You see, I'm not actually an extrovert at all. I am, in fact, a

As the oldest child of a poor family, he went to work as soon as he was old enough to help to feed his family. Every day, he came to our door to lead our four goats away. The last goatherd had been too afraid to take our goats. Antoniu took them all, even the two black goats that half the village was scared to even look at. Poor things – we only took them to save them from the superstitious idiots who would have killed them. Two good nannies, placid by goat standards, but their black hair and yellow eyes frightened people. But he was a kind boy, and never harmed even them.

Constanta is the youngest, and the softest-hearted. She started giving little Antoniu bread, or goat cheese, or a few vegetables, when times were hard. He was the only child who didn’t run from us. The only one who ran to us, not away. He was special. And he needed feeding up.

Antoniu was a good goatherd. Ecaterina, neither oldest nor youngest, taught him the tricks that would help him, how to understand the goats and teach them to respect him. When he came to us in tears because a goat had been lost, she made him a charm that would help him to find it again, so he wouldn’t be beaten. He never told anyone that he had had proof that we were witches in truth, but he brought Ecaterina flowers and herbs from the goat’s grazing grounds all that summer.

I am Minodora, the oldest, and even I must admit, I grew fond of the child. He was kind-hearted, and good with animals. He never did harm if he could help it, which is a rare trait. And rarer still, he was one of those who are born with wisdom, which is to say that he kept his eyes open, saw what was there, not what he expected to see, and thought about it afterwards. Some people take a lifetime to learn that skill, and most never learn it at all. He had it from the beginning.

She went to church and prayed for a child every Sunday, but no child came. She went to every midwife and wise woman for miles around, and followed all their advice, but no child came.

So at last, though she knew of the dangers, she drew her brown woolen shawl over her head and on Midsummer’s Eve she went out to the forest, to a certain clearing, and dropped a copper penny and a lock of her hair into the old well there, and she wished for a child.

“You know,” a voice said behind her, a low and cunning voice, a voice that had a coax and a wheedle and a sly laugh all mixed up in it together, “that there will be a price to pay later.”

She did not turn to look at the creature. She knew better. “I know it,” she said, still staring into the well. “And I also know that I may set conditions.”

“That is true,” the creature said, after a moment, and there was less laugh in its voice now. It wasn’t pleased that she knew that. “What condition do you set? A boy child? A lucky one?”

“That the child will come to no harm,” she said, lifting her head to stare into the woods. “Whether I succeed in paying your price, or passing your test, or not, the child will not suffer. It will not die, or be hurt, or cursed with ill luck or any other thing. No harm of any kind.”

“Ahhhhh.” The sound was long and low, between a sigh and a hum. “Yes. That is a fair condition. Whatever price there is, whatever test there is, it will be for you and you alone.” A long, slender hand extended into her sight, almost human save for the skin, as pale a green as a new leaf. The hand held a pear, ripe and sweet, though the pears were nowhere ripe yet. “Eat this,” the voice said, and she trembled with the effort of keeping her eyes straight ahead. “All of it, on your way home. Before you enter your own gate, plant the core of it beside the gate, where the ground is soft and rich. You will have what you ask for.”

- “There was a coyote last night,” your neighbor says. “There was a bobcat last week,” your other neighbor says. Their eyes dart. Their hands tighten. They want so badly to be right.

- There is a dirt road called Bethlehem. You’ve never taken it. It’s still waiting for you.

- Are the trees creeping closer to the road as you drive home from Missouri? Do they know where you’ve been?

-There’s that old silo, the one on the farm that was lost to Reagan. It breathes in the night, inhaling the memory of corn. It is meant to be filled. It exists to be filled. If it isn’t filled with corn, it will fill with rage.

- The bobcat screams. It sounds like a woman; everyone says so. It sounds like a woman being dragged to hell. You busy yourself with the dishes and don’t ask yourself: how do they know?

- Keep the arrowheads you find in the fields. Put them in the windowsill; they like the sunlight. They’re happy in the windowsill, happy in the sun room. Make a mosaic on the top of the storm shelter where the last rays of the day can warm them. Don’t hang them from the rear view window or they’ll go searching for the hand that made them. If they can’t find him, they’ll hunt alone.

- Leave the arrowheads you find in caves, under moss. They weren’t dropped carelessly. They were planted. They will bear fruit.

- They have a Lovers’ Leap in Crawford County. They have a Lovers’ Leap in Montgomery County. They have a Lovers’ Leap in Wilson County. It’s always the same lovers. Will you make them leap again? One day you must answer.

- You can smell a coyote from a mile away; they reek like an outhouse that ain’t been moved in a while. You know a coyote. You tell yourself that’s a coyote.

- “That cottonwood is twice as big as it was last year,” you grumble. Your grandparents exchange a glance. “That cottonwood wasn’t there at all yesterday!” you say. Grandma’s hands are covered in flour. “Has there always been a windbreak of cottonwoods??” you ask. “Oh yes,” Grandma whispers. “Oh, yes.”

- You hit a deer. Everyone hits deer. They understand, but you must say sorry.             Y o u  m u s t  s a y  s o r r y

- There is corn at the crossroads. “It’s Kansas,” you think, “Of course there’s corn. We grow corn.” But there is always corn at the crossroads. It’s tallest at the crossroads. Our best seed is given to the crossroads; we plant it by hand at the crossroads. We pat the little mound of earth at the crossroads to seal the bargain at the crossroads.

- The Verdigris knows. It has held ages of hunters, warriors, lover, and families in its curving arms. It has smiled upon newcomers. It has been poisoned with blood and bone and debris. Sometimes it shrieks when you walk its banks. Sometimes it sings. Do not touch the singing water.

- Do not whistle the old hymns as you pass the homestead. They crave the old hymns. Seventeen were found under the cabin. Twelve were left there. No one to claim them, no one to bring them home. No rest in the soil of their birth, no tears to wash them clean, no hymns to sing them to peace. Do not whistle the old hymns as you pass the homestead.

- It screams. You close the door; there is no lock. “A bobcat,” you tell your child. “In my room?” she asks. Your hand tightens on her shoulder. “A bobcat.”

*

Let me tell you what I know about this after living here for nearly thirty years.

This is a modern European country, the home of hot net startups, of Internet giants and (in some places, some very few places) the fastest broadband on Earth. People here live in this century, HARD.

Yet they get nervous about walking up that one hill close to their home after dark, because, you know… stuff happens there.

I know this because Peter and I live next to One Of Those Hills. There are people in our locality who wouldn’t go up our tiny country road on a dark night for love or money. What they make of us being so close to it for so long without harm coming to us, I have no idea. For all I know, it’s ascribed to us being writers (i.e. sort of bards) or mad folk (also in some kind of positive relationship with the Dangerous Side: don’t forget that the root word of “silly”, which used to be English for “crazy”, is the Old English _saelig_, “holy”…) or otherwise somehow weirdly exempt.

And you know what? I’m never going to ask. Because one does not discuss such things. Lest people from outside get the wrong idea about us, about normal modern Irish people living in normal modern Ireland.

You hear about this in whispers, though, in the pub, late at night, when all the tourists have gone to bed or gone away and no one but the locals are around. That hill. That curve in the road. That cold feeling you get in that one place. There is a deep understanding that there is something here older than us, that doesn’t care about us particularly, that (when we obtrude on it) is as willing to kick us in the slats as to let us pass by unmolested.

So you greet the magpies, singly or otherwise. You let stones in the middle of fields be. You apologize to the hawthorn bush when you’re pruning it. If you see something peculiar that cannot be otherwise explained, you are polite to it and pass onward about your business without further comment. And you don’t go on about it afterwards. Because it’s… unwise. Not that you personally know any examples of people who’ve screwed it up, of course. But you don’t meddle, and you learn when to look the other way, not to see, not to hear. Some things have just been here (for various values of “here” and various values of “been”) a lot longer than you have, and will be here still after you’re gone. That’s the way of it. When you hear the story about the idiots who for a prank chainsawed the centuries-old fairy tree a couple of counties over, you say – if asked by a neighbor – exactly what they’re probably thinking: “Poor fuckers. They’re doomed.” And if asked by anybody else you shake your head and say something anodyne about Kids These Days. (While thinking DOOMED all over again, because there are some particularly self-destructive ways to increase entropy.)

Meanwhile, in Iceland: the county council that carelessly knocked a known elf rock off a hillside when repairing a road has had to go dig the rock up from where it got buried during construction, because that road has had the most impossible damn stuff happen to it since that you ever heard of. Doubtless some nice person (maybe they’ll send out for the Priest of Thor or some such) will come along and do a little propitiatory sacrifice of some kind to the alfar, belatedly begging their pardon for the inconvenience.

They’re building the alfar a new temple, too.

Don’t go near big trees in the night

If you live on a farm, don’t look outside the windows at night

I have broken all these rules.

I’ve seen some shit.

If it sounds like your mom, but you didn’t realize your mom is home…. it’s not your mom. Promise.

One walked onto the porch once. Wasn’t fun. But they’re not super keen on guns. Typically bolt when they see one.

You think it’s the neighbor kids.

It’s not the neighbor kids.

Might sound like coyotes but you never really /see/ the coyotes but then wow that one cow was reaaaaaally fucked up this morning. The next night when you hear another one screaming you just turn the tv up a little more. Maybe fire a gun in the air but you don’t go after it. If it is coyotes then it’s probably a pack and you seriously don’t want to fuck with that and if it’s the other thing you seriously REALLY don’t want to fuck with that.

So in the south, especially near the mountains, you just go straight from your car to inside your house, draw your curtains and watch tv.

If you see lights in the fields just fucking leave it alone.

Eyes forward. Don’t be fucking stupid. Mind your own business. Call your neighbors and tell them to bring the cats in. There’s coyotes out. Some of them know. Most of them don’t.

Other than that everything’s a ghost and they died in the civil war. Literally all of everything else is just the civil war. We used to smell old perfume and pipe tobacco in the weeks leading up to the battle anniversaries.

We had ‘witches’ in the mountains (more like ghost-women who will snatch you up by making you wander in a daze around the forest like the Blair Witch before killing you or letting you back out into society but you’re… different). Or devils in springs or abandoned wells (don’t look too long into one or something will follow you). 

But we also had the cornfield demons. I’ve witnessed this many times. You’ll be in the passenger seat looking out the window and see red glowing eyes in the cornfield. No light shining in that direction. Just two red dots a few inches apart faintly glowing in a pitch black cornfield. They’re not the glow of deer eyes in the headlights. More like the embers of a dying fire. Sometimes, as you drive away, you’ll look out the back window or side mirror and you can see the eyes have moved to the edge of the corn field, still watching you. If you bring it up with the driver, they’ll call you paranoid, but grip the wheel a bit tighter and driver a little faster.

Well, about halfway through I start to get scared. For no reason. Within the span of two heartbeats I grew so terrified that my palms were shaking and my mouth was dry and for some reason I couldn’t take my eyes off the wood to the driver’s side. 

“Turn around.” I say, quickly. 

“Dude, already on it.” Kama said, doing a quick three point turn. I look in the mirror as she’s pealing away and see the creature. It was vaguely humanoid, and hairless, with elongated limbs and pitch black eyes, on all four limbs, loping after us. Now, if you’re in the know, you might be thinking “hey that’s like the creatures from Until Dawn, I call bullshit on this.” Well, Until Dawn was four years away, and it wasn’t even in development yet, so shush. 

I rip my eyes away from it and hold on tight as she drives. Then, at the same time, both of us get this instinct and we speak. 

“Don’t look in the backseat.” Needless to say, neither of us did. She drove damn near 90 on a dark canyon until we saw the lights of her complex at the mouth of it. 

I haven’t gone back in there since, and that canyon got shut down about a year ago due to a landslide and it hasn’t opened back up. I’m a history major, and research always has been my first love, so I go digging. I visit the local history society, talk about my tale. Turns out the whole valley used to belong to a people called the Tativam. One day, after the Spanish arrived, they vanished. Without a trace. We have a graveyard of theirs that we know of. One of my professors was trying to stop the houses that were being built on it. Spoiler alert: he didn’t, and the houses are hella haunted, and nobody wants to live there. 

Personally I do think the creature is a wendigo. That chain of mountains is park of unbroken chain that leads right up the Serra Nevadas and Donner Pass. 

THE Donner Pass. 

Most of what we’ve got is due to the Gold Rush, and not just the hauntings (though there are plenty of those, a great many of them are theatre ghosts, most of whom are harmless, though some are very particular).  What we’ve got by way of Things were brought along on the trail from the Old Country to the East Coast and then along thousands of miles of wagon trail.

We’ve got our fair share of phantom hitchhikers and women in white, but mostly what we’ve got are the Things That Survived The Flood.  There was a flood in the early 1860s, one that caused the state capitol to actually be relocated for a while, and when it was over and the floodwaters receded, there was enough sediment left behind that what had been the second floor of buildings was now the ground floor.

Enough time has passed. I’m going to tell you about the best thing I’ve ever done, which has resulted in:

the only person I still know from high school thinking I’m a complete monster, and

another person proposing to me the first day he met me. 

Warning for nsfw pranksmanship under the cut. Also, if you’re afraid of the mothman… welcome to the club?

I know I’ve built a follower base around drawing ship art for a specific fandom, but it’s time I finally pivoted and announce my new fanzine shipping the bois from chinese/russia propoganda posters

In the same way that early 19th century British caricaturists portrayed Napoleon Bonaparte as a devilish tyrant, British parents and teachers used Napoleon as a threat to scare children into good behaviour during the Napoleonic Wars. […] 

Betsy Balcombe, an English girl who befriended Napoleon when he was in exile on St. Helena, noted in her memoirs:

The earliest idea I had of [him] was that of a huge ogre or giant, with one large flaming red eye in the middle of his forehead, and long teeth protruding from his mouth, with which he tore to pieces and devoured naughty little girls, especially those who did not know their lessons.

English humorist Gilbert à Beckett described Napoleon’s malign effect on his life at a preparatory school near Kensington in 1815.

Bonaparte had just escaped from Elba, and Miss Frounce, like an admirable politician, took advantage of this important event to overawe the ‘young gentlemen from three to eight’ who were under her guidance. On all occasions, Bonaparte was held up as the great bugbear, and there was not a boy in the school who was not firmly convinced that Miss Frounce had Napoleon under her thumb – that, in fact, if any of ‘the young gentlemen’ should prove refractory, Miss Frounce had it in her power to send for Bony with as much facility as she could order the sweeps or the dustman. If a boy, when spelling, knocked an i out of the word annihilate, he was threatened with being handed over to the tender mercies of Bonaparte; and every one of the pupils of Miss Frounce felt assured that, if Napoleon invaded England, he would knock at the door of the ‘establishment for young gentleman from three to eight’ the very morning after his arrival. […]

Such impressions as those I have related are strange and absurd; but there are many now living who, if they happened, during the time of the Bonaparte panic, to be inmates of a preparatory school […] will recognize the fidelity of the feelings I have described.

Lindisfarne Heritage‏ @medcaut

Aries: You spent the night coughing up god. You woke up slumped over a railing, staring down at the mess in the shrubbery below.

Taurus: It rained last night. When you looked out the window the landscape seemed different somehow. Some things too close, some things too far away. It was too dark to tell and you had the distinct feeling you shouldn’t leave the house.

Gemini: The first nine pages of a book. You have page two. It details something you cant understand. The illustrations are the things of mathematics only found in dreams.

Cancer: The plague of dancing has returned and you are wearing your running shoes. Keep your electrolytes up and get down.

Leo: Tradition keeps the day to day stitched together. All of that unfurls during times of crisis. Be wary of those that fall back on the old ways. Those were darker times.

Virgo: The road flies beneath you, the radio plays a song youve never heard before. You feel something wet on your face. You wake up.

Libra: You planted stone seeds, you got a stone garden. The lesson to take from this is believe in yourself and read the labels. 

Scorpio: You can see the clock tower from anywhere in town. It is always facing you. It towers above every other building.

Ophiuchus: Gain favor with the things inside you. Gain favor with yourself. Sacrifice some tasty vegetables.

Sagittarius: The dragonflies are proud of you for getting out of bed today. Leave some sugar and water on the windowsill as thanks.

Capricorn: Victory never starts well. It wouldn’t be a victory if there wasn’t anything to fight, anything to lose to.

Aquarius: It will be a long time until you see land again. You know the stars. You are not lost, but it will be a while.

you’re lying on mossy forest floors, slowly transforming into a nymph, your fingers are turning into flower vines, your limbs are bleeding honey & growing thick skins of sepia bark, wings sprout in between your shoulder blades. your breath sounds like the wind. fireflies litter the air above you

you’re hold up in an abandoned church, outside there’s a raging storm & a horde of zombies roaming around, pressing up against the entrance doors. you & a small band of survivors are staying inside for the night in hopes to ride the bad weather out. you take first watch & listen to these tunes on an old ipod while everyone else tries to get some rest & the undead crawl outside, awaiting the taste of human flesh.

you’re in your boyfriend’s pickup. he’s asleep in the passenger seat, you’re driving without a destination in mind & you have the window down as you let the cool night air whip against your face in a state of pleasant delirium you’re on a rooftop somewhere, there’s 5 am air on your skin, streetlights glint like coins at the bottom of wishing wells from where you sit. you’re feeling peaceful for the first time all week

you’re lying in the middle of a crop circle forty miles from your grandma’s old house waiting for aliens to come and abduct you

it’s four pm in the afternoon and you’ve got your head in the lap of the only boy you’ve ever loved & you’re reading jane eyre & he’s sipping on tea & it’s the kind of weather where it’s just warm enough for you to pretend it’s summer & it’s drizzling & you’re listening to the rain beat softly against the windowpanes you’re curled up in bed as it pours outside, there’s a citywide blackout and the last candle you had left has finally blown out, but you feel strangely at peace within the warm, all-consuming dark

you’re lying on mossy forest floors, slowly transforming into a nymph, your fingers are turning into flower vines, your limbs are bleeding honey & growing thick skins of sepia bark, wings sprout in between your shoulder blades. your breath sounds like the wind. fireflies litter the air above you

you’re hold up in an abandoned church, outside there’s a raging storm & a horde of zombies roaming around, pressing up against the entrance doors. you & a small band of survivors are staying inside for the night in hopes to ride the bad weather out. you take first watch & listen to these tunes on an old ipod while everyone else tries to get some rest & the undead crawl outside, awaiting the taste of human flesh.

you’re in your boyfriend’s pickup. he’s asleep in the passenger seat, you’re driving without a destination in mind & you have the window down as you let the cool night air whip against your face in a state of pleasant delirium you’re on a rooftop somewhere, there’s 5 am air on your skin, streetlights glint like coins at the bottom of wishing wells from where you sit. you’re feeling peaceful for the first time all week

you’re lying in the middle of a crop circle forty miles from your grandma’s old house waiting for aliens to come and abduct you

it’s four pm in the afternoon and you’ve got your head in the lap of the only boy you’ve ever loved & you’re reading jane eyre & he’s sipping on tea & it’s the kind of weather where it’s just warm enough for you to pretend it’s summer & it’s drizzling & you’re listening to the rain beat softly against the windowpanes you’re curled up in bed as it pours outside, there’s a citywide blackout and the last candle you had left has finally blown out, but you feel strangely at peace within the warm, all-consuming dark