Nightmare Fuel, Day the 30th. Wrapping up a month of horrible things

Today is All Hallows Eve, a fitting day to close out the 2013 Nightmare Fuel season. IN the past month, I've shared fairy-tales, all-dialog stories, flash pieces, poetry, Keroac-style wordsalad, a homemade Zen koan, and more. We'll wrap with an homage to one of the great American writers of short horror fiction. If there's a prompt today I may or may not put a bow on the month tomorrow; we did repeat Day 19, so I'll count this as 31 entries in 30 days.

Thanks, as always, for listening.

"Against the Wall"
by L Czhorat Suskin

Weeks have past, months blessed by his absence, yet still I hear his voice. In my dreams, yes, but also in my waking hours, no matter how far from my cellars I hear him.

"For the love..."

I remember everything. The thousand injuries of my foe, and now this, the thousand and first.

Blessed by his absence I have called these months, but in truth absent he is not. He whispers to me through each stone, through each brick. A thousand and one steps from my cellar he whispers still, a thousand and one feet from my cellars I hear his whispers.

They hear him as well. No fool am I, I know that they are there and I know that they listen to the stones. It was Fortunato himself who told me, told me with that obscene, grotesque gesture and his talk of Masons. Oh, how I wish I had heeded the warning, how I wish to have chosen to lead Fortunato to some other doom through his appetites. But no, fool I was we marched onward, through the path chosen for us in the catacombs, never once to look back.

"For the love of..."

His whispers I still hear, but there is more. I know, deep in my bones I know that you hear the same. Every brick in this accursed town whispers his story, repeats his last words. If his last words they were, if his infernal magic has not brought him escape, if his brothers have not heard already, have not unearthed him, are not plotting, plotting their vengeance.

I am well practiced with rapier. I have taken to carrying my trowel, the very same trowel, as my main gauche. You will not stop me. None of you will stop me.

I know that you hear. There will be this time no libations. No Medoc, no Amontillado. 

Image by our hostess, +Bliss Morgan 

You protest? Still you protest your innocence? Fool. I heard the whispering in the stone, and I know you hear it as well. I know you are of them, and heard his last words. Hear it from my lips, from living human lips, once more before your death.

"For the love of God, Montresor".

Yes. For the love of God.

Nightmare Fuel, Day the 28th. Attick Door

Day the 28th as we count down towards the end.

This one is a skeleton of a real story, and a metaphor. It's another that might be worth revisiting at some point.


"Attick Door"
by L Czhorat Suskin


They say that "Cellar Door" is one of the pretty phrases in the English language. Cellar doors themselves, of course, are some of the loveliest things you humans have made. Warped metal shedding flakes of green paint and rust onto waterstained concrete stairs, battered and warped portals between the aboveworld and the cool living earth below. I can even forgive you the iron, just this once. Just this once. The cellars themselves - not finished basements with wood paneling and shag carpets and air-hokey tables, but honest-to-the-queen cellars with earthen floors, sometimes posts of that damn iron again holding your house up. Not too tall like the building above, but just perfect so you have to stoop a bit while we walk upright. If you see us. Cellar doors are lovely and special. Ask the shade of Poe, ask Drew Barrymore.

I do not live behind a cellar door.

Times, I'm told, change. We change. Oh, there are cellars still, but not so many. The cellars that still exist are old as you measure things, still shinynew to us. They smell of wet earth and history. When I departed home to make my way, I was warned that I would find no cellar door. There'd be no woodpile or coal-bin behind which to hide a passageway to my brothers, away from prying eyes. None of the revels I knew from my youth.

I live above an attic door.

It's treacherous here, beneath the iron roofnails. The prickly pink cotton-candy colored brambles leave tiny itches in my skin. My parents visited once, only once, just after I moved in. My mother caught her wing on a roofnail, still has the scar. Just a little notch, really, but she'll never be back. The nightsky just the other side of thin layers of wood and tar aren't quite enough for her, the nighttime call through a vent across a span of tamed grasses not enough community.

from +Lindsey Clements 

This place has bred mischief in me. No shoes to help mend, no pastries to bake, no craft and no industry. I'll steal the odd sock and curdle some milk and scare some pets. It's been a way of passing time while I wait for word that someone has moved out from behind their cellar door, that I can find a new space beneath.

Then I started hearing the voices in the wires.

They run through my attick aerie, and if you listen closely they positively hum with whispers of love and sex and commerce and gossip from far-off lands. Some nights I've learned to whisper back, learned to steal a packet here or there, to slip one in. My wings have grown thinner, skeletal. My eyes see things they haven't before.

They say that "Cellar Door" is one of the pretty phrases in the English language. But perhaps, if I stay long enough, they might
say the same about the attick door.

Nightmare Fuel, Day 27. Dragonbones

For this one I ignored what the picture looked like and instead used the one in my head.

The ones in my head are always much prettier.

 Chas Redmond on Flickr
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/34768732@N00/19031262
Creative Commons Attribution license.

"Dragonbones"

by L Czhorat Suskin

Some say that the bones were the remains of a gargantuan beast caught by the island's mightiest fisherman.

Some say that the great beast was not captured, but crawled out of the sea to die, that the elements flensed its bones clean of meat or that the long-ago villagers devoured it.

Some say that the bones were always there, long before people. That the dragon - for they are the bones of a dragon - were leftover from the making of the world.

Some say many things, even secret things. That it is the dragonbones that bring good fishing and pleasant weather. That isn't what matters. What does is that the bones have been there as long as anyone could remember. That arches of its ribs, taller than a house, bent upward to the great spine, forming a sort of tunnel. That even on the calmest day, a steady breeze blew through the archways. Some say that this breeze was the breath of the very island. Each year at Midwinter the villagers would gather for the dragonbone festival. The bravest and strongest would walk through the archway and against the wind, which would increase in power to a gale capable of speeding the fastest ships.

No things remain the same forever, and the people of the dragonbones one day learned that they had a ruler, a man who'd won control of the island in some dispute with another who did not own it. The ruler sent envoys and surveyors and, eventually, governors to each of his new islands, where one of them found the dragonbones and their mysterious wind.

Now the ruler was and enlightened man, believing in knowledge over all else. Enlightened men seek to take the world apart, to see its inner workings. That is one thing which elightenment is. So came more surveyors, scientists, astrologers (an enlightened man leaves no avenue unexplored) and all their entourages, followers, hangers-on.

They studied the dragonbones, they measured the breath of the island.

After a months' time they reluctantly told the leader they'd learned nothing. The fault was not, they told him, entirely theirs. To properly study a thing requires laboratories with bright artificial lamps, powerful microscopes, the various arcane tools of the scientists' mystery. A sandy beach populated with bare-breasted native women  was simply not the place for undistracted, uninterrupted science.

The bones were taken.

The ruler was an enlightened man. He wanted science, wanted to learn, but wouldn't leave the islanders without their dragonbone festival. A new set of plaster-cast bones arrived, weeks before the midwinter festival.

On the island's coldest night, their bravest and strongest walked through the plaster archways, against a mysterious wind.

Some say that the plaster bones have always been there, long before people to make them.

Nightmare Fuel, Day 26 - Enlightenment

This one I'm not sure about. There are elements that I like, but it veers a little close to the trope of romanticizing and exoticizing East Asian philosophies without really living or understanding them. It's too easy to make a game or a plaything out of someone else's culture in a way we'd not do with our own. That's not what I intended to do here, but I can see a manner in which it could be written that way.

I'll present it in the respectful spirit in which I meant it, but with misgivings. 

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Enlightenment

by L Czhorat Suskin

The pilgrim came to the temple, seeking enlightenment. 
He listened to the monk, meditated for hours on each cryptic saying, on each raised finger, on each stroke of the broom. He gained confidence in his understanding, confidence that he was reaching his goal. One he came to the master, fat with pride, and proclaimed that he knew that motion lay neither in the flag nor the wind, but in his mind.

The master turned the pilgrim into a crane for a lifetime.

The pilgrim who had lived as a crane climbed the hill, far above the bamboo forest, and came to the temple. He watched the master rake the rock-garden each morning, shaping it in some arcane pattern. The pilgrim who'd been a crane meditated on the patterns of the stones and on each cryptic saying, each raised finger. Staring at the patterns in the sand awoke memories of his life as a crane, visions of the temple from high above, a scrap of rock nestled in the woods beside the glittering jewel of a lake. He  repositioned the rocks a bit each day, cleared his mind and gave his body to the task of raking. Each day the master would walk through the garden, spoiling with footprints and each day the pilgrim would fix it. After twenty years the valley and the temple became a part of him. He'd trace the patterns with his eyes closed, each stroke perfect.

The master turned him into a silkworm for a lifetime.

The pilgrim who had been a silkworm who had been a pilgrim who had been a crane walked slowly, contemplatively through the forest towards the temple. On reaching the temple, the pilgrim hid in a basement cell for fourteen days. He emerged to find Master Shuoj waiting outside his door with a stick. The master beat him soundly.

 Richard Elzey on Flickr.  Creative Commons Attribution license.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/54602205@N00/6953981101

Master Shuoj turned the pilgrim into a turtle for a lifetime. 

The pilgrim who had been a turtle who had been a silkworm who had been a pilgrim who had been a crane approached the ruins of the temple, long since abandoned.

In the emptiness, he found enlightenment.

Nightmare Fuel, Day the 25th. In the Fog

Image courtesy of Bill Collins

This is another little bit of an experiment, and another ghost story. As we get closer to Halloween, there should be more ghost stories.

This is Day 25, but my 26th posting (remember, we did day 19 twice). So, there will perhaps be six more of these, perhaps five or four. Then we'll move on to something else.

"In The Mist"

by L Czhorat Suskin

She came back today. The photographer. That's all I know her as. She never talks to me, never acknowledges me. She appears through the mist, as if a ghost. Sometimes I see her when I'm taking my walk through the grounds, sometimes I'll just hear the crunch of footsteps on grave, and know she's near. I'll sometimes see her, a shape in the distance, sometimes hear the clickclick of a shutter-release and know that she saw what she was looking for. Sometimes afterwards I'll see her 

She came back today. The photographer. That's all I know her as. A silent apparition in the mist, as if a ghost. I see her as I walk the grounds but never where she came from or where she goes to. She's watching me, spying on me? Why? What does she know? She's never close enough to speak, and before I can get close enough she's vanished into the mist, as if she never

She came back today. The photographer. That's all I know her as. She didn't see me, but I saw her, outside the main hall, her eyes straining through the thick fog hanging over the institute. It's always foggy here, always cold. Always so very cold and wet. I can't remember the last time I saw the sun, or the last time I felt warm and 

She came back today. The photographer. Footsteps on gravel, the ratchetclicksnick of film advancing and the shutter closing. shutter, shudder, shudder in the cold fog. She came in thin boots, in a dark windbreaker. She should know it's not wind, its fog that seeps into you and soaks your bones with wetcold so you'll never be warm again I've not felt warm in years not felt warm since before

She came back today. The photographer's ghost. I've figured it out now, so proud I've figured it out. It was all there, once she came into the institute, once she walked past me without seeing she's a ghost they don't always see the living they don't always see. She went inside today the first I saw her inside she raised the camera I heard the word on her lips, she didn't see me but I heard her say 

She came back today. The ghost. An apparition in the mist. I know she's watching me, I know it's about me. Maybe  the nurses told her something. I never trusted the nurses, they said the doctor would be back soon but I never trusted them and I was right he's not been back I'm lonely. So lonely I wish even the ghost could see

She came back today. With her camera, into the fog. I follow her through the corridors, knowing now that she haunts them. Knowing that she's a ghost. I know something now about what a ghost sees, I wish I knew why she chose here to haunt. Why she chose me to haunt. I know the two words on her lips as she takes her pictures. "beautiful

Alone today. Alone in the beautiful desolation of empty corridors, stone walls coated with slick green moss drinking in the everpresent fog. 

NMF Day 24 - Who You Gonna Call?

A bit playful with the title of this one; a callback for those of my generation.

After all, what's October without a ghost story?

"Who You Gonna Call"
by L Cz
horat Suskin

Who you gonna call?

You gonna call me. You gonna call me, cause I hear better, see better. 

geishaboy500 on flickr
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/geishaboy500/1844991555/
Creative Commons Attribution license.

What calls him, what lures him out, out of the bed late nights, weak moonlight washed out in the yellow glare of sodium lamps? Maybe if we didn't rend the night with streetlights and stoplights and porchlights you'd see too, but the night's gone around here. Just ancestral memory from the cave-dwelling just-found-fire days.

Yeah, I said ancestral memory. Don't I look educated to ya? You know what they say when you assume.

Anyway, the night's still there, at least a little. And the ones we put there. The restless spirits, the nightwalkers, the poltergeists, the haunts. You know that's what it is, right? That walks him back in past the wolf's hour, mud on his shoes, swearing up and down he don't know where he's been? The doc didn't help, the shrink didn't help, the pills don't help. So you come to me. Cause if it's nothing the docs or shrink or pills can fix, it's gotta be spirits, right? I mean, you know he's not traipsing through the mud at night to get a little somethin somethin from a lonelycute neighbor, right? Or did you try that kinda investigator already? 

You know there used to be witches here. Young girls, troublesome girls. The kind who'd lure men out with tricks and magicks and deals with devils. naked dancing girls out by a bonfire back before we broke the night with the streetlamps and stuff.

Some say they're still there, even after we drowned them and burned them and hanged them. Still luring men out of their beds late at night, still tempting, still magicking.

So they got their hooks into your man, from past the veil? Bring him back tired and worn?

So.. who you gonna call?

Nightmare Fuel Day 23 - The Canny Ones

This is an odd one.

Again, I wandered away from the prompt - pretty far. I started with the image, came to a story, started to write it and the scene I saw in my head at the start just wouldn't fit. So I'll leave you with what came of this, and let you think of how you see it.

Thanks for stopping by. 

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"The Canny Ones"

by L Czhorat Suskin

We once knew ourselves. We once knew where we were.

All of the things that make us who we are - our sorrows, our anger, our canniness and a thousand thousand other things - all of those thousand thousand things once lived within us. Within the balance of humours in our veins, behind the shell of our misshapen skulls, within the chambers of our beating hearts.

Sometimes one of us was too canny or too sorrowful or too angry. The sorrowful ones would sit alone and weep, the angry ones would rage and bluster. The canny ones, they were the worst of all. They'd pick at the weave of the very world, threatening to unravel just a thread. They were unpleasant or dangerous or just unhappy, the too-canny ones or too-sorrowful or too-angry ones. 

So we'd fix them.

So I'd fix them.

I am, truth be told, too canny by far. Cursed to see the world as a network of levers, balances, of puzzles. Cursed to restlessness, to discontent. It is, I suppose, quite OK on balance. It is acceptable because in my madness I can where people are wrong. Where the bile pushes too hard against the chambers of their stomach, where the blood flows too hot within the chambers of their heart. So, with ice flame, with knives and needles, I fix them.

I could fix you. Right now with the knife. Right here, that spot in the back of your head where the extra spirit is building up. You can feel it, can't you? Pressing all the way through to your eyeballs, making you see terrible things. That's why they brought you to me. Because you see things that aren't there, because you see things that give you ill dreams.

I can fix you with this chisel and this knife and this little bonesaw. 

I can fix you, but I won't. 

I'm getting old, my hands tremble. Not much, just a little. No amount of bleeding or purging or trepanning will fix that. I'm simply worn out.

But you... you're too canny and a touch mad. You can learn.

You can suffer so that they may be healed.

Seabamirum on Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution License.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59323989@N00/3468649494