all he saw was his empty room. Nothing visible was causing the indentation at the foot of his bed. Sweat trickled down his forehead. His breathing staggered. Did he have time to grab his little book of spells? Adam reached for his nightstand but instead got pinned to his bed by his upper arms. A hooded shadow figure slowly became visible, tiny little white eyes and a jagged-toothed smile pressing itself closer to Adam’s worried face. A sulfuric smell spewed from the shadow person’s opening mouth. Adam wanted to vomit, the smell was so strong, but he held on.

“I’m going to eat you,” it whispered hoarsely in his ear, “and my brother is going to eat your girl.”

Adam lifted up his head as far as he could to whisper back, “Not if I eat you first.” He grabbed the shadow with his hand instantaneously causing forget-me-nots to sprout all along its frame. Before it could make a noise, before it could move, the shadow was consumed, leaving behind only petals of the flowers that fed on its life.

With a little bit of a groan, Adam forced himself out of bed and ran out his bedroom door, flying past his roommates and out of his apartment, down the street, past flickering streetlamps and past who knew what else. He was just focused on getting to Lorelei.

He reached her front door and threw it open. Lorelei, sitting on the couch alone and watching the television, nearly jumped out of her skin.

“The hell, Adam? When I dreamt this the apartment was on fire and you were a fireman. Right now I don’t see a suit or a flame, so what’s going on?”

Adam knelt down in front of Lorelei, grabbing her by the shoulders. His breathing was hard, which worried Lorelei. He looked around the apartment.

“Did you run all the way here? What are you looking for?”

The resident of the creepy little house looked Lorelei head on. “Have you seen anything out of the corner of your eye? Like a shadow you didn’t recognize?”

“Maybe? I don’t know. Are you talking about those stories we were telling before you left?” Lorelei stroked Adam’s cheek gently. “Honey, Adam, they were just urban legends. What’s really bothering you?”

“The fact that I can’t see it.”

“What?” Lorelei could feel a heavy presence on the couch next to her. Slowly she and Adam looked at the indented cushion; something was obviously there, but they couldn’t see it. Lorelei repeated her question, “What?”

“I’m going to eat you.” Two beady white eyes and an opening mouth filled with sharp teeth quickly appeared, a sulfuric smell seeping out of the oral cavity. Adam grabbed Lorelei, tossing her over his shoulder and went straight for the front door, which slammed shut, the lock clicking into place. The walls began to shake and lights flickered incessantly. Adam turned around and avoided the eyes and mouth that lunged at him, ignoring Lorelei’s screams. He went for the next closest door; the bathroom. He slammed the door shut, locking it even though he knew that would do nothing to protect them. The door shook violently, Lorelei backed up against the tub, and Adam tried to think of what to tell his girlfriend.

“Adam, what-”

“Nightmare.”

“What?”

“Pretend it’s a nightmare.” Adam pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to recall a sutra but it was no use. Even though he had only been in college for two month he had already done more than enough to push out any of the sutras or mantras, or any other spell he had taken the time to memorize.

Lorelei pinched herself. “Adam, this isn’t a nightmare. What’s going on? Why is a shadow person trying to eat me? Why does it exist?”

“You used a Ouija board.”

“And?”

“You opened up your house by talking about them then using a Ouija board to try and talk with the dead. It didn’t help that I was here, either.” Adam stood up and walked towards the door. It had stopped shaking rather abruptly.

“What does that mean?” Lorelei asked slowly, inching forward. She was still very much afraid, but the encounter with the supernatural awed her, it drew her in.

“I’ve… I’ve dealt with this stuff. A lot. Now it’s like I’m a magnet or something, you know what let’s change the subject. I’m going to buy you a lot of chocolate after this.” Adam, with a steady hand, touched the doorknob. “Lore, I’m going to chase the demons out of town.”

“I’m going to eat you.”

“Do you trust me, Lorelei? I mean it. Don’t feel alone. I’ll get rid of it.”

“I’m going to eat you.”

“I’m opening the door. After this, you can’t deny… you won’t be… things’ll be different, okay?”

“I’M GOING TO EAT YOU.”

“Dammit, I sound like Kristjan.”

Adam threw open the door. Behind it a hooded figure stood hunched over, bent at odd angles and taking up much of the space in the hallway in front of the bathroom. It moved forward with jaws opened wide ready to eat Adam, but he grabbed the shadow person’s face and held on tight. Forget-me-nots popped up on the shadow’s face, trailing down its body. It didn’t go as fast as the first. Excruciatingly long minutes rolled by while flowers blossomed and fed. Lorelei witnessed it all, every tiny flower growing then dying, petals dropping to the ground but vanishing before they could hit the rug. When the last flower fell, the shadow was gone.

Adam turned to look at the cowering Lorelei. He knelt down beside her and tried hugging her, but she pushed him away. Adam grabbed her by the shoulders. “Lorelei, I-”

“I can’t do this, Adam. I can’t… I can’t handle…”

She didn’t need to finish. Adam, hurt, looked at her for the last time, let go of her shoulders, and left. Adam knew words were powerful, but sometimes they just couldn’t penetrate. It didn’t help that he never knew what to say. Ever.




“So that’s it? How did you end up in the hospital?” Sebastian set down his cup of coffee and scrunched up his face.

“Why do you keep asking all of these personal questions? Creeper.” Adam nonchalantly finished off his own drink, tea with lemon, and ignored Sebastian’s frustrated gaze.

“You suck at telling stories. Why do I put up with you?”

“You crave attention.” Adam took a chocolate bar out of his coat and tossed it to Sebastian. It had become something of an inside joke between the two of them since their first meeting six months beforehand. Any time Adam caused Sebastian any sort of grief, he would offer to get him chocolate.


Sebastian let out a single, light laugh and accepted the treat, placing it in the inside of his suit jacket. Since their first meeting Sebastian had cleaned up some; his hair was no longer shaggy and was instead well groomed and parted on the left. He always wore a three-piece suit, like the navy blue one he had on right then, and he had gotten a promotion or two in The Horrorscope.

Somehow, Sebastian managed to do well in befriending Adam, which surprised both Rachel and Kristjan. Since the encounter between Sebastian and Adam they had kept in regular contact through email and phone calls, often meeting up as Sebastian’s new articles took him places the house took Kristjan, Adam and Rachel.


“The next day I had a football game and I tore a ligament.” Adam reached over and grabbed Sebastian’s coffee, smelled it, looked slightly disgusted, took a sip, and set it back down. “How’s the Horrorscope thing going? Did you bring me a copy?”

“Hot off the press.” Sebastian opened a briefcase he had by his feet and tossed Adam a thin newsmagazine with a picture of a creepy tree on front with an old creaky swing hanging from it. Sebastian loosened his black skinny tie and took off his jacket. “I’m really enjoying my time there. After we met I couldn’t get enough of this stuff… I have to admit, I was surprised when your house vanished, though.”

“It does that.”

Sebastian laughed. He rolled up his sleeves, revealing a tattoo of a magic circle. “I still have the medallion you bought me, and I tattooed a magic circle on my arm after doing some research. I’ve had some close calls and Francis de Sales can only do so much.”

“He probably doesn’t consider you a journalist anymore,” Adam muttered while flipping through the pages of the magazine. “Half the time I don’t even understand how the magic works. Like why do all the ghosts speak French?”

Adam stopped on page fourteen where in bold letters he saw written THE GLOOMIES, and next to that a picture of the college he had gone to over a year ago.

Clay Tuesday: No Faith, No Voice, No Blues

The Case of the Silent Angel

It was very common for students who attended any of Rachel’s classes or lectures to come to her with other-worldly problems, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise when one of her brightest students from that semester, Akahana Mizu, approached Rachel one afternoon after class. What did surprise Rachel was the problem. Outside Aka’s family store stood a prize machine with a mechanical parrot perched inside. According to Aka, the mechanical parrot had recently started freaking people out with glowing red eyes and would scream out incomprehensibly. So, not having taken a case recently and wanting to avoid grading assignments, Rachel graciously decided to help her student. Regretfully the blonde professor stood confusedly in front of the robotic bird.

“It… looks like it’s very well built. Is it from China? Most things these days are,” Rachel shrugged. “Honestly it looks fine to me Aka.”

“Sorry, professor. I swear it usually acts out when people are around. It’s why we moved it over here near the alley where only creepers like to go.” Aka tucked her bobbed hair back behind her ear. “Please believe me.”

“I believe you, Aka. There’s no question about that. I just don’t have time to stick around. My brother’s making dinner tonight.” Rachel apologized and waved goodbye to Aka. As she started to walk away, a little dissatisfied with the fact she did not in fact get to deal with a possessed robot, she became overwhelmed by a violent screech that drew her back in. Turning, she saw Aka looking around trying to figure out what exactly she should do about the parrot. Rachel ran back and grabbed the glass encasing of the machine, looking with curious and confused eyes at the parrot’s rash, rabid red ones, looking as she could to find something. Sparks flew inside the cage. Lights in and around the store flicked rapidly on and off.

“Professor Moomaw, what’s going on?” Aka looked as though she would have a seizure from the rapidly blinking lights.

“Ghosts mess with electrical currents,” Rachel shouted urgently, trying hard to make herself heard over the probably demonically possessed bird. Searching her head for the best possible solution to the problem, Rachel settled on an exorcism spell in Latin then began to chant. The lights settled down and the parrot began to choke on its own words, thrashing its head to and fro. As the spell took effect, a grimy mist ejected itself from the machine’s mouth, covering the inside of the glass encasing. The smog slowly cleared out leaving behind blinking red eyes. Before the light in the parrot’s eyes went out, it said one word: Ballieu. Little luminous lights floated away from the machine.

Rachel sighed in relief. The darned thing had given her a monstrous headache. She tried convincing herself some of Adam’s homemade rolls would cure the pain if she could only get home in time to prevent Kristjan from eating them all. When she turned she saw a pale Aka, clutching her chest and hyperventilating.

“Professor,” she said softly, “what was that?”



The professor took her student for a walk around the block, delicately explaining with the little detail she could afford how she, Adam and Kristjan dealt with those sorts of things. The shock of knowing that the boogymen stories her older cousins from Japan told her as a girl were possibly real caused the girl to rub her temples and let out a pathetic moan. Pitying her student, Rachel found a bench in a park for the two to sit on near a statue of an angel grasping at its throat. The statue didn’t sit well with Rachel, nor did the incense at the statue’s base, or the ornaments decorating it. Rachel tried casually breaking the silence she had given Aka in order process the information.

“Aka, you know a little about the local folklore. What can you tell me about that angel?” Rachel rubbed her hands on her black leggings and skirt to try and bring warmth back to her fingers, for it had suddenly gotten chilly. Aka, whose breathing had finally been regulated, stared dismally at the statue.

“You don’t know about it? I thought you came here to study local legends.” Aka didn’t sound like she particularly wanted to talk any more about anything, let alone frightening things. “It’s well known in the state.”

“Honey, I don’t know everything, I only just got here. Assuming I’d already know is like me assuming because you’re Japanese you know all about karate.” Rachel responded gently like a mother talking to her child. Aka gave her teacher a pathetic look.

“It’s the silent angel; it’s a symbol for people who can’t speak up for themselves. People pray to it for miracles, and from what I hear sometimes it works. People leave loaves of bread in front of it as an offering, and some crazies sacrifice squirrels,” Aka explained in a half mope. Rachel folded her arms. It had gotten even chillier in the passing minutes. Glancing around, she noticed that they were the only ones there. “Wow, I can’t believe how cold it is, I should’ve brought a jacket. But it’s August…”

Rachel had a pretty decent idea of why it was cold; something supernatural was too close for comfort. Before she could grab Aka and leave to avoid an encounter, everything around them went black. Everything but the statue. This of course didn’t help with Aka’s current anxiety.

“Why…”

“Are these things happening to you?” Rachel said, trying to complete the trailing thought.

“No. Why aren’t you offering me extra credit for this?”

Rachel withheld a snort. Aka said she wasn’t kidding. Rachel let out her snort. “We’ll see.”

The darkness was everywhere, all consuming. Rachel could feel a desperate hunger emanating from it. She clutched her chest trying to feel for the charm necklace she brought to class that day for lecture, realizing in a daze that she had left it at the school.

“Are you scared?”

All focus shifted to the statue. Sitting cross-legged in front of it was a living representation of the angel, but rather than clawing at its throat it held a goat’s skull in his hands. His sharp features and dark hair struck Rachel. She placed a hand on Aka’s shoulder.

“I’ll ask you again. Are you scared?” His voice crisply penetrated Aka’s core and entranced her. All she wanted to do was stare at him. To Rachel, though, his voice was one with the darkness.

“I’ll have to think about that. Feel free to ask me again after you tell me who you are,” came Rachel’s response. She hoped her voice would serve as an contra to the angel’s and grasp Aka’s attention. “I don’t think I’ve meet something quite like you yet.”

The angel’s neutral face shifted into a smiling one, a change that frightened both women.

“Ballieu, the silent one. I am a spiritual being.”

“And how long have you been here?” Rachel patted Aka’s back, keeping her calm. “I’m assuming you represent those who can’t speak for themselves, but have you been around as long as the statue? For twenty, thirty years?”

“Seventy-seven this past March,” Aka interjected. Good, Rachel thought. She wasn’t completely overcome by shock or the darkness.

“I suppose… I suppose since March. I have been able to keep a solid, consistent form since then. But I first remember being conscious in the thirty-third year, when I heard a prayer uttered to me. I ripped out a man’s vocal chords as an answer to the victim’s plea.” Ballieu caressed the skull with his large hands, his fingers going over the grooves of a pentagram carved into the skull’s forehead.

“So it’s fair to assume you’ve been able to gradually keep conscious longer and longer the more you were prayed to?” Rachel’s hand made its way slowly to her bag where a little book of spells was kept.

“Yes, that is a splendid assumption. Now may I ask what you’re doing?” Rachel’s hand froze. In his hand Ballieu held up her little book, scanning through the pages. He began mouthing a few of the words, obviously having a hard time understanding them. “Magic… that is why I was drawn to you.”

The angel made a cutting motion in the air then held open his palm to show a little flame. Rachel felt her throat and tried making noises, but nothing came out. Without her voice she could not use any of her spells, which made protecting Aka that much more difficult.

“Your voice will allow me to read and understand your spells… I can better answer prayers this way, better punish the oppressors.” Ballieu’s smile was so sincere in what he believed. It horrified Rachel. “Perhaps I can permanently reside in your world then.”

“No.” Aka sounded breathy and nervous. It shocked Rachel that Aka was able to speak at all.

Ballieu stared at Aka, the girl who clutched her skirt so tightly her knuckles went white.

“Child, I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do to prevent me from doing so,” came his reply.

“She did nothing wrong. People produce prayers all the time directed at you, the saint of the oppressed, to avenge them. But taking her voice is punishment and she hasn’t done a thing, this is abuse!”

The angel clutched the horn of the skull in his lap. Darkness crept around the park bench and up the legs of both girls, devouring them, something that gave Ballieu’s face a frightening, joyous look. With that look he brought the voice to his lips, preparing himself to feast on the knowledge of magic speech it would bring him. Yet, as he opened his mouth, little blue lights surrounded the voice in his hand, preventing him from reaching his end goal. He tried scooching them away but every touch brought a searing pain to his senses. He dropped the voice and the lights carried it away; the darkness was being eaten by dozens of the little lights, the encasing of black releasing Rachel and Aka. The lights carried Rachel’s voice to her, and she gladly accepted the offering, placing the flame in her mouth and swallowing. She cleared her throat and straightened herself. The lights, Rachel’s fireflies, surrounded the fallen angel.

“You asked me if I was scared,” The woman sternly started, “well, allow me to answer. I’ve witnessed dreamers willingly sell their souls to the boogyman and turn into hollow shells known only as Empties. I saw a man eat a human soul to fulfill his own selfish needs. My whole life could be compared to the stuff nightmares are made of, but that’s how I grew up. So when you ask me if I’m scared of a hypocrite who was created by the misplaced faith of people looking for help, then the answer is no. No, I am not scared. I am infuriated. And hell hath no fury like a woman.”

The fireflies engrossed Ballieu, and he combusted into rich flames, catching the blackness that held the very area together on fire as well. Rachel watched the edges of the black burn up to show the outside and park where they sat originally. Ballieu flailed but made no noise- the fireflies had first gone for his throat, turning it to smoldering ash before anything else. Once the manmade entity left life behind, the women were able to see nothing but the natural world including the statue- a statue that had lost a meaning to Aka that maybe hadn’t have even been there to start; her indifference became disgust.

Aka hung a charm, something she had meant to show Rachel, on the statue that she had brought to class, but forgotten to do. She hoped it would help prevent negative energy from entering the statue again.

“As a woman scorned.” Aka said softly as they left. Rachel gave her a curious ‘huh’. “You didn’t say it properly. It’s hell hath no fury as a woman scorned. And you owe me extra credit.”

A laugh left Rachel’s luscious lips. Aka was so strangely serious that she couldn’t help but laugh at the student’s attempts to make the entire event worth it. “You’re still asking about that? Well, I don’t see why not.” As an afterthought she added, “Don’t tell the other students. They might get jealous.”



Kristjan looked over the couch when he heard the front door of the creepy house creak open then slam closed.

“Rachel, that you?” He called out, trying to see if he could at least spot her shadow in the door frame. “Adam’s in the kitchen. How was your day?”

“I met a spirit created by the combined faith and worship of seventy seven years’ worth of people while one of my students was with me. Oh, and I also dealt with a possessed parrot that tried warning me about the spirit beforehand.”

“A real one?”

“A robotic one. Less exciting, I know.”

“That’s debatable.” Kristjan slumped back down and continued reading from his picture book of exotic birds from around the world. “Parrots are creepy enough as is. They give me the wiggins.”

This coming from the man with crows that came out of his body, Rachel pondered, moving out of the doorway. She went to go see if there was any food left for her, knowing that her own faith wasn’t misplaced. She was rewarded with a quaint stack of biscuits and a plate of other such homemade delights.

Clay Tuesday: Roots in the Grave

Roots in the Grave (The Case of the Canopy of Flaming Hands)

A Clay Tuesday Short

It was a drastically dull evening with the clouds eating up all traces of star- or moonlight, a travesty that struck deep in the chords of Rachel’s nature-loving soul. The evening air was warm and dry, filled with the taste of a prolonged death. Being around ghosts as often as she was, she felt comfortable assuming she knew what death tasted like in the air.

Rachel was in the process of making her way back to the creepy little house on the creepy little hill, only she was infuriatingly lost and in need of a great deal of guidance. The house had brought them to the outskirts of a little town in Colorado three days prior, and for the entirety of those three days she and Kristjan had been getting lost trying to find the supernatural disturbance that required their attention. Nobody in the sleepy little town of Rent that either of them had talked to knew a thing about any local legend, any strange disappearances, or any odd people that had recently moved to town. Instead Rachel received a few cat calls and a local priest, who was oddly youthful in appearance, told her that women shouldn’t wear pants on a Sunday to which Rachel replied that it was in fact a Tuesday. He then re-introduced himself and made the exact same comment. His short term memory must have been awful. Three hours later, when she passed by his church a second time, he told her she was going to hell for showing so much skin and then called her ‘Delilah.’ Whether he was comparing her to the biblical figure or not, she had no clue, but she would make sure to avoid Samson.

            Some days Rachel wondered if introducing herself as Dr. Moomaw would get her more respect from people, but in a town like Rent, Colorado adding a fancy title to one’s name was no way to get that respect. Respect had to be earned, and Rachel knew that from the little town she and Adam grew up in. Their father had only a high school education, but he earned the trust and respect of everyone he came in contact with by being a hard worker. Rachel was starting to think that at the rate they were going, she would be in Rent long enough to earn that kind of respect.

            Then she thought about Adam, her little brother. He hated the family work and had declared his plans to go to college in one of the Carolinas—Rachel couldn’t remember which one. She didn’t care. Adam was already gone, leaving her behind with Kristjan. She was without family.

            Frustrated, the woman with the sweet southern voice shoved aside dead tree branch after dead tree branch, searching for her way back home. The further along the path she went the more melancholy the trees looked. Instead of bursting with florid leaves and a speckling of blossoms Adam would fawn over, the trees were bare and void of any significant life. She hadn’t even heard the familiar buzzing of insects so common to that time of year. Rachel paused on the path, moonlight breaking from the clouds catching her eye—the fragile beam of white light shone briefly on one glowing red spot not more than 200 yards away.

            She sprinted to where the light pointed, branches scraping against her skin leaving long ruby marks on her arms. She was desperate to find the red glow, to see what needed to be fixed. She came to a halt when she arrived in a clearing, in the middle of which was a very old and very large tree. It was majestic looking, whimsical even, and was the only thing blooming with bright blossoms. But what caught Rachel’s fancy were the small objects dangling loosely down from the branches. As she drew nearer her eyes began to better focus thanks to the low glow emanating from the objects in question. She could make out the shapes clearly.

            They were hands. Hands were hanging from the tree.

            Rachel reached up to touch one of the hands but withdrew her finger millimeters from the glowing red appendage. After a brief hesitation she held the hand. The life of a little boy, who professionally played piano, a prodigy, flashed before her eyes. His birth, the first song he played by ear, his first concert, his last; all leading to a premature death from consumption. She let go and grasped another hand and the full life of an old man who once had plans to leave Rent but had stayed for the woman he adored momentarily replaced her vision. The woman, a blonde who looked vaguely similar to Rachel in the fact that she was blonde and also a woman, was a vixen named Delilah. She did this several more times until she felt she could no longer handle channeling the memories; the older the hand she held, the fuzzier the memories were as though the soul trapped in it was fading into nothingness. It dawned on Rachel that that was exactly what was going on. Souls were trapped inside the hands, being fed on by either the tree or by something else entirely.

            The sole female resident of the creepy little house on a hill tried to walk quickly to the trunk of the eerie tree, but everything felt slowed down. She walked step, by step. By step. By step… By painful step. Her breathing reverberated in her skull. The hands twitched in an achingly slow motion, and even ones with newer souls that grasped at her for help were moving at a fourth the speed they had been moving at before she walked towards the trunk.

Rachel imagined that anyone who had ever died in Rent, Colorado had their soul trapped right there in one of the thousands of dangling hands, helpless, in need of rescue.

Finally, in what took hours in her mind but was actually only a minute, she made it to the trunk, where time felt more or less normal than it had been arriving there. She paced around it, brushing the gnarled tree as she went along. The more time she spent going around the circumference, the more she saw that it was not one tree originally, but multiple trees grown together. How had she not seen this monstrous plant from town?

            Rachel stopped several yards away from a rouge light on the opposite end of the tree. She stepped slowly, inching her way until she could make out what it was. The source of the rough glow was the priest from earlier, who was melded into the large trunk of the tree. Rachel lowered her eyebrows and daintily brought the fingers of her hand to her lips to form her common thinking posture. It made sense, somehow. The priest was oddly youthful in appearance, yes, but had the attitude of an old, nearly senile man. Rachel’s father had once told her a story about magicians like these who were able to keep themselves young by slowly feeding on souls. However, while their bodies remained young their minds were still susceptible and aged. The priest was greedy, Rachel decided, living much longer than he should have, afraid of death. She couldn’t save Yeates from Wallace, but she could save the souls trapped in the hands hanging from the tree. While the priest was attached to the tree he was feeding he was vulnerable.

            Little blue lights flashed into existence, slowly at first. They were soft little fireflies that belonged to Rachel, were a part of her, protected her, did her bidding. They latched on to the tree, setting it ablaze in flames of reds and yellows that danced and licked the dank sky. The priest’s eyes shot awake and his distorted voice shrieked blasphemes at Rachel, but he couldn’t free himself from the tree, hard as he tried.

The strings holding the hands singed into nothingness. The hands vanished as the souls were set free. And Rachel stood there in front of the blazing tree and burning man, remorseless. Before long there was silence—the only thing that remained by Rachel’s side were her fireflies flickering fearlessly in the moonlight breaking through the gray clouds and the ash that dusted the ground.

Clay Tuesday: Bad Standard

Bad Standard (The Case of the Death Chair)

A Clay Tuesday Short

            And so the story went, continuing on to the next resident of the creepy little house: Adam. Adam Moomaw rarely took on cases by himself. In fact, he rather hated leaving the house altogether but once in a while he was forced to inspect something due to Rachel’s absence and Kristjan’s working on something else. This was one such occasion.

            The legend of the death chair was one of those stories well known in only one area, though it had plenty of evidence to back up its reality, and thus remained an obscure tale. The real tales of its horrors from ‘back in the day’ had been told so many times through unintentional games of telephone that the actual facts had become so muddled and altered that all believability soon became lost. The chair, originating from the late 19^th century, now resided in a museum as part of a set piece for something or other. Adam had quit paying attention by that point when researching the chair before coming. That was about as far as Sebastian Doegh got as well.

            Sebastian worked for what would be considered one of those ridiculous supernatural magazines, though how ridiculous it truly was, was debatable. Often times Sebastian had witnessed and written about supernatural events and ghostly encounters, and his experiences had made him into a believer.

They, they being The Horrorscope, the magazine that employed Sebastian, assigned him to travel around the eastern coast of the States and report on local legends. He had first covered the Jersey Devil, blue hole, Mothman, and finally he came to the death chair, the least exciting, he thought, of them all. He wasn’t particularly thrilled, hating all of the travel. Money was money, though, and so he dealt with it.

            Brushing his shaggy black hair out of his way, Sebastian stared unenthusiastically at the chair wondering whether or not he should snap a picture of it with the Polaroid camera that dangled around his neck (he had learned using Polaroid snapshots made the photos look that much scarier for the articles). Next to him stood Adam, who was slightly shorter than the slightly taller than average Sebastian. Adam had no need to brush his close cropped dirty blond hair out of his face nor was he curious if he should snap a photo to see if he could catch a ghost in the shot or not, something his sister Rachel and their father had been known to do. He was actually very hungry and wondered what kind of groceries he should pick up for the next few days to feed Kristjan and himself while Rachel was off giving lectures. Kristjan was a surprisingly picky eater with refined, code for expensive, tastes. Adam was convinced Kristjan didn’t even need to eat but he had to put up with it anyway, because he always got stuck with cleaning the house and preparing the meals. Aside from thoughts of groceries, Adam did wonder if he should touch the chair or not- if the chair really was haunted, it would be the quickest way to end the case.

            “Have you heard the story of the chair right there?” Sebastian inquired of Adam, trying to make polite conversation. Adam responded with a ‘huh.’ Sebastian was starved enough for attention that he ignored Adam’s ‘I don’t care’ remark and continued anyway. “Apparently whoever sits on that chair dies within a few days. I personally don’t believe it, but I get paid to write about crap like this.”

            There was the briefest moment of silence before Adam responded with the gem “Are you hitting on me?”

            “What?”

            “Not interested.”

            Sebastian, for the first time since the tenth grade when his then girlfriend had broken up with him, was at a loss for words. He resorted to taking action, snapping a quick picture of the chair, shoving his camera into Adam’s chest, and crossing the rope to sit in the chair. “Take my picture.”

            “What? You idiot, why would you- if you’ve heard the legends, then- are you- did you get a lobotomy?” Adam’s southern accent, something he tried very desperately to hide, slipped out with his shock and anger. He ran towards the chair but froze with his hand inches from Sebastian’s. His eyes were frozen, blue eyes dilated. His gaze was caught above the chair.

            “Just take the picture before a worker comes back. What’re you even staring at?”

A dingy skeleton floated above Sebastian like an aged buzzard draped in ragged clothing, looming, its hands reaching for the reporter’s head. Adam yanked Sebastian out of the chair then grabbed it with both hands. The skeleton vanished. Adam would have smiled had he not discovered that his touch had no effect on the chair. Nothing was growing on it; the skeleton had no reason to vanish. So why had it, if Adam didn’t cause it to? “What was that?”

            Adam looked back at the bewildered Sebastian, a Sebastian that looked like he was about to be sick all over the floor. Adam responded, “The reason you shouldn’t have sat in the chair. Now shut up.”

After checking the chair for magical symbols, Adam found one. This was satisfactory enough as it gave him something to work with, but disappointing because Sebastian wanted to know everything about it and Adam, forcing an introduction out of him. For the first time in ten years Adam spoke with his natural accent for more than three sentences.

“I’ll buy you chocolate or whatever if you’ll be quiet and leave me alone.” Adam walked out of the museum, Sebastian tailing closely behind.

“Why would I want chocolate?” Sebastian followed Adam through quick turns; he was obviously bad at losing people in crowds. So instead Adam decided to stop at a shop and finish some errands praying that this would bore Sebastian so badly he would leave of his own free will.

“I don’t freaking know, just take it.” Adam thoughtlessly thanked the thinning cashier, a charming old woman, for her compliment of his southern drawl. She called it adorable and Adam blushed, taking the items he purchased and tossing two of them, a catholic medallion and a chocolate bar, at Sebastian. “Put on the medallion.”

“Um, thanks. Now explain to me what’s going on.”

“You’re cursed and I need to break it before you die.”

“Thank you?” Sebastian tried asking more questions. Adam tried ignoring him. Neither plan worked very well. Both were a little miserable and Sebastian only spoke again when they started ascending a creepy little hill towards a creepy little house. In front of that creepy little house was a creepy little tree with a creaky little swing. “How long has this place been here?”

“Two days.” Adam opened the front door, entering with Sebastian.

Multiple aged books lay open on the floor in front of Adam as his research for the magical circle he found on the chair. Sebastian was having a hay-day examining all the old texts that covered the house.

“You have… thirty three grimoires at least, and I haven’t even heard of half of them. Like this one, the Lunar Grimoire. How did you find these things?”

“Stop touching them, that’s not polite. Especially the lunar one, Wellington might need that one again.” Adam was referring to a young man and his friends Adam and the other house residents had helped half a year prior when the house had taken them elsewhere in the country. Adam ground his teeth while flipping through pages, about the only two things he was good at doing at the same time. “They belong to my sister, Rachel.”

Sebastian made the connection in his head. Rachel. Rachel Moomaw, Ph.D, had degrees in folklore studies, ancient mythology and the like, and was often a guest speaker or teacher at universities. Other reporters from the website had interviewed and consulted her for stories as well. Before Sebastian could ask yet another question, Adam spoke in his sweet southern tongue.

“The magic circle bound the maker’s soul to the chair. The reason me touching the chair didn’t do anything is because when somebody sits in the chair the soul attaches itself to the person and haunts them until they die. Show me your chest, I’ll prove it.”

“Excuse you?” Sebastian was taken aback. Adam got up and forcefully lifted up Sebastian’s shirt. A magic circle was burned into his chest.

“Yeah, cursed.”

Sebastian could only make strange noises in response, freaking out even more when Adam touched the burn. Small blossoms started popping up, covering the mark then dying and falling off just as quickly as they had appeared. The mark was still there. Sebastian managed to mutter a “What?”

“Green thumb. The magic circle on your chest’s a curse. It transferred the ghost from the chair to you. It’s too powerful for me to get rid of myself.”

“So what you’re telling me is I’m haunted.”

Adam answered quickly and sharply, “Yes, I already said that!”

“How haunted?” Sebastian was starting to feel a little awkward.

“More haunted than an abandoned mansion and less haunted than the state of Florida.”

“Oh, you don’t say? Now would you mind letting go of my shirt?” Sebastian gave Adam a tight lipped smile. Adam, shrugging, let go. “What’s the next step?”

“Wait for it to try and kill you.” There was silence, then Sebastian let Adam know he was not okay with the plan. Adam heaved a sigh, slipping once again into his southern accent. “Listen, it’s a basic ghost- okay, maybe more of a poltergeist since it’ll probably move things to try and kill you- but it’s still simple enough. I either need to touch it or bind it with some sutras.”

“Sutras?” Sebastian was massaging his temples out of frustration. Adam was doing the same.

“Chants. They’re ancient… and stuff. My sister says they’re words that hold things together like the world. Words are important, you know. That’s why you should never tell somebody your full name. It gives them power over you.” Sebastian then pointed out he knew Adam’s full name because of the forced introduction earlier. Adam waved him away with his hand. “That’s not the point, you were being flippant. Hush and follow me.” Sebastian, before leaving, grabbed one of the books Adam had been looking at and brought it along.

Not so far and away, down in a perky playground Sebastian sat somewhat frightened on top of a jungle gym, playing with his dark skinny tie. Adam was hiding inside of a slide. Sebastian decided right then and there during his moping that if he died he would haunt Adam.

The plan was to wait for the ghost to find the perfect opportunity to kill Sebastian. Sebastian had no idea why Adam chose a playground for this to happen, but it was. At first, nothing happened, and Sebastian began getting annoyed. He glanced up, seeing the raggedy clothed, dingy skeleton. It reached out a thin, darkened hand, a gust of wind pushing Sebastian off the jungle gym and the hand caught him mid-air by his tie, choking Sebastian to death.

From the slide emerged one Adam Moomaw, leaping up to the rescue. In a booming voice he began chanting. Glowing Sanskrit letters faded into existence around the ghastly apparition, binding it in place. Its hold on Sebastian was broken, and he crashed to the ground, getting the wind knocked out of him. He hacked and coughed, trying to get back his breath and reaching for the book that had fallen out of his hands when the ghost appeared. Adam’s focused gaze did not break. The ghost could only move its jaw. A smog oozed out of the skeleton’s open mouth, dripping down its chin. It coughed like Sebastian, then gurgled, trying to make a noise. The sounds at first were incomprehensible, but quickly they began making sense. “A… dam…,” it started, “Adam… James… Moomaw.”

Adam’s name was followed by a long slur of unintelligible words, a spell. As long as the skeleton ghost had been around it must have picked up something or created its own sort of magical spell because the letters floating around the skeleton shattered in a magnificent burst of fluorescent, breaking the spell simply by the call of Adam’s true name. He was now for a short time unable to use any magic spell, his energy being repressed by the skeleton.

The specter descended to Sebastian’s level, reaching out its dusty hand. Sebastian, who had regained some breath, held open the book and shouted a phrase. A Sanskrit letter blocked the ghost’s hand but the ghost pushed through the floating symbol, shattering it like the other ones, and for the first time directly touched Sebastian. It would be the first thing the ghost would regret touching. A crackling energy surged through the spirit, pushing it back into the second thing it would regret touching- Adam’s hands. Vines grew across the ghost’s body and those vines grew silky, scarlet spider lilies. Once those lilies bloomed, other flowers emerged, engulfing the ghost skeleton. This was Adam’s natural ability, not a spell; it was the one thing that could not be broken by reciting his name with a spell.

 Energy wafted up like steam and vanished seconds later. The flowers fell down, shriveled and dead, the ghost having fed them until it vanished and they could feed no more. What looked like a few fireflies flew away.

Sebastian took out the still glowing medallion from underneath his shirt and watched it twirl round and round on its chain, mesmerized by the effect it had had on the cursed spirit that haunted him. The glow grew softer and softer before fading altogether.

“Francis de Sales, patron saint of Journalists. Now lift up your shirt.” Adam tried forcing up Sebastian’s shirt but he smacked away Adam’s hand, lifting up his shirt himself. The curse mark was gone. “Good, let’s keep it that way.”

“What were those things that showed up a second ago?” Sebastian asked, letting the medallion plop softly against the cloth of his tie.

“Those firefly things guide lost souls to the afterlife once they let go of this world, either willingly for forcefully.”

“Forcefully?”

“There’re other spirits that come and take demonized human souls like that one to the afterlife sometimes.” Adam plopped down on the cool grains of sand, sifting his hand through them. He held his breath and drank in the moment; the setting sun, the finished case and someone new sitting beside him. Pins and needles went down his spine and involuntarily he shivered. He hadn’t felt this good since the case with Wallace Moorcroft and P. Darwin Yeates two years earlier. Who knew, he thought. Maybe one day he would get used to Sebastian like he had Kristjan and even consider him a friend.

Sebastian walked Adam to the front steps of the creepy little house. He glanced down at the dying grass, browning like the death chair, a half smile crawling across his face. “We should do this again sometime.” Sebastian said, handing the book back to Adam. Adam received the book, his handsome face as dull, drowsy and dreary as always. Adam shrugged, knowing the house probably wouldn’t be there in the morning. “Just stop trying to undress me, alright?”

“Cool.” Adam, unsure of what to do, nodded, glanced around and did a half turn. Sebastian did something similar and held out his hand. Neither one could agree on a handshake, fist bump or man hug so Adam ended the awkwardness by walking into the house and shutting the door on the journalist. Sebastian laughed and descended the creepy little hill, passing by the creepy tree and creaky old swing while on the other side of the door Adam allowed himself to smile.