#rituals

The dark portal had not been active for more than a few seconds before Emrys materialized inside the watchtower room of his Shadowed Spire. He had little cause to believe that it would be anyone other than his daughter Petra returning from her mission, but he was nevertheless unwilling to risk an incursion into his sanctum. Whenever he sensed someone creating a portal into his home, he made sure he was there to greet them.

The light of the waning gibbous showered down through the veil of clouds onto the wheat fields below. There was a scar amongst them, where there lay the charred skeleton of a farmhouse. A cold wind blew through the autumn air. The front door stirred, which bore a strange sigil upon it, scratched into the woodwork. Ashes blew solemnly into the night. Beyond, many such sites could be seen littered amongst the fields, all reduced to teeth and cinders. Down the road for miles and miles the wheat…

At the outset, I should tell you I’m a thief. Not a classless “smash and grab” guy or a lowly pickpocket. Those require no planning or strategy beyond “move quickly and be ready to run.” I’m a fourth-generation cat burglar. I’m very good at my job. If everything goes right, you don’t notice I’ve been there for weeks. If ever.

"The last few nurses we've hired have all flaked on me," Jim said with an exhausted sigh. "Please tell me you don't plan on flaking."

Smoke covered the midnight moon, while cheers could be heard all across a small farming village. Bonfires were lit all around the main road. Young and old folk alike celebrated as the Fire Runners, dressed in dark clothes adorned with bright red and yellow ribbons, moved among them, their faces covered with masks whose abhorrent features imitated the unholy visage of demons and monsters. They were performing what was locally known as the Devil’s Dance, an ancient pagan tradition, much older…

Ice spread from within my soul. I felt myself falling in silent darkness. Cold... it's so cold... I can't breathe and I can't move... I tried to fight: to open my eyes or recall what happened that rendered me at such a state, only to find my mind equally rigid and frozen. The coldness webbed around my body, squeezing air out of my lungs. It's too cold... My arms reached out in the dark void. Seeking, grappling, pleading for something -- anything, to stop the freeze.

​THERE EXIST such places where every fragment, every corner is pierced by pain, suffering, darkness, and oppression. It is so dense and stifling there that in some places it makes you want to vomit. The mind is drilled through as if by an auger, and every second of drilling feels like an eternity. It is as if someone has sat on a chair full of spikes in a dark, merciless torture chamber full of cruelty, blood, and pain. Time is not measured here because time does not exist here at all.…

Pentimento I spent two years working on a single sentence.

Father did not sleep that night. Neither did I. After the fourth call faded into the mountains, he checked every door and window in the house twice. Then he pulled a chair beside the front door, laid the shotgun across his knees and remained there until morning. Nobody talked much. Mother took Thomas into their room. Evelyn stayed downstairs. She sat wrapped in a blanket near the stove, occasionally looking toward the windows whenever the house creaked.

Mr. Pike arrived shortly after noon. I knew it was him before father said anything. There was something about the way the man approached the house that made him uneasy. Most visitors, as in would imagine, would look towards the farmhouse first. Not Pike. He looked straight to the woods. He came up the road in a dark green truck that coughed smoke behind it and rattled like loose bones. The truck stopped near the barn, but Pike didn’t immediately get out of the truck.

For three days after I found the rabbit, nothing else had happened. That frightened me more than the noises had. The woods had gone quiet. Not truly quiet. The birds still called in the mornings. Cicadas screamed from the trees in the afternoon. At night, the frogs took over the creek. But the other sounds stopped. No howls. Not footsteps beneath my window. No knocking against the walls. Nothing watched from the pasture either. Nothing moved in the tree line.

By the end of our first week, father had stopped talking about Boston. That was how I knew he was happy. Every morning he woke before sunrise, dressed without lighting a lamp, and went outside with an axe over one shoulder. By breakfast, he had already split enough wood to last us for several days. He repaired the barn roof. He cleared the weeds from the garden for mother. He even found an old plow beneath a pile of rotten boards and spent the better part of two days repairing it.

Hynensborgs Skogar ​Det höll på att bli höst i staden Hynensborg, en av årets mörkaste och regnigaste perioder. Det är också den tid då unga människor vill fördriva tiden med något, då folk ofta sätter sig tillsammans runt en eldspruta och berättar mörka historier för varandra. En grupp kemistudenter och vänner – Noah, Freyr och Vidar – bestämde sig för att spendera en av septemberkvällarna under den inledande helgen på precis det sättet... ​Befriade från vardagens bekymmer och oro bestämde de…

We didn’t have much to do. Not in Cairo, Georgia anyway. That’s Cairo pronounced with a ‘k’. Kay-Row. Not like the one in Egypt. Instead of pyramids, we had our beloved Cairo High Syrupmakers. But besides those Friday Night Lights, we didn’t have jack shit to be honest. Just an old theater and a museum downtown. There wasn’t much us twelve-year-olds could do even this close to Halloween.

Part I

Hands raised above his head, none could bear witness to his holy tunic. Dust filled light peered from the stained glass windows, blocking the view of the not yet holy. I could make out his holiness’s silhouette and his robe’s red shine from the ethereal glow. The floor became wet with the tears of those who stood at the pews, hands raised as did their holiness. Their eyes were a squint, but their teeth would break under the pressure of their smiles. Some reached for it, some hid from it, some…

Did you know tens of thousands of people die in their sleep each night? Most of them succumb to natural causes like heart disease, stroke, or just plain old age. But in that vast group of the fallen, a small subset of them have perished with no explanation at all. Hell, I've heard some have outright disappeared. The funny thing is they all shared one curse that led them to such a demise.

Have you heard of the man by the dock? It’s said that when twelve strikes the clock, A shadow stirs, a silent walk, Across the pier, in midnight’s flock. His footsteps fade on wooden planks, A ghostly figure, no one thanks, But if you seek to break or make The ritual’s curse, beware the stake. A silver coin, a candle’s flame, A mirror dark, to call his name— Arrange them ‘neath the moon’s cold glow, And whisper softly, soft and slow. Toss the coin into the water’s flow,

Starting this blog because I don't know where else to put this. I've spent the last few weeks going through case files that keep showing up in different countries, different years, no obvious connection between them. Police never cross-referenced any of it. I think I know why now. If any of this sounds familiar to you, message me. I need to know I'm not the only one who's noticed the pattern.

My dad Don may as well have been dead this past year. Hell, you could make the argument he may as well have been dead for nearly the past fifty… ever since his brother Tommy passed away from cancer in 1973.