It is best to know an areas local superstitions before wandering about exploring.

Andrew Richardson lives in Wiltshire, England, with his wife, son, and a hamster. When not writing or working as a science administrator Andrew visits historical sites, watches his favourite football team, and takes long walks over rugged countryside. His lifelong interests of horror fiction and history often combine to provide inspiration for his writing, which includes three novels and several shorter pieces. For more on Andrew http://andrewjrichardson.blogspot.co.uk/

Stones

By: Andrew Richardson

The stones stood still, silent and unwelcoming.  Darren’s shudder wasn’t just in response to the frost.

“Oh great, Darry!  A stone circle.”

Darren stopped as Alice paused beside him.  Her hand was soft and warm in his, an antidote against dawn’s chill.  The new ring was a solid band around her finger, and touching it helped dispel the cold.

Alice pointed.  “Four…five stones.  Let’s count them.  And I remembered the guidebook.  We can see if they’re mentioned.”  She tapped her jacket pocket and clear blue eyes smiled at Darren.  “Don’t they look pretty, sticking out of the frost?  I think there’s seven, including a couple over there that have fallen over.”

“Yeah.”  Darren followed her finger.  He tried not to think the stones were glaring at them.  “Can’t we just pick up some firewood?  We can come back when it’s warmer.”

“Oh Darry!  We haven’t even opened one wedding present yet, and I’ve already discovered you’re allergic to coal dust.  Now I find out you’re a stick-in-the-mud with no interest in history, either.  What other secrets have I got the rest of our lives to discover?”

“Loads.”  He threw his arms around her slender waist.  He picked her up, spinning her round so her blond hair trailed after her.  “I’ve got five mistresses on the go, debts running into thousands, and I wear my sister’s clothes every Friday night.”

“Well, you’ve no need to grovel to your sis now.  You can borrow my dresses any time you like.  No need to ask.”  She slid from his grasp and her delicate lips curled upwards.  “I’ll bet you’d look great in one of my thongs.”

“Not as good as you look, darlin’.”  His hands fell to the zipper of her jeans.

“Get off – at least until we get back to the cottage.  Someone might come.”

“Yeah, me with any luck.”  Darren gave what he hoped was a cheerful leer.

“Don’t be disgusting,” she said, but with an added giggle.

“I thought you could take my mind off these stones.”  Darren glanced to a monolith, and told himself it wasn’t staring back.  “I can’t help thinking they’re watching us.”

Alice flicked her eyes to the sky.  “We came out here at the crack of dawn for firewood.  If it wasn’t for your coal dust allergy you could be having your wicked way with me and doing your primeval grunting in front of a warm fire.”  She reached into her jacket.  “Instead, what do I get?  My husband whinging about the cold on our wedding night, then getting spooked by stones.”

He gave her nose a playful flick.  “I don’t grunt primevally.”

“You do too.”

“Humph.  Anyway, you were the one who wanted to spend your honeymoon in a cottage beyond the edge of civilization.  It’s not my fault it doesn’t have central heating.”

She gave a playful swipe and pulled a pamphlet from her pocket – ‘England’s Peak District: History for the Visitor’.

Darren glanced at the brooding stones.  In the distance, bells summoned worshippers to Sunday’s service.

Alice opened the booklet.  “There’s got to be something about the circle in here,” she said.

“Yeah.  Why don’t you sit on that log over there and concentrate on looking gorgeous.  Relax and make yourself comfy for a nice rest.  Don’t worry about me, risking my back to pick a few humble sticks to keep us warm.”  He put a hand to his spine and gave an exaggerated wince.

“Humph.  You’re the one with the coaldust allergy.”  Alice’s eyes flicked to skyward again.

Darren picked up a twig lying at a stone’s base.  He patted the rock.  “I know you’re alive,” he said into two grooves that could have been eyes.

The stone glared.

Darren stepped back.  Agony coursed through his leg, pulling at his ankle, twisting his foot, trying to snap his bones.  He fell, clasping the pain and gritting his teeth.  “Shit,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Are you okay, Darry?”  Alice leaned over him and her soft features almost drove the pain from his mind.  “What happened?  Can you walk?”

“I can wiggle my toes, so I don’t think it’s broken.  Bloody rabbit hole, I think.  Shit.”

“I suppose this is just a ruse to get me to collect wood while you sit around watching?”

“Yeah.  You rumbled me.  I nearly bust my ankle so I get to lay about in the frost for five minutes.”  He gave a half wince, half grin.

“Okay, Darry.  You sit down – here, lean your back against this log – and I’ll collect some firewood as quick as I can.”

“’Alice?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t be long.  I’m cold.”  Darren tried to sound pathetic.  “I think I might be getting frostbite.”

“Baby.”  She tossed the guidebook in his direction.  “Here.  Make yourself useful instead of aimlessly freezing to death.  See if the stones are mentioned.”

“Right-ho, nurse.”  Darren looked at the brooding monoliths before flicking through the pages, occasionally blowing on his fingers to warm them.  He winced as he shifted his foot, and to his surprise found the circle.  “Hey, Alice, they’re in here!”

“Really?”  She clasped a pile of twigs and looked up.

“Yeah.  On the third page.  Not a good picture though.”  Darren let a fantasy push the monoliths from his mind.  “It’d look better if they’d got you to model on page three instead.”

“Pervert.  Just read it out.  I think the cold’s getting to me.  I’m feeling all stiff.”

“Not as stiff as I’d feel if you were on page three.”  Darren read.  “’The stone circle, known locally as the Seven Sisters, is an ancient feature avoided by villagers.’  That must mean you’re right.  There’s seven.  ‘Local legend says…’”

“Honest, Darry.  I think I’m catching something.  My joints are all seizing up.  Darry!  Help!”

“Alice?  Darren jumped up, ignoring the pain in his ankle.

“Darry!  Help!  I can’t move!”  Alice stood rigid over a pile of dropped sticks, her face grey and colourless.  “Darry!  I can’t move my back or my legs…or…my…arms…oh…my

…God…I……can’t……Darry!”  Her voice slowed and dropped, like a record played too slowly.

Darren limped toward his wife, shouting her name as she greyed and her clothes became as one with her body.  By the time he reached Alice her mouth had silenced.

She stood still.  Even her blond hair was as grey as the stones.

Darren’s eyes dropped to the book he still held limply in his hands.  ‘Local legend says the Seven Sisters are named after young women who were turned to stone as punishment for collecting firewood on the Sabbath.’

He could do no more than watch open mouthed as, before his eyes, the woman he loved became an eighth stone of the circle.

along the gravel paths

in the bleak shadows of the graves

when I saw an entourage dressed in black

with a coffin of finest oak

Who is buried in this late hour

so secretly laid to rest

in the most distant corner

in the field of death?

When I reached the open grave

the night laid still and desolate

curious I sneaked to the edge

and gazed surprised down

in the open empty coffin

when I felt a hard push

and fell headlong

in the soft velvet death

In the suffocating dark

I could hear

ashes to ashes

and earth to earth

that fell on my lid

and my brother and my fiancé

laughing as ravens from hell

Some dark nights of the year, terrible things like to lurk through cemeteries looking for something to eat.

Erin Cole is a dark fiction writer from Portland, OR with stories appearing in over 50 print and electronic publications, including Dark Eclipse, Eschatology, Aoife’s Kiss, Every Day Fiction, and more.  She is the author of the mystery novel Grave Echoes and the horror anthology collection Of the Night.  See more of her work at www.erincolewrites.com

Beneath the Eclipse

By: Erin Cole

When darkness descended, so did they. But today, it wasn’t just any darkness. It was one within a day, a night without a night.

* * *

Sylvia balanced herself on the tip of her toe atop the steeple of her father’s grave. Only from there could she see the black river at the bottom of the Riverside Cemetery. It could have been tar or wet strands of ebony hair the way it looked so still.

Except, beneath the calm of its surface, cocoons of evil thrived, far beyond anything that lived in the cemetery. There, in the deep murk of grime and silt, wild phantoms roamed. The kind that had mouths too large for their faces, fingers too long for their hands. The kind that ate ghosts.

Nell, an elder in her death, frequently walked the tracks behind the cemetery. Though they had found most of her when she died, there were still a few bone chips left, probably buried beneath quarried rock underneath the bridge. She thought if she could find them, she could leave this place and its phantoms for good.

Sometimes Sylvia helped her, but she hated going back to that spot. It was she that Nell had seen driving across the tracks that foggy day in autumn. The ghostly sight of Sylvia in Nell’s review mirror had caused her to stall the car. The five o-clock train missed its last stop.

Nell returned to the cemetery, content with a handful of aluminium disks and reflectors that blinked at the signal junctions. Aluminium was the only reflective metal capable of mirroring the light of a ghost.

Nell held up a disk and looked at herself like a long, forgotten twin. Her hair stood out in a circle as if she had licked a light socket. She combed it down, but it sprang back up again.

Henry, the oldest spirit though youngest in death, paced at the base of a marbled monolith. “Do you see them coming?” he asked Sylvia. The last time the phantoms came, they ate his family. Tore them right out of their graves, squeezed them small, and swallowed them with distended jaws in one bite.

At the mention of them, Nell dropped the disk to the ground and looked toward the river with amplified eyes.

“No,” Sylvia said. “I don’t think they’ll come out until it’s perfectly dark.”  Henry blanched himself to near invisible. Sylvia drifted down and wrapped a pallid arm around him. “We’ll think of something. Don’t worry.”

Hazel, the newest spirit, soared up from her post at the crematory. “What about the mausoleum?” she asked. “We could hide in the vaults?”

“No,” Sylvia said. “They’ll find us there too.”  She turned to the moon, which only a moment ago, had been kissing the sun. Now, a scoop of blackness ate the light.

Hazel drew closer to the group, her eyes ever watchful of the river. “Then how did you escape them the last time?”

“Many of us didn’t,” Henry said. “They fled once the light returned.”

“There must be something we can do.”  Hazel looked to both Sylvia and him.

Sylvia fixed her eyes on Nell’s reflectors. “Nell?  Do those reflectors still blink?”

Nell picked one up and turned it over. “I think so.”  She flicked a switch on the back. A bulb blinked behind the red lens.

“I have an idea.” Sylvia picked up three of the reflectors and handed one to each of them.

Henry accepted the reflector with a restrained take. “Railroad reflectors?”

“The phantoms hate light,” Sylvia explained. “This should be bright enough to at least slow their assault.”

“Looks like we’ll find out soon enough.”  Hazel pointed to the sky. “Look.”

With the bottom side of the sun missing, it looked like the carved eye of a pumpkin.

“Sylvia?” Henry said, tapping the vaporous form of her elbow. “The river is moving.”

Boiling waves stirred the black waters as though a great mythical beast were surfacing. Clawed, contorted hands jabbed through the ashy froth.

Everyone gathered beneath the overhang of an old crypt, switching the reflectors on and clutching them tight between rigid, frostlike fingers. The sun waned to a sliver of gold.

“J-Ju-st aim the re-f-f-lectors at them?” Henry questioned.

“Yes, but not until I tell you to do so,” Sylvia replied. “We must surprise them … and whatever you do,” she looked specifically at Hazel, “don’t let them touch you.”

“Why is that?”

None of them answered her. Their gazes wandered instead to the dark shapes crawling up the bank.

Sylvia tightened her grip around the reflector. “Get ready.”

The last spark of sun snapped into the darkness, leaving a dim ring of light in a black sky. Shadows submerged down on the cemetery, skating across the ground like giant insects. A cold draft of putrid air enveloped them.

“Now.” Sylvia shined the blinking reflector into the drapes of night.

In obscured, rapid clashes, the phantoms rushed the crypt’s perimeter with shrill wails that escalated into howls. The cold breath of one plumed at Sylvia’s back. She spun around, holding the reflector out at the face of a phantom. Under the pulse of red light, she saw the phantom’s sharp, stunted nose and massive jaws crowded with crooked, shark-like teeth. Mineral-green fire ignited over its shoulders and head. Red-rust eyes warped in rage before its shadowed form ruptured into a giant flame. It crackled and disappeared with a spark of light . . . remnants of the ghosts it had eaten, Sylvia thought taking a faded breath.

Two more flashes spouted around the backside of the crypt. Sylvia heard Henry holler. She ran toward the sound of his voice. A phantom had cornered him at the base of a monolith. His reflector wasn’t on. Though Sylvia couldn’t see Henry or the phantom, she knew that the phantom was breaking its jaw open into an abnormally, large cavity and trying to swallow Henry head first.

She screamed and pointed her reflector at it, striving for the phantom’s attention before it touched Henry, if it hadn’t already. A small green hole burned into the phantom’s back. It screeched and burst into a giant flame, then vanished into a speck of light.

“Hurry, quick,” she said to Henry, reaching for his hand. “We have to find the others.”

They followed Hazel and Nell’s shouts from the other side of the mausoleum. A phantom roared, and a reflector was tossed to the ground. Sylvia caught the crouched form of Hazel in the reflectors dim light, shivering beneath the putrid breath of the phantom.

Sylvia handed Henry her reflector. “Go help Hazel.”  Then, she turned to find Nell.

She tracked the sound of hissing, a phantom squeezing Nell small. But a sharp ray of sun glinted through the nighttime sky, piercing slices of light into the dark. The phantom over Nell shrieked as it sizzled. It burst into an orange blaze before sparking out of sight. The rest of the phantoms shrank down the hillside, oozing like fluid silt back into the black of the river.

Nell laid backside on the grass. A large black cut extended from her chin to the bottom of her shoulder.

“No,” Sylvia cried. She wiped at cold tears. “You did it, Nell. You helped us kill the phantoms.”

“No, you did.”  Nell grabbed Sylvia’s hand in both of her own. Her voice wheezed as she spoke. “It wasn’t your fault, that day on the tracks. You have to stop blaming yourself.”

“I don’t deserve forgiveness.” Sylvia said, stifling a sob back.

“It’s not up to you.”

Sylvia pulled Nell to her, but her form dissipated through her fingers like grains of sand, then she vanished. Sylvia directed a teary-glare at the black water. Once again, it appeared calm, empty. The moon had slid halfway across the sun. The light of a red dusk cloaked the landscape, tinting the cemetery in a blood-red haze.

Henry smacked the last reflector, exasperated. “It’s not working anymore.”

Sylvia picked up another one and tried to turn it on, with no luck. “The phantoms must short them out. We’ll need to get more.”

Hazel looked to the river. “Why?  The next eclipse is months away.”

“It’s not just eclipses,” Sylvia said. “There is a new moon in two nights.”

Return Fair

Nathan J.D.L. Rowark

Carried along on an excrement’s flume, the corpse of dear William left its tomb,
floating away by a tributary stance, to be righted once more and regain a lost stance.

Hitting the crest of a sewer built wave, without ticking pulse or a heartbeat to save,
last rights of passage dissolved in the hume, of a thick oozing liquid, his bones to consume.

Slipped from the graveyard, then stolen away, the earth was found willing to give William his day.
A chemical sludge from pipe fractured nearby, that had hole in its tunnel for a gentleman’s eye,

found worms passage teeming from a miscreant deed, as a cellular wriggled collective agreed,
the unjust of internments need turn on its head, so a constable’s murder could be forgotten instead.

Moulded in structure, yet weak from decay, three hundred years of mystery began to melt away,
until a fusion’s symphony, unnatural in its end, rose up the banished legacy of an England to defend.

Surveying self most vigorously, a thief taker replaced, arms and legs peculiar, from grotesque feet  embraced,

William rose to greet the dawn, for the bell tower ring of his penitence cried. “I am fairly returned,” he remembered, “for no longer have I died.”

Spring still has not yet made its full appearance. Yes, we have our days of mild weather but cool, rainy days outnumber those with cheerful sun – and trust us, we do not mind being spared cheerfulness for a few more weeks.

Given that it has been rainy, people are careful to don the appropriate attire consisting of rain jackets, boots, and carrying the essential dreary weather accessory – the umbrella.  When I was a child, I remember being scolded by my mother for playing with an umbrella indoors. In fact, to her horror, I was twirling an opened umbrella in my bedroom. It seemed like such a fantastic thing to do – to bring a pretend world of rain inside. My mother quickly snatched the umbrella from my hands, closed it and said it was bad luck to open an umbrella indoors. Since then, I have not opened an umbrella inside. Besides my mother’s warning, and because it does appear silly having an open umbrella indoors, I’ve never gone on to investigate the origin of this superstition, until now.

I found an account in the Oxford Dictionary of Superstitions from 1883 that states “It is unlucky to open an umbrella in the house, especially if it is held over the head, when it becomes a sign of death.” However, I found some indications that this superstition goes back even further to ancient Egypt. Parasols were used by nobility when outside to block the sun’s harsh rays, and so it was believed if one was opened indoors it would be an insult to the god of sun, Ra. If Ra felt you were insulting him it was believed you were then cursed.

A much more practical account is that umbrellas of the Victorian Era were constructed with steel poles and opening one indoors could cause injury or eye loss.

Regardless of the reason, refrain from opening an umbrella indoors because opening one could be a sign of death, an insult to the god Ra, or simply could poke someone’s eye out.

-Gravedigger

Twins flames of anger shone forth from the windows of that lonely home.
In the midnight hour, the soul’s pain shone in retrospective virulence.
Hatred for the living smelted the flesh, burnished the souls, which walked the lane.
Abandoned in the primordial depths, they despised the wicked living,
A living death, a seeker of flesh, it waited, it craved.

Emotional rot in its core, the beast of Hunter’s Lane resisted
the call to lay in its grave, come to me, it begged those without.
In the darkness of the window, it sought victims for play.
Withered from life’s destitution, the prey moved close.
A family’s wretched spirits gained a foothold within its lair.
The seeker concealed, spoke in dreams of murder and misdeed.

Darkness bloomed, shedding the light of eternal warmth,
as the malignancy cajoled the young one, join me it implored.
Forever unite with I; we shall explore deaths boundless light.
Within the home on Hunter’s Lane, she crept along those corridors.
While in her hand, the blade dripped with crimson nectar,
as the trail led from bed to bed.

Warmth fled as the steel turned red: — a soul’s death.
In the horrid expanse of her mind, desires of life rebelled; I am dead.
Her life of promise abandoned as she fled the shattered remains.
A corpse lay in the attic, her journey corrupted by the beast.
While along the lane, passerby’s whispered of the curse they bore.
The House on Hunter’s Lane: — a crypt for the dead.

Sometimes we have to do mundane tasks at work before heading home for the night. Sometimes those mundane tasks turn terrible.

Philip Roberts lives in Nashua, New Hampshire and has been published in a variety of publications, such as the Epitaphs anthology, Midnight Echo, and The Horrorzine. A full anthology of Philip’s short stories entitled Passing Through can be found on the Amazon kindle store. More information on his works can be found at www.philipmroberts.com.

Last Cart of the Night

By: Philip Roberts

Eleven hours. Eleven God damn hours he’d been stuck in the back end of the store unloading three separate shipments none of the night people had bothered with, and since the night people weren’t in over the weekend, Fred had been screwed into working eleven hours straight of the same tedious job.

He could’ve left three hours ago when his shift actually ended, but Omar, the sales floor lead, knew how Fred thought, how much he hated leaving a job undone.

The job itself wasn’t even the worst of it. The back end of the store had never been air conditioned, made so much worse by the open bay door for the trailers, plus, just to top it all off, a storm had rolled in. The water dripping down the side of the trailer and soaking through half the boxes overshadowed whatever coolness the rain brought. Didn’t help either that the roof to the back end of the building was so horribly made the rain sounded like machine gun fire.

Last but not least, as Fred finally pulled out the last box and closed the trailer door, he stepped out onto the sales floor to find it hadn’t been straightened yet. Store had already been closed for ten minutes and the people were barely getting done with the first few rows, the whole back end of the store left untouched.

Fred tilted back, letting his muscles stretch and crack, his hair sticking wetly to his forehead. If he went up front and made a fuss there was no way they’d make him stay to finish cleaning up the store, but he knew he wouldn’t raise a fuss, just like he hadn’t left a trailer undone. The pay wasn’t bad, he had to admit, the overtime just the kind of thing he needed, but eleven hours had a way of making money seem less important to him.

Omar stood along with some seasonal teenager with acne so thick Fred felt sorry for the poor boy. They were looking out into the dreary night, rain pouring everywhere, drenching the parking lot.

“What are you two doing?” Fred asked as he stopped behind them.

“Waiting on them,” Omar said and pointed towards the far back end of the lot.

Squinting through the pouring rain Fred could see a car parked back there along with someone standing next to it by the trunk, probably loading the thing up. Beside the car Fred could see the bright red shopping cart and the real thing Omar was pointing at.

“Just leave it,” Fred said. “Not like one cart really matters.”

“Lot of closing managers have a bad habit of saying that, and with the way Jack’s been lately, I don’t want him coming down on my ass for being sloppy, especially since he’s opening tomorrow.”

“Well, what are you waiting for?”

“Was hoping they’d finish up and leave but I think they’ve been back there for fifteen minutes now by that trunk. Besides, maybe we’ll get lucky and the rain will break.”

“Hell, I’ll go get the damn thing, but I’m leaving when I’m done. You guys can clean up the store yourselves.”

“Your call,” Omar said with a shrug and motioned for the seasonal boy to follow him back into the store to get to work. Fred watched them go, trying to remember the boy’s name, but thinking it probably didn’t matter since Jack wasn’t likely to keep him on once the season was over. The uglier looking teens had a habit of being the first to go, fair or not, and that boy wasn’t exactly a looker.

Fred unlocked the front door and ducked his head down as he ran out into the pouring rain towards the car in the back. Within seconds his shirt was plastered to him, socks sopping wet, his hand up to stop the rain from spraying in his eyes as he pounded across the empty parking lot towards that one, lone jackass who just had to take their sweet time.

As he drew closer he saw the person move away from the back of the car and duck down behind it. Fred slowed, frowning, confused as he approached the faded blue, two-door car with the trunk still open. He put a hand on the empty cart, but rather than just run back with it, he inched around the end of the car towards the other side and the person knelt down on the ground, their shoulder leaning up against the car.

“You lose something?” Fred shouted through the pounding rain, thinking what a bitch it would be to drop your keys on a night like this, but the person didn’t respond, staying hunched low, even their head partially out of his sight as he walked fully around the car and up to them, the only thing he could say for certain was that they wore a thick, black coat.

He began to reach out his hand to touch their shoulder but before he could the person dove forward, actually crawling across the wet asphalt, moving underneath the car. They moved so fast, skittering along the ground, out of sight beneath the vehicle within seconds and leaving Fred standing in the pouring rain with his mouth gaping open in surprise.

“The key, maybe?” Fred whispered to himself, thinking they might’ve seen it under the car, but he had no idea what they’d crawl completely under the car.

He backed up a few steps, eyes looking over the roof of the car towards the bright storefront, and then back down to the car itself and the water splattering on the ground. Fred knelt down to see beneath the car, but from what he could tell there wasn’t anyone under there anymore. The person was gone.

Fred jerked back and rubbed the rain from his eyes. “The cart,” he told himself, keeping things simple, to the point, the whole thing some weird trick of the light given the rain, or something like it. Maybe some jackass was playing a joke on him. Fred didn’t really care. All he wanted was the cart.

He started inching his way back around the car towards the cart, careful to keep his eyes on it even though he felt ridiculous for even taking this seriously. The damn rain got on his nerves, made it hard to hear over the low roar of it, see with the water splashing in his eyes, cutting him off a little too much from the world around him for his liking.

He only slowed when he got around the back end and saw the open trunk. Fred had to pause, stare into it and the darkness inside, a darkness that just kept going deeper. The sight surprised him enough to take a single step closer, one voice saying to let it go and just get back inside while another told him he’d be up all night thinking about it if he didn’t at least look a little closer. He thought he’d probably be up quite a few nights wondering what the hell this was, and he had a bad feeling years from now he’d be telling others, swearing it was true, but they’d laugh it off and say it was the rain and his nerves playing tricks on him.

Those future voices laughing at him forced him to kneel down to peer inside, eyes roaming over the darkness for something to define what it was.

Then the shape came, almost like a bright light in the middle of it until the figure burst forward and Fred realized it was a person, their skin so pale it practically glowed in the darkness. They had no hair, face covered in thick grooves that might’ve been scars, the image rushing at him too fast to say for certain. The person had their eyes and mouth wide, what looked like bloody saliva pouring over their bottom lip and down their chin, arms stretching out to grab hold of Fred’s arms before he understood what was happening. The person reached halfway out of the trunk, their lower half unseen, actually combined with the trunk itself, face pressed right up against his own, bloodshot eyes wet and fixed on him, mouth contorted as if in a scream but no sound heard from it over the pounding rain.

The fingers dug deep enough into his arms to send sharp pain through his body right before the person pulled back inside, taking Fred with them, lifting him off his feet and yanking him face first into the car, but as the darkness reached forward to consume him he felt a sickening warmth from within the car and the warped face in front of him dissolving into the darkness right before the car consumed him whole.

***

Omar didn’t even think about Fred until he stepped into the loading bay and saw all the boxes stacked around the walls. Having Fred working a shift that day had been a little blessing, the guy so easy to push around and manipulate Omar tried to get him in on every shift he could.

He left the back area and walked up to the front end of the store, surprised when the automatic front doors opened up for him. He didn’t think Fred was likely to forget about locking them when he came back in. He stopped with the doors open and looked out into the lot and the car still parked near the back along with that same prick taking all the time in the world. Even the cart remained. Person had probably still been loading and Fred decided to bail rather than bother with them.

Susan was counting out the money from the registers when Omar called her over. “Want to do me a favor?” he asked her.

“Not really,” she said.

He had known she’d say that, the girl just as bitchy in tone as she was in appearance, which gave him plenty of amusement when he said, “Got one last cart out there. Go get it from the person.”

“Are you kidding me? It’s pouring out there.”

“Guess you’d better make it quick then.”

She scowled at him before running out into the rain towards the back of the lot. Omar turned towards the registers to finish up counting out the cash.

These tombs typically allow for multiple burials. It is the final resting place of famous New Orleaians such as Homer Plessy, the plaintiff in the 1896 landmark Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court Decision that challenged racial segregation and Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau.

Marie Laveau was a Louisiana Creole born a free woman in 1794 in the French Quarters of New Orleans. She would go on to have a reported 15 children, and worked in a hair salon servicing New Orleans women of high society. Marie Laveau was famous for her practice of Voodoo and for sharing spells with the community. It is said that she is the one who brought the overall practice of Voodoo into the public.

One of her daughters, Marie Laveau II was also said to practice Voodoo like her mother, but Marie Laveau II was known more for her large, public rituals.

The Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau is said to rest in the Glapion tomb which is said to be one of the most visited graves in the world. People leave behind mementos such as beads, candy, fruit, cigars, pictures, and money. It is said that wishes can be made at her tomb by drawing three X’s on its surface. Others say that the three X’s became a popular form for people to let Marie Laveau  know that they had visited her tomb, since at the time of her death many people still did not know how to write and so would indicate a signature with this practice.

It is illegal to deface any property in the cemetery. Some also believe that Marie Laveau is not entombed there, but then again, there is no way to know if she isn’t there or is. You will find photographs of this tomb as well as others in the following photographs taken by the Undertaker. We hope you enjoy.

This past weekend the Undertaker and I spent some time in the reportedly most haunted city in America, New Orleans. We strolled through St. Louis Cemetery Number 1, left some mementos at the tomb of Marie Laveau, the great Voodoo priestess, and walked through the French Quarters at night listening to ghost stories, talks of witchcraft and Voodoo and of course to tales of vampire lore.

We will share some photographs soon of some of the lovely tombs at St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, but for now, below are some interesting ghost and vampire stories that we learned while we were there.

Zach & Addy

In 2006, Zachary Bowen, a 28 year-old Iraq War hero threw himself off the ledge of the Omni Hotel in New Orleans. A note was found on his person that read to check on Addie. When investigators arrived at the apartment he shared with his girlfriend Addie no one answered after repeated knocks, yet the officers could smell what was described as dinner being made. After further attempts at knocking no one came to the door and so authorities broke down the door. In the kitchen they found the dismembered body of who later was identified as Addie Hall. News reports indicated two boiling pots were found on the stove, one containing a females head and another pot containing hands and feet. In the oven, detectives found legs and arms in a basting tray.

Ghost hunters in the French Quarters say that Zachary continues to repeat his suicide. Many people have reported seeing a man leaping from the rooftop of the Omni Hotel. Some say he disappears right before he hits the pavement.

The Yellow Fever Murders

The New Orleans Pharmacy Museum once operated as a pharmacy. Built in 1823, the pharmacy was operated first by Dr. Duffulo and was later purchased by Dr. Dupas who is believed to haunt the museum today. According to reports, Dr. Dupas experimented on slaves, especially pregnant slaves. Some say he was trying to find a cure for Yellow Fever and he would inject these people with varying treatments. All of those he experimented on would go on to die of Yellow Fever. Reports state that bodies were often found piled on top of each other in his small courtyard.

Dr. Dupas would himself go on to die of Yellow Fever. He can be seen stalking the museum today in a brown suit, throwing books off shelves, moving items in display cases, setting off the alarm system and overall emitting his negative energy.

Ursuline Convent Vampires

The Ursuline Convent dates back to 1718. At one point in the 1700s the ratio of men to women was problematic with men greatly outnumbering women. The local government went to the nuns at the Ursuline Convent and asked if they could request the French government to allow some women to be trusted to the care of the convent for a proper education. If after graduating the ladies found the calling to become a sister then they could surely stay at the convent or go on elsewhere for their work. Or, after graduating if they wanted to remain in New Orleans then the sisters could arrange an appropriate suitor for the young lady. When the sisters took this request to France the French authorities vehemently declined. At that time, America and New Orleans were seen as uncivilized and they would not allow young ladies to travel to such areas. The nuns then took their request to local, rural families who were struggling to financially support their children, especially their daughters. Some of these families agreed and three months later a boat arrived in New Orleans from France and a group of dirty, pale, and frail young ladies stepped on the land. Each girl was carrying a small casket in which they said held all of their belongings. The girls did not allow anyone to touch nor open their caskets. The caskets eventually were said to have made their way to the attic of the convent. Some people say that at one point the caskets were opened but nothing was found inside. Others say the caskets girls brought with them vampires.

Many people went missing after the casket girls arrived from France and eventually shutters were put on the attic windows. Legend says that each of the attic windows was sealed by 100 blessed nails from the Vatican. What’s most striking is that no other building in that area has shutters on their windows. Also, the nuns just left the convent one day without giving a full explanation why.

From time to time these days, there are reports of a window being spotted open and from time to time there are still reports of people going missing in New Orleans. The attic windows never stay open long as it’s said that 100 blessed nails arrive immediately from the Vatican to seal inside whatever lives in the attic. Today, the Ursuline Convent has been converted into a museum and people who have visited the museum have said there is no way to enter the attic. As far as the museum is concerned, the attic does not exist.

Jacques St. Germaine Vampire

In the 1800s Jacques St. Germaine was a wealthy man who loved to throw parties in the company of multiple beautiful women. At these parties though, Jacques St. Germaine never ate any food. It’s said that he had a wine collection that held hundreds of bottles of wine in an impressive home in the French Quarter.

One evening, screams were heard and a woman was seeing throwing herself from the top floor apartment window. She survived the fall and in the hospital doctors found that she was covered in long cuts from which she said Jacques St. Germaine was drinking her blood. When he was approached by authorities at his home Jacques remarked that the woman was unreliable as she had been drinking. Investigators insisted that he follow them back for questioning. He said he would follow their orders but first needed to gather some things from his home. Minutes passed and when Jacques did not emerge the authorities entered his home and were surprised to find it sparsely furnished as though someone has just moved in, or out. Upstairs, they entered the master bedroom and found the walls covered in blood, the bed covered in blood and the floor completely covered in blood. When one of them began to regard a bottle of wine, it fell accidentally but instead of spreading across the floor the liquid slowly settled. After a quick examination it was determined that all of the bottles were filled with blood.

Jacques St. Germaine never returned to New Orleans, but there are rumors that a Jack St. Germaine currently lives down the block from the original home.

-Gravedigger

Russell C. Connor has been writing about demons, serial killers, and the end of the world since he was five years old. His short work has appeared in “Black Petals Magazine,” “Alien Skin,” and “Sanitarium,” among others. He currently has six novels available, including the supernatural crime-noir “Finding Misery,” and “Whitney,” about hurricane survivors facing a deadly plague and a ravenous beast. His newest, a Bermuda Triangle horror novel called “Sargasso,” will be available in March of 2013. He lives in Grand Prairie, TX with his mistress of the dark, rabid dogs, and extensive movie collection, and has been a member of the DFW Writers’ Workshop for 7 years. For more visit: www.darkfilament.com

That Old Rugged Cross

By: Russell C. Connor

The box of bibles bounced on the seat next to Beecher as the car hit another uneven patch on the winding dirt road. One of the tomes on top, already precariously balanced, slid forward and made a valiant effort at escape.

Beecher took his hands off the wheel and snatched it out of the air before it reached the filthy floorboard of the vehicle; not much to worry about hitting if he ran off the road.  The last house was miles back, nothing more than a dilapidated little log cabin with no air conditioning. He’d given his sales pitch there yesterday to a farmer with a craggy face and his rapidly balding wife. Both were sweating profusely and reeked of B.O. and they made it abundantly clear they had little use for the word of God, even when offered in a handsome and convenient leather bound travel size.

There were only extremes when these simple folk realized what he pedaled; out here they either foamed at the mouth in their religious fervor to buy a bible or ran him off their property with shotguns and pitchforks.

But the wife offered him a glass of water for which he was thankful—he’d been on foot taking orders all day, and the Mississippi sun had wrung every ounce of moisture out of him—until he followed her through the kitchen doorway. He at first thought heat waves caused the interior of the kitchen to shimmer, until he looked closer and realized it was a layer of flies, a thick carpet of tiny jostling bodies covering every surface of the room.

He politely declined the water.

And that was about par for the course out here in the backwaters of the country. For a kid from suburban Chicago, rural America might as well be another planet.

Beecher stacked the bible back on top of the others and glanced at his watch.

Thirty-five minutes after nine in the morning, and that meant he had a bigger problem than the local population.

He had to find a church, and he had to find it fast.

“Never happen,” he muttered to himself. “You’ll never find a church with a service this late out here. Screwed yourself real good on this one, Beech.”

These country folk liked their worship services at eight o’clock on the nose, nine at the latest. His own fault for going out this morning to deliver product to as many customers before service as possible, but the shipments were in, he had orders to fill, and he really needed the money or his current diet of tomato sandwiches was going to get even skimpier. He had intended to take a short trip and then double back to a tiny Church of Christ on the edge of his selling territory, but somewhere along the maze of unnamed back streets he made a wrong turn and got lost.

And just why did he have to get to a church so urgently? They weren’t allowed to sell at the houses of God after all, so why should he be so worked up about attending, other than you know, the salvation of his soul?

“Because the people who run this business are damned Nazis,” Beecher answered his own question. “Nazis disguised at bible-thumping business moguls.”

He never expected a summer of bible selling to be like this. Sleeping in a communal bunkhouse outside Biloxi every night with his fellow salesmen, up by six for a rigorous morning of calisthenics and ‘optimistic reinforcement,’ wherein they got one another fired up for a day of grrrrrreat sales (always grrrrrreat, like they were hawking cornflakes), and then out on the job from eight till dark. There was a whole manual of do’s and don’ts for the selling aspect of the job, but as far as personal lives went, the only restrictions were no smoking or drinking.

And one other.

They must attend a church service every Sunday morning, or forfeit all bonuses for the week.

Most of the time it wasn’t a big deal. They had Sundays off, and he just rolled out of bed and went with the other guys and the regional sales manager to a Baptist outfit in the city. But, if they went off on their own, they were required to bring back a signed pamphlet or some other form of authorization proving they attended elsewhere.

Nine forty-five now. He was out of options.

Beecher topped a short hill and came around a corner guarded by a thick copse of sycamore trees. He would settle for civilization now, somewhere he could stop and ask directions, get back to the main road and finish his deliveries.

And there, lo and behold, rising against the sky like a lighthouse beacon was a wooden arrow pointing the way toward salvation. He saw that old, rugged cross floating above the stand of trees. The road split off ahead, one branch curling back behind the copse and Beecher followed, knowing services must be over already but hoping for a miracle.

He began to catch his first glimpses of the temple through gaps in the thinning trees. The structure was made entirely out of badly rusted corrugated sheet metal, welded together at crude angles in a rather slapdash display. The wooden cross was mounted at the top of a steeply sloping metal roof that couldn’t be more than a single story high, canted crookedly and badly pitted and weather beaten. No foundation whatsoever; the whole horrid thing just sat right out on the dirt, ready to be picked up and moved or blown over by a strong wind.

A handmade church, no way it could have central heat or air or even electricity, and small enough for a congregation of no more than two dozen people.

And right now it looked like heaven.

A dusty dooryard with a rickety screen door set into the metal indicated the entrance to the building. Close to the road running in front of it, was a faded hand-lettered sign nailed to a stake in the ground that read, SERVICES HELD PROMPTLY AT TEN. That was all. No church name or catchy biblical quote, just short and to the point.

Beecher smiled. He had to be the luckiest SOB in the universe.

Well, Mr. Lucky, if worship is about to start, where are all the cars?

The thought popped into his head, and Beecher’s smile faded. Maybe they weren’t meeting this Sunday. Maybe they were on an annual pilgrimage to see some tortilla with Jesus’ face on it. Maybe they just figured it was too damn hot. He felt panic start to rise up and quelled it with a possible answer.

This was a church slapped up only for the benefit of the locals, all of whom were probably within walking distance.

You haven’t seen a house in the last ten miles. You telling me they walk all the way here in this heat?

Sure. Why not? He’d been to a place just last week where he pitched to a nice-looking couple on their front porch while the three of them sipped tea—all very nice and elegant, how he imagined the deep south really would be—while their approximately one-hundred and fifteen children played, screamed, and chased one another all around them. As he flowed into his bit about how a new bible could enrich their lives, a naked boy of no more than eight came strolling out of the house. Beecher, to his credit, hadn’t missed a beat as the child crossed the porch to stand next to him and began urinating with reckless abandon on the tacky green AstroTurf. The parents seemed not to notice, so Beecher took his cue and did likewise. The child then strolled over to the sparse flowerbed that ran the length of the house, ripped an elephantine palm frond out of a plant that looked half dead, and came back to the bright yellow puddle to begin slapping the frond down on it, splattering droplets of hot, foul-smelling urine all over the front of Beecher’s best shirt and his demo bible. The couple ended up buying a unit from him, but he had to wonder if his two dollar bonus was worth going home smelling of some hayseed brat’s piss.

Just went to show, these people had a ton of eccentricities he would never understand. It was a different culture, a different lifestyle, and nothing should surprise him anymore.

Okay then, at least tell me this: What denomination are they?

He didn’t care, and he was more than a little annoyed with this interior pessimist for bringing him down. He didn’t care if they called themselves the Fifth Church of the Macarena Zionists. It was a Christian church—that beautiful cross up there couldn’t proclaim it any more if it were written out in pink neon—and he just wanted to go in, sit through whatever kind of service they called worship, get the preacher to sign something for him, and get back on the road.

Beecher parked in the dirt beside the church under the shade of a stumpy sycamore and got out. The heat washed over him, beads of sweat popping out along his brow and arms at once. He walked through the dirt to the door, set under the shade of a metal eave that seemed to have been added as an afterthought to make the place look a bit homier.

He peered through the screen, but could see only a dim glow from within.

Beecher pulled open the door, which screeched on rusty hinges.

It was dark inside, especially after the brightness of the day. There was no electricity just as he predicted; the only light came from rusted Coleman lanterns hung on the wall at irregular intervals. The heat rushed out in its eagerness to claim him, and Beecher grimaced at the thought of going inside.

Snake handlers, his mind objected desperately, snake handlers can be Christians too, you know, but he shook this off. To get that bonus, he might consider taking a few venomous bites.

He saw footprints in the dirt and followed them inside. The door swung shut, closing out a vast majority of the light so his eyes could adjust.

Directly in front of him was a small chamber, with a corrugated metal wall blocking off the rest of the church except for a hole with a curtain hung over it. On either side, two men stood solemnly waiting with hands clasped in front of them.

The one on the right came alive at the sight of him. “Welcome!” He shouted, rushing forward with hand outstretched. He was dressed in black, wearing what appeared to be a priest’s cassock and robes, without the white collar. He was in his fifties and had a merry face—small glasses perched on a round bump-of-a-nose, twinkling blue eyes, and a quick smile. Beecher found himself accepting the dry, rough hand offered to him and smiling in return while he check for snakebites.

“Welcome,” the man repeated, pumping his arm like a water well. “I’m Brother Sweeney. I’m the preacher here at Found Faith. How are you today, son? What’s your name?”

“Uh, I’m fine,” Beecher said, trying to free his hand from the preacher’s enthusiastic grip and keep up with the speech. “The name’s William Beecher.”

“Brother Beecher, is it? Well, we’re so glad to have you this fine morning! We so rarely have visitors here at Found Faith. Isn’t that right, Brother Junior?”

Beecher glanced at the man on the other side of the door. He was rotund, a huge belly stretching out the waist of his filthy overalls. No shirt beneath, a carpet of thick hair covering his meaty arms and creeping on from under the front of the overalls on his chest. He grunted and nodded his piggy head, dull eyes taking in Beecher in one gulp.

“I’m…glad to be here,” he answered, and then added, “I’m a bible salesman, and I never miss a service.”

“Did you hear that, Brother Junior?” Sweeney beamed at Beecher. “A bible salesman! A spreader of the gospel! How nice!”

Beecher was getting the idea the man would stand here and talk to him all day if he didn’t find a way to get the show on the road. Runners of sweat were already trickling down his back, and he didn’t want to prolong his time in this hotbox. These two hardly seemed to notice the heat. “Well, I don’t want to interrupt your service. I saw that you start at ten…”

“Nonsense!” Sweeney waved the thought away, and then his hand froze in midair as a new thought occurred to him. “You know son, you could be our guest of honor!”

“Oh no, I couldn’t possibly.” Beecher raised his hands in polite protest.

“Sure you could! We haven’t had a guest of honor in such a long time! What do you think, Brother Junior?”

For the first time, Brother Junior showed some expression, his eyes livening and his lips curling up into the slightest of grins. He grunted like an ape. Probably the product of champion inbreeding, Beecher thought.

“See there, it would be our pleasure! Oh, please say yes! The congregation would be so happy!”

At the very least, it might result in a sales appointments. Beecher nodded. “Sure. Okay.”

Sweeney clapped his hands together once in delight, as exaggerated as a Disney character. “Wonderful! Let’s get you dressed, then!”

“Dressed?”

Sweeney put an arm on his shoulder and guided him away from the curtain in the wall behind him, toward another hole in the metal to the right that opened onto a tiny closet-like room. The heat was so constant, worse than any sauna, and he felt like he was swimming through the air.

“Step right in here Brother,” Sweeney said. “There’s a robe right inside. You can just slip it on over your clothes.”

Beecher frowned, sighed internally, and stepped into the little booth. On a nail to the right was a plain white robe covered in dust.

“Should have read the fine print,” he muttered.

He comforted himself by thinking of the cross outside. Whatever their practices, they were still a Christian church, but, much like when a species becomes geographically separated and evolves differently, these worshippers had been away from any like-minded brethren for too long and developed their own ideas about running a temple. But it would still all be the same rigmarole he’d been through a thousand times: blah blah blah, Jesus did this, Jesus did that, forgive your sins, Amen.

He would worry if he saw snakes.

With a smile, Beecher picked up the robe, shook it out, and slipped it on over his shirt, tie, and dark slacks. It hung to his knees and had a cloth belt that he cinched at the waist.

When he stepped back out, Brother Junior had changed into a robe of the same cut, but jet black and large enough to cover his gut. Sweeney held a large flat pan full of greenish water, and, before he could protest, the preacher dipped his hand in and flung some of it in Beecher’s face. At the same time, he rattled out a harsh series of syllables in a language Beecher had never heard, something that sounded like, “Fer dim shaggoth Maymar mi opij.”

Beecher recoiled, unable to stop a look of disgust slipping over him, and wiped at the substance on his face. Slightly greasy, with flecks of something in it that looked like spinach. It was too dark in the church atrium to examine the source as Sweeney placed it on the ground beside them.

“Come Brother,” Sweeney said cheerfully, taking his arm and leading him toward the curtain. “Service must start on time!”

They stepped through the curtain with Brother Junior right on their heels.

The room beyond the curtain was much bigger than it looked from the outside. Entering the narrow end, the room stretched out in front of him for a good twenty yards and the vaulted ceiling fell away into darkness. Here the heat was nearly unbearable, the stench of packed bodies and old sweat electrifying, and the few Coleman lanterns around the room were just sufficient to show him the backs of two rows of pews made from old wood. It was a packed house, at least thirty people, and the entire congregation stood in the pew aisles.

Men, women, and children, all wearing robes like the one Brother Junior had put on. They turned to watch Beecher with strange, solemn eyes.

“Brothers and Sisters!” Sweeney shouted, holding up the arm not around Beecher. “Brother Beecher has agreed to be our guest of honor! Let us begin our praise, so we may show him Found Faith has the gospel in our hearts!”

As one, the congregation of Found Faith opened their mouths and began to chant one of the words in that harsh language Sweeney muttered when he anointed him with the spinach water, a rapid but steady repetition of the word, “Maymar.” They turned away, toward whatever pulpit lay at the other end of the dim church.

The heat made him feel drugged, and Beecher suddenly wanted to be out of here, to run from this church and screw this week’s bonus. They were growing louder and fiercer with each utterance of that hypnotic word. Sweeney’s arm suddenly became ironclad, and then the man was leading him up the aisle between the two rows of pews.

They approached the front of the auditorium, and only with decreased distance was Beecher able to make out the pulpit. In front of him another, larger cross hung suspended from the ceiling, over a beautiful—and very out of place—white marble table with an ornately carved pedestal holding it aloft.

Both the tabletop and the dirt floor beneath were stained a dull maroon.

Beecher’s breath caught in his throat, and he cringed against Sweeney.

From a side door by the pulpit, another man in a black robe led in a goat by a leash.

“No, Brother Adams,” Sweeney shouted to him over the swelling noise of the congregation. “We won’t be needing that today. Brother Beecher has agreed to be our guest of honor!” The man with the goat nodded and silently retreated.

Sweeney released him at last and turned to the suspended cross and held up his hands in supplication. He began to speak in that sharp, guttural language.

Beecher spun in a drunken circle. It seemed the congregation had closed in, cutting off the exit, but he was sure part of it was sunstroke from the crushing heat in this place. Their faces floated around him, each of them dead and expressionless, their mouths opening repeatedly around the same two syllables.

“Maymar, MAY-Mar, MAY-Mar, MAYMAR!”

He completed his turn, coming back to Sweeney, and froze with eyes bulging from their sockets.

In the air in front of the cross, a shimmering black hole appeared, a swirling vortex at least five feet across whose interior darkness made the church look as brightly lit as a hospital. From its swirling center came clacking, chitinous noises that set his teeth grinding and his hair on end.

Sweeney turned to him, his chest swelled with pride. “Behold the true god Maymar!”

From the hole, multi-segmented legs began to emerge, each half a car’s length and as big around as sapling trees. They gripped the edges and strained as though attempting to pull something too big for the circumference through the hole.

“But…but…b-but,” Beecher stammered. “T-the cross! I thought this was a Ch-Christian church!”

“Well, son,” Sweeney said, grinning at him and displaying an extra row of needle-sharp teeth from somewhere far back in his mouth, “you didn’t think Christ was the only one to die on a cross, now did you?”