Ghost Stories

Amazon's asshole intelligence has terminated my publishing account. I am just waiting to see if I get my last order before deleting my entire account. I've double HEXED them for that. I'm already revamping my ghost stories for my first future publication, probably at Barnes & Noble, we'll see. I plan to include all four dream books into a massive omnibus as my second project. Of course, Fanging with Claude, DOC, and Hot Blood will be coming along. The art and doll books will be later. I doubt that the Pennsylvania picture books will ever be available again, but I might be able to work with my massive cemetery archive with prints or something. Stay positively wicked, my friends! ✨
   

Hot Blood

  
 Hot Blood is a true crime novella set in fourteenth century England. Available as an eBook, soon to be released in all formats, you can read it on Amazon now. 

Hot Blood 

What Ravens Do

Vulcan

  Vulcan, my Samurai Betta, is so awesome. He shares my beautiful Roman tank with four black neon tetras, a couple of frogs, and two enormous emerald cory cats. It's hard to believe that my first samurai, Tam Lin, a white one, had only lived a couple of days, and I thought I'd never get another samurai. That was when I had my cube tank in an outside corner of the house. I have no problems with it since I moved it. Julius has been sharing it with Oscar and the Glo cat, Govinda. I still have Lennox, my Black Orchid, in the Druidic tank. He's a killer though, alone with the rabbit snail, The March Hare, who seems to be working out. 

Beautiful Betta

  I'm working on Hot Blood. Brother Norton has become something of a local celebrity with his newfound falsetto. He was neglecting his housekeeping duties, so the abbot had him helping with the sheep. He lost two lambs. The Lancaster doll show is today. I hope we can make the early bird. I'll try to get a video, but no promises with my new computer, a purple hp laptop that I really like. Anyway, I just had to try to snap a picture of Vulcan napping atop the mossy driftwood. I actually reviewed Samurai Betta at PetSmart I love them so much. I will be there tomorrow with my ten dollar scratch off coupon getting Arthur a harness he can't chew up. Lucky, he doesn't wander off. He chewed up his Buddy ID tag. He also loves eating paper and notebooks. Guess Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wasn't such a bad name, although Houdini would've been better. 

Sale: Dark Shadows Originals, The Vampire Lestat, Gatsby Jewels, & More...

  I am getting close to finishing my Christmas shopping, have two upcoming doll shows, and need a new computer so lots of originals and my personal collection are on sale on Ebay for a limited time. I am working on Hot Blood. I grew fifty gourds this year. TTYL... 🍂🍁🍂

Shop the Sales on Ebay

 

From Hot Blood

Five

  The next morning nobody mentioned anything. Norton downed his breakfast, but still wasn’t talking. “Mother Agatha wants us to try out Brother Norton with the choir.” Abbot de Brinkeley attempted nonchalance. 

  Brother William looked up from his porridge, startled, he was our resident composer and choir master. “Brother Norton can’t sing.” There was a general snicker carried amongst the brethren. Brother William was Norton’s friend, but everybody knew that he couldn’t carry a tune if his life depended on it. He was one of the few brothers left out of choir practice. He couldn’t even hum. 

 The abbot cleared his throat. “Just try. Maybe start with a chant.” 

  William shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. Nobody argued with the abbot. His word was law. Nobody questioned him as he was as fair and wise as Solomon himself. 

  The choir gathered in the loft. The morning light spilled in from the stained glass window and cast a green glow upon our faces. Tommy was allowed to sing with us as he was our only soprano, seated to the far left. He would probably become one of us in time. He sang quite well, although his voice would certainly change with age. I was a tenor and sat directly behind him. Norton looked uncomfortable and out of place. He usually swept the nave and scrubbed the mosaic floor while we practiced. Brother William composed original pieces, but we also sang Gregorian chants. I presumed that was on the agenda for this morning, but William passed out a new piece for us, a polyphony, and not in Latin, but English. This was all very strange and whispers began around before Brother William hushed us by tapping his baton on his podium and raising his hands. The basses, Brothers Benedict and Bruno, began, sounding like thunder in the woods. My heart quickened in time with them when Alphonsus, Sebastian, and I joined them with, “Lord of light, lead us through the darkness. Lead us through the woods…” That was when it got very weird. Tommy was supposed to come in just now with a sweet solo, like a whistling of a bird. Just like in the forest with the wild girl, the hair raised on the back of my neck. We all stopped, stunned. Brothers’ mouths were agape, some dropped their music. 

     Brother Norton came in with an amazing falsetto like none of us had ever heard. His voice chimed like a bell and rang around the chancel in a tinkling echo, eerie, and sublime. If I was a cat, I think my ears would have laid back. I closed my eyes, picturing his song running round my head in a pool of color. “Oh, Father! Light up thy way! Lead me through your forest this glorious day!” Then he just stood there with an idiot smile stretched across his face rivalling Tommy’s. 

Thanks for following! I'm excited that this horror just crept up on me. Based on true crime it will capture all of my lifelong obsessions: Faeries, Druids, The Green Man, plague, mystery, and more. I'm going to try to make Hitchcock happy. I'll let you know when I've finished, (sooner than later), and it is available in all formats on Amazon. TTYL... 🍁

My Books on Amazon

From Hot Blood

  Four 

  That night a while after we’d all gone to bed a soft rapping came to our door. Grafton woke up first. “Francis,” he whispered, “someone is at the door.” I forced myself awake. It was strange, indeed, to be woken at night. I got up and let Brother Eustace in. He held a candle in his hand and looked ghoulish in his nightgown. 

  “Sorry to disturb you, but Norton is gone again.”

  “What?” I was incredulous. Grafton lit a lantern and the room glowed. We cast long shadows on the stone walls. 

  “Where could he have gone?” Grafton asked. “Back to the woods?”

  Eustace shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know. Will you help me find him? I’d rather not disturb the abbot at this hour.” 

  So the three of us in our nightgowns searched the halls up and downstairs. The tight staircases wrapped around. Eustace was tall and had to stoop so as not to bump his head. Norton was nowhere to be found. 

  “We are going to have to look outside,” I acknowledged. Grafton huffed but followed us outside where the crickets were chirping. “Shh…” I held my index finger to my lips. We all stopped and listened. I could hear something past the bugs. “I think it’s coming from the garden,” I whispered. 

  We kept a garden full of medicinal herbs: hellbore, lady’s mantle, monkshood, nightshade, pennyroyal, sage, soapwort, thistle, thyme, vervain, woad, wolfsbane, yarrow, and the like. Brother Ignatius was the head gardener, and Edmund, the alchemist. I helped them with my bees. I saw something white floating through the dark garden and for an instant mistook it for a ghost. The abbey had its share of wandering spirits before the Pestilence. Afterwards we were a virtual zoo of spooks for a while until Mother Agatha and Sister Sarah set most of them free. None of us scoffed at ghosts. Grafton held up the lantern. 

  “Is that him?” Eustace asked softly. He stepped quickly towards the white figure and we followed behind timidly. Neither Grafton nor I were up for ghost hunting. As we closed in I noticed it was indeed a living being, Norton, and he seemed as if he was under a spell or in a trance. 

  Eustace shook his shoulder. “Norton?” His mouth was hanging open and his pupiless eyes shone in the night, rolled back in his head. “Norton!” He shook his shoulder harder this time, which seemed to have some effect as it looked as if Norton was waking up. 

  “He’s asleep,” Grafton was flabbergasted as were we all. 

  “Sleep walking, somnambulism, my little brother used to walk in his sleep and scare the hell out of us.” I revealed. 

  “Yes,” Brother Eustace was relieved. “Let’s get you back to bed. Thank you.”

  We nodded and all went back to our rooms. Once in bed and the lantern extinguished Grafton looked over at me. “That was a damn scary thing.”

  “Yes.” I rolled over and fell back asleep. I dreamed of the wild girl in the woods again. This time she was playing a flute and beckoning to someone.  

From Hot Blood

   Three

  Brother Norton was never the same afterwards. Before his disappearance he was very friendly and jovial. He stopped talking. We didn’t know if he had lost his voice or if it was some other malady that caused this. “Give him time,” Brother William said. “Maybe he had a fright”. 

  “Perhaps it was exposure to the elements,” I wondered. “He was out all night, and it was damp.”

  “I am worried for his soul,” Abbot de Brinkeley remarked. “I’m going to take him to Mother Agatha.”

  The cloister on the grounds housed twenty-nine sisters. Like us their numbers had been decimated by the Pestilence. Unlike us, the townsfolk still held them in reverence and sent their daughters to replenish what had been lost. Half of the sisters had only just reached womanhood. Mother Agatha was their Mother Superior and the closest thing to a doctor that Bury St Edmunds had. Her wisdom was held in high regard throughout the land. During the Pestilence the cloister had become a hospital. The sick and dying were piled high. Although the dead were not given funerals, and like everywhere else were laid to rest in a mass grave on the outskirts of the abbey, near the tree line of the ancient forest; the sisters worked tirelessly to ensure that each person was given a proper shroud and kept records as to where each individual was buried. The fact that none of the sisters had run away further endeared them to the survivors of the little community. This was another thing that the monks could not boast, but we were not proud. 

  I went along with the abbot to the cloister that was a stone’s throw from the cathedral. Brother Norton was silent as ever but came along willingly. A tall middle-aged nun with dark eyes let us in. 

  “We’ve come to see Mother Agatha.” 

  She led us to a kind of parlor off of the stone foyer, to the right. Mother Agatha looked up from her reading and stood up to greet us. “Thank you, Catherine.” She motioned to a seat. Norton and I took it, but the abbot remained standing and took the plump little woman’s small white hand. “My old friend, what can I do for you?” She smiled. Her cheeks were rosey. 

  “Mother, Brother Norton, here, will not speak after having spent a long night in the forest.” 

  “When was this?” She went to Norton, touched his chin, and looked into his eyes. 

  “Just the other night.” 

  Now she looked to the abbot. “Not Walpurgis Night?”

  He nodded. “Yes, the same.”

  Suddenly she seemed concerned. “I presume he had no problems speaking before this?”

  He shook his head. “No, none.”

  “Can he sing?”

  The abbot chuckled. “Brother Norton was never known for his singing voice.” It was true, he was tone deaf and could not carry a tune. 

  “Well, try. Any other troubles with him?” She was studying him intently again. Took his hands and opened his mouth. He seemed obedient as a poodle. 

  “Well, he was always outgoing and gregarious, now he is withdrawn.” 

  “Maybe had a fright.” That’s what William had wondered. “Take him back. Feed him up, and keep him warm. If you have any other troubles with him, sleeping, or behavior, bring him back to me. We will keep him in our prayers.” The younger nun was still standing in the front of the room by the door with her back against the wall. Mother Agatha raised her eyebrows to her and gave a little nod. “Sister Catherine will show you out.” 

  The abbot took both of her hands this time. “Thank you, mother, we will do as you say.” 

  Flowers had sprung up along the path and colored our way back to the hall. Brother Norton seemed to be intent on studying a busy bumblebee. 

From Hot Blood

  Two

  His cassock was gone, nowhere to be found. His eyes looked wild and confused as he rose from the ground. I ran towards him. “Norton! What in God’s name?” I bent down, took his hand, and helped him up. He stumbled as if he was drunk. I didn’t smell any wine on him. He smelled terrible like a cave. “What happened? Where have you been? Abbot de Brinkeley is worried about you. We feared the worst.” We had come to expect the worst. It was easier. My father had said, “Hope in one hand, shit in the other. See which one fills up faster.” That was how it was, or how it had been for years now. 

  He rubbed his throat but did not speak. I turned him around on the path and started out of the woods. I thought I had. I thought I had only come off the footpath into the trees a bit before seeing the girl. Where were we? My breakfast rolled over. I removed a handkerchief from my pocket and mopped my worried forehead that was breaking out into a cold sweat. “Can you walk?” I let him go. “Where are we?” I felt dizzy and lightheaded as if my blood pressure had suddenly risen and dropped. 

  Just then a May Day parade broke through wearing animal masks, all whistles and bells. I stepped back, putting my hand against Norton’s chest, holding him back, off the deer path. There were foxes, owls, badgers, and boars. They picked up their feet and held out their hands. Their tambourines were strung with colored ribbons that they shook and patted against their hands and hips. I followed at a distance hoping they’d lead us from the woods, but they seemed to go on for miles deeper into the forest. I became tired and thirsty. Norton dropped to the ground and stared up at me like a child. I would’ve panicked if I wasn’t exhausted. I dropped down beside him and fell asleep for a long while. 

  I dreamed of the girl. She ran from me on and on through the forest and the trees. It was getting darker, and she laughed like a bird before disappearing into a mossy chasm hidden in the rocks. 

  I was woken by somebody shaking my shoulder. “Brother Francis, get up.” It was Brother Luke and Vigilius, two of the youngest brothers in their late twenties. Brother Norton was already standing beside them. I rose and downed a good bit of wine that Vigilius handed me in a skin. “We got lost.”

  “I see that. How?”

  “I don’t know.” I rubbed my head. “I didn’t think that I had come far into the woods. Then I made the mistake of following the mummers. They got us lost.”

  “Hmm…” The two of them took us back to the abbey. It was late afternoon by the time we got there.  

From Hot Blood

    An unkindness of ravens surrounded me as I left the gate. I reached into my pocket and tossed them some crumbs leftover from breakfast. Like the ravens we wore black cassocks. They were associated with Saint Benedict and the place. Usually they scattered and cawed thankful for the treats, but they hovered above me, their beady eyes on me. “What’s the matter?” I continued on the path alongside the grove in spite of their admonishment. 

  I didn’t know where I was going. The abbot didn’t ask much of me, so I wanted to find Brother Norton for him. If I was him, where would I go? I heard a strange sound coming from the trees and stopped. What was that? A flute? It sounded weird and unfamiliar. I found a deer path and took it into the woods. 

  It was darker, cooler here. The May breeze didn’t stir. It smelled like moss, and the earth was moist beneath my feet. I could still hear the flute, lilting, but it was faint. My heart beat into my ears like a Druidic drum. 

  A young girl, perhaps thirteen, stepped out from the brambles and startled me. She was very pale and thin, wearing nothing but a filthy shift. Her feet were bare, and her arms were scratched. Her matted and tangled hair kept tiny blossoms and blooms as if they had grown there. She was eating something, looked like a ripe sort of fruit that I had never seen around here. It was too early for fruit. She wiped her mouth with her dirty hand and smiled. She offered me the half eaten thing that she held out to me. 

  I shook my head. “No thank you. Have you seen my brother? He’s dressed like me.” I plucked at the skirt of my cassock. 

  She tossed the fruit into a thicket, waking little buntings who rose up like spirits and vanished into the morning shadows. She walked towards me. I noticed her left eye was a bit lazy. As she approached the hair rose up on the back of my neck, and I shivered. Then she laughed and ran off like a doe. “Hey!” She was gone as was the eerie flute. I rubbed my head. What was that? Birds? Insects? I don’t remember hearing it before. Then something stirred in the leaves to my left. I looked back. It was Brother Norton. Thank God. 

From Hot Blood

   “Brother Francis, find Brother Norton. Be snappy about it. Where could he be?”

  “I don’t know.” I looked to Brother William. If anybody knew where Norton had gotten to it would be him. Brother William Blundeston was the newcomer, only joining us last year. He was young and goodlooking. He had lost his entire family to the Pestilence. He was Norton’s best friend. Brother Norton felt sorry for him and took him in under his wing. William did not meet my eye. I felt uncomfortable and clammy. What was going on? 

  “You are excused.” The monks got up at once and cleared their places. There was no chatter. They all went about their work. 

  The abbey had bee hives for honey, apple, plum, and pear trees for preserves and cider, and a vineyard for wine. We traded with the townsfolk very little and kept to ourselves. We were mostly self-sustainable. Brother Henry fished the brooks for trout, and Brother George set rabbit traps. Brother Gregory kept the chickens, and Brother Michael tended the goats. Tommy helped Brother Mark with the sheep. In all there were only nineteen monks left. The Pestilence had cut our numbers in half, taking young and old alike. 

  I moved through the Great Gate. St Edmunds dated back to 1020 when the original stone Saxon church was built to house the relics of Saint Edmund, the martyr. He had been king of East Anglia when the Viking hoard invaded. He gifted them a set of fine horses in attempt to spare the land from rape and pillage. They took the horses and hunted him down. When they found him they shot him full of arrows so that he bristled like a hedgehog. Then they cut off his head and threw it into the briars of the oak wood. His ravaged body is the foundation of our original church constructed of blue stone and river rock. The hexagonal Norman tower and limestone hall, the Black Hostry, came later. Abbot Samson had done much to improve the place a couple hundred years ago. That was back when we were still loved and respected. So much had changed. 

Hot Blood

   My wild reading list has inspired a new horror, Hot Blood, based on a true story. 

 One

May 1, 1361

  The morning was warm, and I wondered at the wild hare who bound across the lawn, kicking up pink blossoms. He seemed a couple of months late. No matter, nothing was as it used to be. He was likely just thrilled with living, as we all ought to be. The abbey bells chimed the hour, and I joined the brothers for breakfast. 

  The porridge was hot, fresh today, and there were plum preserves and fresh mint. After grace Abbot  de Brinkeley cleared his throat and tapped his spoon. Where was Brother Norton? It was unlike anybody to miss breakfast, was he ill? Our numbers had dwindled so much that a moment’s lateness instilled worry, ten minutes, panic. Abbot  Brinkeley too furrowed his lined brow, which had come to resemble a country map, staring at Norton’s empty place, before beginning. 

  “The heathen will no doubt be playing the fools today, so keep to the grounds. Stay out of the woods and clear of the meadow. Where is Brother Norton?” 

  “He wasn’t in his bed,” Brother Eustace said. Unlike many abbeys where the brothers slept in a line, since the Pestilence, we slept two to a room. I shared my room with Brother John de Grafton who was seated to my left and began to down his porridge. We all relished our food and drink a bit more these days, but Brother Grafton had become fat as a friar. The silver tabby, Judas, caught up a moth in his paws and looked to be praying. 

  “Who let that cat back in here?” Abbot Brinkeley wanted to know. Nobody answered, but we all knew it was Tommy, the little idiot, who loved the cats.