A witness mark is a groove, a dent, left by people gone before. Sometimes they’re deep, gouged, gone over so many times by people, living and reliving moments on moments. Sometimes they’re just a scratch, easily sanded away.
It was Catia’s first time waking up in a coffin. It would not be her last.
Near where I grew up there’s an abandoned quarry. For over a century bluestone was mined there. A deep open pit cut into the earth; steep walls of dark basalt criss-crossed by fine veins of quartz, caverns and sink holes and shelves of hard rock. Forty years ago the quarry stopped being profitable, so the mine owners turned off the pumps, removed the equipment that still worked, and let the ground water rise. Within a few months the quarry had turned into a lake. The rising tide submerged the void, and what was left behind was forgotten and drowned beneath the surface. The mining company planted some trees, put up a few picnic tables and walked away. Because of the height of the quarry walls on one side, the lake stood sheltered from the wind that whipped over the land, the skin of the water still and inviting, a dark blue pearl in an amphitheatre of stone.
Kathy’s Dad passed away in his own house, his last rattling breaths aided by the morphine his daughter poured down his ancient mouth. He lived alone in the old place for decades. Germs terrified him. He secured the windows with plastic. The air inside turned stale and rancid. He roamed the neighborhood at night, searching for cans and bottles. He filled the house with old lawnmowers, pieces of scrap metal, newspapers piled to the ceiling. Kathy inherited this rotting, junk filled dwelling. Over the next year, she and her husband Neil renovated. All the plumbing and electric wiring renewed, a new shingle roof, restored walls and floors. The father’s piles of tools and newspapers, old tiles and bottles all recycled, usurped by Kathy’s stuffed toys and hangers full of vintage and antique clothing, her hundreds of art books and coffee table volumes about Hollywood stars, her garbage bags and boxes packed with blankets.
Ha! Versatur Circa Quid! Has any fable (feeble or otherwise) been told in the first person? Methinks not. For those of you unlucky enough to be unacquainted with my humble works of genius, behold the vainglorious splendor of, I, Judge Jasper P. Montague, contentedly, fruitfully, and most certainly deceased. The unwashed refer to me as a common household poltergeist, but, in fact, I am a Quillemender.
4 A.M. New Town Cemetery, Charleston, Washington
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Eternal Keeper reached into the sky and plucked threads of starshine. The sheared strands merged as a multi-colored lightning bolt which struck the only oak tree inside New Town Cemetery. Thunder failed to tattle on the bolt; no one saw it strike; nor were the plentiful, watchful, sensitive, nocturnal creatures in the graveyard aware of it; nor did it in the least disturb the slumbering daybreak birds, nor squirrels, nor even the insects that inhabit the lone graveyard oak. But something did happen within a set-aside dimension where Keeper and the spirit of the tree coexist. Come sunrise, the shape of a ghost, whom Keeper had woven from the threads of plucked starshine, rose from his grave and proceeded to the power and safety of the enchanted tree.
Continue reading “The Haunting of Miss Gwen Cooper by Leila Allison”
“Your limbs grow weary, and the inn’s still far. Rest here. No need to punish your faithful and pleading flesh. Rest a moment, only a moment, and then proceed with new vigor and greater speed.”
“Foul specter, hush, quiet your insinuations and temptations. The inn’s fifteen easy minutes on a good road, and dusk stirs; the sun lowers, and your kind will be about soon. Still, still, it’s too soon to vacate your gloomy tomb.”
During the summer holidays when I was twelve my neighbour shot his three sons. I was at home with my brother when it happened. We were experimenting with a magnifying glass, colouring strips of card with different pigments to see which would burn first under the focussed triangle of sunlight. I remember the sound of the gun was a huge and deep boom. I could feel the concussive force even through the walls of our house. I heard a shot, a scream, two more shots, and then silence. Three shells fired from a breech loaded shotgun, each containing nine double aught spherical pellets, their destructive force expressed onto the children next door. The boys used to play in the yard. I would see them almost every day. They were all younger than me, twins and an elder, one at school. My mother would look after them from time to time when theirs wasn’t well. I tried to teach them how to play cricket.
It was in the eighth year of her life that Becky truly became obsessed with The Tall Man. His coming, his arrival, was all she had to fear in the world. He could be upon her at any moment. Becky turned her mind away and sat Indian-style on the floor, playing with her dolls. She wondered if she would ever feel safe.
I am a dutiful wife.
It’s Monday. Every Monday and Thursday, I visit Lucas. I always bring new flowers, and since it’s the summer they’re from my own garden. There are daisies and tulips and baby’s breath. It doesn’t matter what I add to the water, or how I snip them, they are always dead when I come the next time. The staff will have ensured there are no dead leaves scattered around the vase on his windowsill, but the stems will remain, withered stalks decaying in their coffin.
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21 August 1902 and 2017
When the moon occluded the sun 42,005 days in the future, Lewis Coughland became self-aware in the Legend of Emma Wick. He had known that this would happen, but it was still a surprise to awaken in the mind of the great love of his afterlife as she stood on the deck of a ferry, clutching her sleeping two-year-old daughter, Mary, to her chest.
Continue reading “A New Book of Numbers (Part II) By Leila Allison”
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