Also, I can kill you with my brain

Book Sale

2012-02-05T16:52:00.000Z

Amazon have Grandma's House available for free for the next couple of days.

The Science Thieves

2012-01-30T20:32:00.000Z

This has been the work of several years (mostly procrastinating), so it's something of a relief to finally make it available on Kindle. And it has a cover that I didn't make by taking a close-up photo of a wooden fence (sorry Grandma's House, your secret's out).

Anyway, assuming I've managed to do this correctly, here's the cover.

Copies are available on the various Amazon sites (I'm too lazy to put in a link to every single one, but here's the UK one) The Science Thieves on Amazon UK

And the US one Amazon US

Links to my ebook

2011-06-20T19:09:00.002Z

Grandma's House at Amazon.co.uk

and at Amazon.com

and Amazon.de

Comments

2011-06-19T21:55:00.003Z

So I've turned moderation on for comments to this blog - too many spam comments. Just so you spammers know that you're wasting your time (although as all the comments seem to be in Japanese, I'm not sure that you'll understand this).

Anyway, while I was deleting them all (it's been a while since I was last using this blog, so there's been a bit of a backlog), I did come across one comment that was actually in English. Insulting, really not the sort of thing I want to read, but in English.

While I was tempted to censor it - I wouldn't have let it through if it had been referring to anyone else - I thought I'd let this one pass. It's the only one that will though - anyone else who wants to call me a moron can do it on their own blog. I have no problem with people wanting to disagree with me (although at least read what I write first before doing so (which dear Charlabrady seems to have failed to do (feel free to read and make up your own mind on that one though))) - but they can at least be polite about it.

The comment is under my post on The Road. I have to admit I did look up the user's blogger account - mainly because I wanted to check that it wasn't Cormac McCarthy's mother having a go at me for being less than effusive about her son's work. Judging by the time the account was set up, it looks as if it may have been set up purely to insult me. Maybe I should feel flattered.

First Kindle Book

2011-06-19T21:49:00.002Z

So I decided to publish a book on Kindle.

Well to so much a book, it's five short stories. Not convinced it's worth the price (couldn't figure out how to get it on there for less than 70p ($0.99), but I suppose I spend about as much on a bag of crisps (potato chips (I'm in UK-US translation mode this evening (afternoon)) and I can finish those in less time than it takes to read even the shortest of the stories. So maybe it's not too much (and a lot less calories too).

A full-length novel will follow. Once I'm happy that I'm not going to completely embarrass myself by putting it out there.

Child of Fire

2009-10-18T09:31:00.002Z

The front cover of Harry Connolly's Child of Fire has a recommendation by Jim Butcher and superficially it does read a bit like Butcher's Dresden files crossed with a Dean Koontz small town (not weird enough for one of Stephen King's Maine townships) and with a bit of F Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack thrown in for good measure.

I'd say describing that way perhaps does it a disservice, but I'd consider that a pretty decent mix - and rather than being a pale imitation of those writers, Connolly manages to put together a nicely crafted tale that, despite the comparisons, definitely feels like its own entity. Combining the urban fantasy genre with the small-town-America-horror genre gives Child of Fire a fairly unique flavour.

In terms of where it sits on the scale of urban fantasy, it's not up to the standards of Butcher - but I'd say there's little that is. It is better than most of the rest of the market though and considering it's a first novel, that's no mean feat. I've already recommended without reservation to one friend and have no hesitation in doing so again. I'm also looking forward to the follow-up novel and hope that we're going to get more of a glimpse into the world that's being set up in CoF as so far there's only been a fairly limited introduction to it - but what has been shown is certainly enough to peak my interest.

Definitely a series worth watching.

Exploring Story Worlds

2009-06-17T18:11:00.003Z

I recently read Inkheart by Cornelia Funke (turned into a film with Brendan Frazer), which has a great hook of people who can read characters out of books and into the real world.

There's so much potential with that story - you can just imagine the possibilities: famous fictional characters, fantastic creations entering the real world, maybe the heroes even reading themselves into a book and seeing what life is like on the other side of the pages.

Unfortunately we don't get any of that. Instead the fictional characters in the story belong to a book made up specially for the novel. The novel within the novel that they're from is also called Inkheart and it's a fantasy story depicting a world where all sorts of fantastic creatures exist.

But we don't really get any of those - instead we have a juggler who's very good at playing with fire, a villain who's main goal in life is to make the people with the ability to read things into the real world to read him lots of gold and a few of his henchmen.

We do get a couple of characters from 'real' fiction who have a fantasy twinge to them. There's Tinkerbell, who doesn't have much to do at all. We have the Brave Tin Soldier from the Hans Christian Anderson, who gets to come out of a book and then be read back into it (albeit with a happier ending) - and then there's a kid from the Arabian Nights stories who seems to have been in the Ali Baba tale, but is a non-entity in terms of the story (and may have just been made up by Cornelia Funke).

At the climax of the book we do get a few more fantastical creatures, but they're very much there as an afterthought. The rest of it is filled with fairly mundane villainy.

Now there are another two stories in the trilogy, so there may be more of an exploration of this world of people who can read fiction to life, but the first in the trilogy in no way fulfills the potential for the created world. This seems to be a problem that keeps cropping up again and again in novels and films - a good idea poorly mined.

It's very easy to point to stories that manage to mine the potential of their worlds - they're usually the ones that people like a lot. The Harry Potter series of books - love them or loathe them you'd be lying if you said that they don't get stuck into the universe that Rowling has created. The world is practically dripping with magic.

Pirates of the Caribbean - opening with a ship at sea in the fog and the telling of a ghost story and then throwing pretty much every possible piratey thing at the screen rarely misses out on a trick when it delves into its story world.

Star Wars - again a universe that feels well-lived in - it's not the regular world with a few science fiction things bolted on.

Steven Gould's Jumper novel (NOT the film). This is the regular world, so no cramming every corner with some weird and wonderful thing, but he takes the initial concept of a teenager who can teleport and runs with it, fully exploring the idea and what it means.

Those four examples were stories that I thoroughly enjoyed, that I've recommended to friends and that I'd happily go back for more with (and in all those cases I've gone and read or watched the sequel(s). Inkheart I'm not so sure - I was left feeling fairly unsatisfied after finishing reading it and thought I could have come up with better ideas than the author - largely because she hardly seemed to come up with any at all.

Still, it's a fairly popular novel series - so what do I know?

Buffy without Joss

2009-05-30T22:46:00.006Z

News is that there is a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie on the cards, apparently with the involvement of the original movie's producers. As of this time of writing there seems to be no involvement from Joss Whedon - which as any fan will be able to tell you is completely inconceivable.

It's just nonsense thinking anyone else could possibly play the part:

I think a letter writing campaign may be in order.

Dollhouse

2009-05-30T19:22:00.003Z

Two episodes in and I have to confess that I'm liking this a lot more than the critical response indicates that I should. I do find that the missions Echo is being sent on are a bit yawnsome (how many times can US TV remake The Most Dangerous Game?), although they're still watchable enough, but more importantly Helo's ... sorry, Ballard's investigation and all the background shenanigans at the Dollhouse seem to be laying down some interesting foundations. I also think some of the complaints I've read about the ickiness of the whole meat-dolls/slavery/programmed-prostitution are a bit misplaced as it's clearly meant to be A Bad Thing. But maybe I'm over-simplifying the issues people have with it.

I'm not entirely convinced that it's going to have enough steam to keep going for more than a season without dragging things on too long, unless we see some sort of format-altering twist, but so far I think this has been getting a bit of a rough ride. The news that it's been renewed for a second season gives me some hope that I'm not the only one.

Characters Arcs Redux

2009-05-25T20:13:00.003Z

John Rogers blogging on character arcs. Very nicely made points, although he still uses the hated term. But the difference between transformation character arcs and revelatory ones is an important one - although perhaps it's not taking it quite far enough for me.

When it comes to character change, I'm a firm believer that people don't fundamentally change. I think there are core parts of our personality that will always remain set and which will affect how we normally react to a given situation. Equally though, I don't believe that this means that reaction will always be the same.

Two people could be control freaks. One of them tries to take over the whole world, the other gets all the trains to run on time. Alternatively, the person who tries to take over the world might through experience come to realise what a bad idea that is and reapply that trait in order to make the trains run on time - which is after all a much more useful endeavour.

I believe people's actions are affected by personality, by circumstance and by experience. That's what I look for in characters. If their personality changes totally then I'm not going to believe it (unless they have major brain damage or a complete memory swap). If they manage to redirect that personality though then I think that's going to be much more true to life. And if they chart exactly the same course at the end of the story as the one that they were on in the beginning then really I don't have much of a problem with that either.

I don't expect to see someone do something that is not within their makeup from the start - circumstance followed by action should reveal character, not alter it.

Even Ebenezer Scrooge, one of the most obvious choices to illustrate a character arc, does not have a character-altering encounter with his three ghosts - if you look at who Scrooge used to be, as revealled by the Ghost of Christmas Past, the story seems to be about his return to that personality, not a creation of a new one. Scrooge makes different choices as a result of the events of the story, his character does not magically transform into something completely different.

I think most writers understand this and I'm probably pointing out the obvious - but as with all the 'rules' of writing, I think people can sometimes get the wrong end of the stick and assume that all characters must transform and that a transformation is a personality change rather than a shifting of perspective/purpose based within the parameters of the character's established persona.

Cormac McCarthy's The Road

2009-05-25T10:13:00.003Z

I don't really need to say anything nice about this book, the back cover of my copy is plastered with seven complimentary quotes from reviewers, the inside front cover has a further six the inside back cover another six and the first three pages of the book have twelve more.

I feel as if I'm being bullied into liking this book.

The thing is, I did quite enjoy the read, short as it was. There are almost more words in the reviews dedicated to the book than there are in the book itself. At a rough estimate, I'd put the word count somewhere in the region of 50-60 thousand words. That's little more than the introduction if you're looking at a Stephen King novel. Really the book should stretch to around 150 pages, except my copy runs at 300 due to an awful lot of page space being taken up by a nice large font, never mind the large stretches of minimalist dialogue that could destroy rainforests with a few conversations.

The story itself is nothing new if you've read enough science fiction books. For the literary reviewers who turn their noses up at such genre fare though, I can imagine it came as something of a revelation. It's certainly an easy to read book - incredibly bleak in outlook but a palatable walk through despair rather than being a complete wallow. It does fall into a repetitive pattern of boy and father are hungry, boy and father find a source of food, boy and father eat food until it runs out, boy and father are hungry again, punctuated by boy and father try to avoid contact with people who might want to eat them. However, it's a decently told repetition and from a human perspective it feels quite truthful.

Stylistically it's quite sparse - sentences run on and on without a pause for breath, particularly when describing the actions of the characters, creating a mundane feel to their quest for survival. The dialogue is absent speech marks and in most cases attribution, but for that is easy enough to follow. Descriptions of the bleak environment are more poetic in nature, suggesting that it is here that the author's real interest lies. The best thing about The Road is watching the scenery out of the window.

Shakespeare's Star Trek (a bit more)

2009-05-24T13:42:00.006Z

Scene II
The Enterprise - Spock's Chambers.

Enter Spock and Christine

Spock: What is this thou dares to lay before me?
Out, out, prying harridan. Shouldst I be
In need of thy soup, ask for it I would.

Enter Kirk. Exit Christine.

Spock: Captain, I present my request to thee.
To Vulcan I bid thee fly. Divergence
From our present bearing would be no more
A loss of distance travel'd by stars' light
Within the passage of two point eight days
And two point eight nights.

Kirk: Spock, what devils drive thee to make of me
Such a request?

Spock: My case I have stated and all I say,
Thine answer I require. Yea, or nay.

Kirk: Let us hear it. Thy manner perplexes.

Spock: If a woman be honest dignity
Requires she not wait upon a man
Not given to her in troth.

Kirk: Thine petition peaks curiousity
More than thy want to hurl soup against walls.

Spock: In faith I have serv'd your voice and your call
For years uncounted. My plea I have made.
Grantest thou or not.

Kirk: Since almost striplings you and I both were
Never hav'st thou sought elsewhere than my side
Refused my calls to seek a balmy shore
Whenever proffered by my hand. Why now?

Spock: Captain, in time thou surely owes enough
Such as my request not be meritless.

Kirk: Aye, but the question remains unanswered
Perchance the cause lies with thy family
A sickening?

Spock: The nature of my request lies elsewhere.

Kirk: The ship makes her heading for Altair Six
Excellent in facilities it be.

Spock: No I must take my leave upon Vulcan.

Kirk: Spock, I ask again. What troubles thee?

Spock: The call of duty wears heavy on me
I may speak no more.

Kirk: Bridge, thy captain speaks.

Sulu: [off] I await thy bidding, my lord.

Kirk: Make heading for Vulcan. Warp factor four.

Sulu: [off] Aye, aye, sir.

Spock: I thank you, captain.

Kirk: Tis oft overlook'd that even Vulcans
Be not form'd from impenetrable steel.

Spock: [Aside] No we are not.

[Exeunt]

Scene III
Enterprise - Bridge.

Officers of the ship in attendance. Enter Kirk, Spock and Chekov.

Kirk: [Aside] Three three seven two point seven by how
The firmament's spheres measure passing ages
Our course has been fix'd upon Altair Six
By way of Vulcan. First Officer Spock
Inconsistent in temperament be.
Ship's surgeon McCoy regards him with care.

Enter Uhura

Uhura: Captain, a message from Starfleet hast come.
Mark'd as urgent dost it appear to be.

Kirk: Speak, Uhura.

Uhura: To Captain of U.S.S. Enterprise
From Admiral Komack in Sector Nine
Ceremonies held upon Altair Six
Advanced to seven days hence have been.
Thou art commanded to hasten forthwith.

Kirk: Lieutenant Uhura, pen this reply.
Message acknowledged.

Uhura: Aye, aye, sir.

Kirk: Mister Chekov, set forth by the stars.

Chekov: On time's arrow we fly. Vulcan must wait.

Kirk: Make haste for Altair Six, tarry dare not.
The luck of Neptune's passengers have we.
Mr Spock. Our dial fixed to the orbits
Of kingly whims. Altair six's ruler
Makes haste so hasten we. Promise you this
When done with duty to Vulcan we speed.

Spock: My understanding I profess.

[Exeunt]

William Shakespeare's Star Trek

2009-05-23T20:57:00.005Z

Having seen the new movie, I've been going back to the old Star Trek TV series (well the remastered version of the old Star Trek TV series) - and one of the first things I noticed was how stagy the whole thing seemed. Which in turn led me to remember the over-zealous fans of the series who declared that if Shakespeare were alive in the 20th century he would have been writing episodes of Star Trek.

So I just had to have a bit of a go:

AMOK TIME

PERSONS REPRESENTED

KIRK, a Captain, in the service of Starfleet
SPOCK, his lieutenant and a Gentleman of Vulcan
MCCOY, a doctor
CHEKOV, a Navigator
STONN, a Gentleman of Vulcan

T'PRING, bethrothed to SPOCK
T'PAU, a lady of Vulcan
CHRISTINE, a nurse
UHURA, a messenger

ACT I
Scene I
The Enterprise - A Corridor

Enter Kirk and McCoy

McCoy: Oh Captain, hast thou a minute?

Kirk: A minute, for what purpose good doctor?

McCoy: Thy right hand, Spock. Strange behaviours have thy
Noticed?

Kirk: No good doctor, why dost thou ask?

McCoy: Tis nought a finger I could place upon,
Yet suffering of strange maladies dost
He appear to be. For that he were not
Of Vulcan, his mind might seem unquiet.
And for three days hence he appears not to
Have supp'd.

Kirk: In contemplative phase perhaps he be.
Would not be uncommon for Spock.

Enter Christine

McCoy: Good nurse, Miss Chapel, come hither.

Christine: Good morrow sir doctor, captain.

McCoy: What steaming elixir carries thou?

Christine: This bowl?

McCoy: Tis plomeek soup, a dish of Vulcan. Made
I wouldst venture by thy fair hand. Holdst thou
Ever hope's flickering candle within
Thy bosom.

Christine: Perchance I noticed. Spock, he eats not.

Kirk: Prithee continue thy business, good nurse.

Exit Christine

Kirk: Sawbones, my clock is winged.

McCoy: Jim, when I did suggest to Spock that his
Exam was overdue, thy first officer
In whose skull passionless logic resides
Turn'd to me and spake "Thy will cease to
Pry into behaviours personal to
Me, doctor, else I shall be most certain
To break thy neck."

Kirk: Tis hard to fathom such words from the ever
Sturdy Spock.

[Exeunt]

Star Trek

2009-05-19T20:29:00.002Z

I went to see this last night with a couple of friends from work. Neither of them were familiar with any of the various TV incarnations - beyond the pop culture knowledge of the basics. I on the other hand went along having seen just about every incarnation of the show and almost every single episode (except for a number of the animated ones) and having read any number of the books. Unlike some of the fans I thought the reboot idea was a great one, but I'd been looking forward to the film with a large degree of trepidation.

Fortunately, plot coincidences aside, I loved it. So too did my two friends. t wasn't a perfect movie, but with the amount of stuff that they did get right, I was more than happy with it. For the sheer enjoyment factor it might even be my favourite of the films, but I'll leave that call for later once I've got a bit of perspective on the matter. It's certainly a much better film than the last two, holds up well with Khan and First Contact (my previous two favourites) and managed to push even more geek buttons than seeing Star Trek the Motion Picture for the first time did.

On the plotting side I still maintain that the alternate timeline angle is inspired. While the writers could have gone with a straight reboot, I think this very neatly avoids the trap of having to fit in with the expectations of the story conforming to Trek continuity, while at the same time conforming to Trek continuity - brilliant! A couple of franchise-induced shocks really kicked that one home - and it did create a sense that when it comes to the inevitable next movie, anything could happen.

And the other thing they got absolutely right - using Alexander Courage's original theme at the end - the films have previously just used the opening fanfare - the full orchestra version of the 60s theme was long overdue.

I like where they've gone with this - and perhaps more importantly I like where they're going. And my two non-fan friends agree - which is a healthy sign for the once beleaguered franchise.

Mr Weston and the Ironing

2009-05-16T18:24:00.005Z

For the uninitiated, Mr Weston and the Ironing is a popular beat combo and nothing to do with a gentleman and his pressed clothing. The Mr Weston of the group is a friend and work colleague of mine. I've known him for most of the time I've been at the BBC (19 years and counting), but Tuesday night was the first time I'd been to hear his band.

I've been meaning to go for ages, but usually his gigs are at pubs in awkward parts of London at awkward times of the day (well awkward for me anyway), but as he was playing at the BBC Club in Great Portland Street, which is very handy for me catching my train home, I didn't really have an excuse not to go this time.

I always have a certain amount of trepidation when going to see someone do something musically. I'm cursed with an over-honest nature, which means that I'm not good at lying, even when it is for the common good. So when I go to these things I always dread that I'm not going to be able to find something nice to say. Fortunately in this case he was bloody good, so no qualms about being positive. Easily the best performance that evening (although I only heard one other, but everyone who was there all the time informs me that my unwarranted belief is in fact correct).

Their next gig (according to their MySpace page) is on the 28th of the month at Cross Kings in Islington, in the unlikely event that anyone reading this is in the area on that day. They'll also be playing at the Eastbourne Lammas Festival (I always thought Lammas were camel-like animals that spit, but they don't have any of those on the south coast that I'm aware of) in August.

Or you could just visit them on MySpace and listen to a couple of their songs.

Every time I think I'm finished ...

2009-05-04T15:17:00.002Z

There always seems to be one little loose end that I need to tie up. This one's part of the denouement. What I'd written was a brief little summary of all the things that had happened off-stage while the heroes were busy fighting the bad guy. Only then I decided that it was a bit too easy and I needed to dramatise the scene a bit more. Which is more difficult than I first thought - but I think that's probably more because I keep distracting myself than because the scene is particularly tough to write.

In other words, time to stop blogging and get back to some real writing.

First Chapter

2009-04-27T15:46:00.003Z

Daniel Smith was a sickly-looking boy. His pasty complexion suggested he was more likely related to a family of mushrooms than to his own parents, to whom he bore no resemblance whatsoever. He had even questioned his parentage on one occasion during a particular row.

Oddly enough he had never seen his mother as panicked before or since. She had even gone to the trouble of digging out the recording made of him being born, forcing Daniel to sit through the whole thing.

By the time it ended, Daniel was left knowing more about childbirth than he had ever wanted. He had also been left in no doubt that not only had his mother given birth to him, but that it had been one of the most unpleasant events of her life, judging by the screaming and cursing during the event and her complete disinterest in her newborn baby when the nurses tried to show it to her.

In a way it was a shame: while he had been uncertain about being related to them, he had held onto the hope that someday his true parents would come along and take him away from his life with the Smiths.

Unfortunately there would be no such fairy tale endings for him.
Despite his sickly-looking complexion, Daniel actually suffered from unusually good health. The term suffered was appropriate because it seemed the reasons for his good health could potentially kill him. Daniel’s immune system was capable of fighting off all illnesses and ailments at the drop of a hat. No sooner had he sniffled the first sniffle of a cold than it was over.

This unusual resistance to ill-health, according to the family physician, Dr Largo, was due to an excess of white blood cells being created by Daniel's body. Left unchecked, this would prove fatal, so every month Dr Largo would insert his thick needle into a vein and remove the excess blood.

Daniel often wondered if Dr Largo took too much blood. He usually felt weak for several days after the blood-letting and he was sure that his unusually pale complexion was no coincidence. However, Dr Largo said it was perfectly safe and, as far as Daniel's parents were concerned, what Dr Largo said was the end to all debate.

The one time Daniel had meekly suggested that a second opinion might be useful was the time his parents decided he could go without food for a couple of days for his impertinence.

It was not the first time they had imposed such a punishment, unfortunately this time it coincided with one of his bleeding sessions and before Dr Largo had finished, Daniel collapsed.

The doctor fixed up a glucose drip and, assuming Daniel was still asleep, rounded on his parents. However, Daniel had regained a hazy form of consciousness when the drip had been inserted, and heard every word.

“Do you have any idea how close you idiots came to jeopardising everything?”

Daniel’s father raised his voice, indignant in his response. “He was asking for a second opinion. He doesn’t trust yours any longer. We couldn’t just let that go.”

“Let him have his second opinion,” Dr Largo replied. “If it will put his mind at rest.”

Daniel wondered how he could have doubted Dr Largo. While he was thinking the doctor’s medical practices might be less than sound, here Dr Largo was demonstrating that he only had his patient's best interests at heart. Daniel made up his mind that he didn’t need another doctor’s opinion.

What he heard next though completely reversed his decision.

“How can we let him see another doctor?” his mother asked. “They’d know there was something wrong.”

Daniel felt his heart quicken. What did she mean?

“They certainly didn’t pick you two for your intelligence,” Dr Largo said.

Daniel almost laughed at that, but instead found himself wondering what his parents had been picked to do.

“If he sees another doctor,” Dr Largo continued. “It will be someone we set up. Not just the first name picked out of the telephone directory.”

Daniel’s heart was pounding so hard now that he wondered how they could possibly avoid hearing it on the other side of the curtain separating the recovery bed from the rest of the surgery.

“He is asleep, isn’t he?” Daniel’s father suddenly asked.

Daniel shut his eyes and willed himself to relax.

Go to sleep. Go to sleep, he repeated over and over to himself.

Strangely enough, despite his sense of panic, the instant Dr Largo’s hand twitched open the curtain, Daniel fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

The following day, with Daniel well on his way to recovery, his parents insisted on taking him to see a doctor in the neighbouring town of Merchester. Despite telling them that he had changed his mind, Daniel still found himself in the back of the family’s aging Citroen as his parents and he made the ten-mile trip.
Dr Dafur, an elderly Indian man with a thick accent, asked Daniel to sit up on a table as he performed his examination.

“How old are you, Daniel?” he asked as he held one end of a cold stethoscope to Daniel’s chest.

“Fourteen,” Daniel replied.

He knew he was smaller than average for his age: he had looked up the figures on the Internet. His parents had all sorts of filters on their computers, supposedly to prevent Daniel looking at age inappropriate material. In reality they seemed more interested in preventing him from accessing any site where he could do anything more than play kids’ games.

Unknown to his parents, Daniel had been able to bypass the filters since he was ten. He probably would have managed to do so long before then, but it had only been after his tenth birthday that he was finally left alone in the same room as the computer long enough to reprogram it.

Dr Dafur nodded, making no mention of Daniel’s physical development.

“And you’ve had this condition ...?”

“Since he was born,” Daniel’s mother answered.

Dr Dafur consulted the medical file on his desk.

“And your doctor had been taking blood every month?”

“That’s right.” Daniel’s father answered this time.

“Hmm,” Dr Dafur pondered, flipping through the pages. Daniel wondered how long he would keep up the pretence before announcing that he completely agreed with Dr Largo’s diagnosis.

“I’m not sure I quite agree with this treatment,” Dr Dafur said.

Daniel almost fell off his chair in astonishment. This was not how he expected the session to go. Dr Dafur should have been dismissing Daniel’s concerns, not agreeing with them. He wondered if his parents had somehow taken him to the wrong doctor.

“Dr Largo appears to be a little more aggressive in his therapy than I think is warranted,” Dr Dafur told Daniel‘s parents. “My recommendation would be to reduce the exsanguination sessions to period of one every six weeks. Of course you would also need to keep close watch on him.”

Daniel pondered the result of the visit to Dr Dafur on the journey home. His parents had agreed to the revised timetable for his treatments. However, it wasn’t exactly as if Dr Dafur had been in violent disagreement with Dr Largo. Daniel was sure it was a ruse to placate him.

It was possible the reduction in the frequency of the treatments was a response to his earlier collapse. Whatever else, he was certain that his visit to Dr Dafur had gone exactly according to the plan formulated by his parents and Dr Largo.

At the next opportunity, Daniel logged onto the Internet to look up blood disorders. He wondered why it had taken him so long. Perhaps, he admitted to himself, he had not wanted to believe that he was being lied to by his parents.

Although he hated them most of the time, although they rarely had a kind word to say to him, although they often treated him cruelly, they were still his parents. He had to believe that despite appearances, they had his best interests at heart. That belief was rapidly being eroded.

The information he found on the Internet completely demolished any remainder of his belief in them. He found his symptoms on line: the production of excess white blood cells. He had even heard of the illness before, although he hadn’t ever known to put the symptoms and the name together. If what he was reading was correct, he was suffering from leukaemia.

It didn’t make sense to him. For a start the treatment for leukaemia was radiation therapy. Taking blood was used to treat other diseases, not leukaemia. Also, although white blood cells did play a role in combating illness, the over-production of them would not have the effect of making Daniel the most disease-resistant boy in the world.

Which left Daniel with two questions: if he did have leukaemia then why was he receiving the wrong treatment? If he didn’t have it then what exactly was he being treated for?

As a consequence of his condition, whatever it might be, Daniel’s schooling had been decidedly erratic. Up until his tenth birthday he had been bussed to a school in Merchester. Then his illness had been discovered, or invented, effectively putting an end to his time at school.

On the days following his treatment sessions, he was often too weak to leave his bed, let alone go to school. It had been agreed between the school, Daniel’s parents and Dr Largo, that Daniel would be home educated.

At first Daniel had dreaded the idea of spending more time with his parents. However, it seemed that in their eyes, home education meant giving him a book and telling him to get on with it. Grudgingly they had even given him access to the Internet, albeit with all the filters preventing him seeing ... well, almost anything.

He soon discovered that his parents hands-off approach to education gave him unparalleled freedom. He spent much of his time in the local library, a ramshackle affair of a couple of dozen bookcases holding books that were all at least ten years out of print.

Somehow it had been overlooked by the local council when it came to shutting down services. It was probably only the library’s isolated location that had enabled it to survive the periodic cull of such establishments, given that most councillors probably didn’t realise it existed, let alone that they could close it down.
It was barely used by the other villagers; often the whole day would go by and the only other person Daniel would see in there was the librarian, Miss Dryleaf. She was an elderly spinster, with a penchant for beige cardigans, who wandered aimlessly around the shelves in a cloud of what smelled like eau-de-cat-wee.

Despite the olfactory challenges Miss Dryleaf presented, which Daniel solved by never inhaling when he was downwind of her, the library remained one of Daniel’s favourite refuges.

The only days he would not be found there were Sundays, when it wasn’t open; the three days a month when he was recovering from his blood letting; or those sunny days of the year when he decided to take a walk in the woods.

Daniel had the perfect excuse when it came to hiking off into the woods. “It’s for biology,” he would tell his parents. He even suggested that they might want to come with him while he hunted for woodland fungi to draw. Unsurprisingly they both declined and left him alone to wander the woods by himself.

“Just don’t get up to anything dangerous,” his father instructed him in a rare moment of parental concern.

Daniel sometimes wondered if his parents didn’t see him so much as a son than as some form of resource that needed to be guarded from accidental damage. Occasionally he would imagine that the blood extracted from him was being used to solve the global energy crisis, somehow being used as an ecologically-friendly replacement for oil.

Certainly they must have taken enough from him over the last few years to keep his parents’ car running for a good length of time.

It had been raining for a week before, and three days following, Daniel’s appointment with Dr Dafur. On the fourth day Daniel woke up to a face full of sunshine and decided to go for a walk.

There was a freshness in the air born of the previous days’ rainfall. In places untouched by the direct sunlight, the soil was still sodden, threatening to suck down Daniel’s shoes. For the most part though, the heat of the sun had dried out the woods, making it pleasant going.

Daniel had no real purpose in the woods. He had long ago catalogued all the different species of flora, having exercise books full of drawings, as well as pressed samples of many of the plants. Today was just about enjoying nature.

It was not long before fate put a crimp in his plans when he trod on a patch of slippery mud untouched by the sun’s rays. His foot skidded out from under him, threatening to spill him over. His arms windmilled as he tried to keep himself upright. His efforts had almost succeeded, when his heel caught against an errant tree root.

He came crashing down onto his back.

Daniel lay there for a couple of moments, his body tensed as he refused to accept the pain. Unable to hold it off any longer, he opened himself up to receiving sensations once more.

To his surprise it didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would. It was more a dull ache spread across the bottom of his back rather than the sharp pain he had been expecting.

He stared up at the overhead tree branches, wondering if he should remain where he was for the rest of the day, or get back up and chance something else going wrong. While on the face of it remaining still seemed the preferable choice, he wasn’t sure that it was sustainable in the long term.

He put out his hands to push up from the ground. His right hand came into contact with something hard, something made of metal. He pulled his hand back sharply, an instinctive reaction to feeling something that shouldn‘t have been there.
Rolling onto one side and ignoring any protests from his bruised back, he took a look at the metal object.

It was mostly covered by vegetation that had grown up around it, but there was enough of the object showing for Daniel to be able to tell what it was supposed to be. It was a hand.

Daniel scrambled to his feet, completely forgetting that he had injured his back. In the process of forgetting his injury, he also failed to realise that it no longer hurt at all.

He pulled away the plants surrounding the hand to reveal an arm attached to it. Further inspection revealed the arm to be protruding from an old tree stump, so overgrown with plant-life that Daniel had taken it for a bush.

Daniel tore away the plants with his hands. He made short work of them, releasing the tree stump from its green bondage. The find was better than Daniel could have ever hoped. He recognised what he had discovered straight away.

Tucked into the hollow tree stump was an honest-to-goodness robot.

Perhaps if he had been a normal boy with normal parents, Daniel might have run home to tell them exactly what he had found in the woods. However, with Daniel’s family being far from normal, he instead did the next best thing: he looked for an on-switch.

He had done no more than touch the robot’s metal body when its eyes began to glow a faint green. Daniel snatched his hand back, dangerously close to falling over again as he overbalanced with the sudden movement.

The robot shifted its head, its dimly lit eyes unseeing. A sound, like a metal coughing, emanated from the robot’s head. Daniel backed away, ready to run if the machine looked as if it might be dangerous.

The robot’s metal cough barked once more, then it was silent. Daniel wondered if the machine had been running an automatic response, the final vestiges of power being spent.

The robot moved again, its eyes brightening.

“Memory error,” it said. “Corrupted sectors. Recommend reinstallation of operating system.”

Daniel blinked, not sure what to make of this.

The robot swivelled its head, its green flowing eyes focusing on him.

“I must complete my mission,” it told him.

Daniel gaped, unsure of how he should respond. His mind had been racing through the possibilities of where this robot had come from. Three options seemed more likely to him than any others: a research laboratory, the military, or an alien planet. The use of the word mission suggested it was not a laboratory.

Daniel screwed up his face. “You’re not from outer-space are you?” he asked, just to make sure.

He was almost certain that a confused alien robot would not be talking English, no matter what the old science fiction films might have taught him.

“No,” the robot replied. It paused for a moment. Daniel almost expected to hear its hard drive whirring. “At least I don’t think so. My memory doesn’t contain those details.”

The robot’s voice had softened, becoming less mechanical and more ... human.
A nasty thought occurred to Daniel. “This isn’t some kind of wind-up, is it?”

The robot tilted its head at a slight angle, considering Daniel’s words.

“No,” it finally answered. “I do not believe that it is. My memory may not be fully functional, but there is no data to suggest that I am part of a ‘wind-up’. I am on a mission and ...” The robot tried to move. It lifted an arm, but that was as much as it could manage. “... I am unable to proceed.”

“What’s your mission?” Daniel asked.

“I am to retrieve a canister and return it to .. The robot paused.

“Return it where?”

“That memory sector is unavailable,” the robot answered.

“How can you complete your mission if you don’t know what it is?”

The robot moved its still-operative arm. “That matter is irrelevant. I cannot complete my mission until I am functional again. Priority is to become mobile first. Recovery of the damaged memory sectors is secondary.”

The robot looked away for a moment before refocusing its attention on Daniel.

“Perhaps you can assist me with repairs.”

Daniel thought about it for a while. The idea of working to repair the robot was a tempting one. It would be the type of science project that would make other kids jealous ... well, at least those kids who appreciated the inherent coolness in owning their very own robot.

On the other hand, Daniel wasn’t completely naive. He knew enough about the world to know that people had all sorts of hidden agendas and if people did then so could robots.

“What’ll happen if I repair you?” he asked.

“I will seek to complete my mission,” the robot replied. “I will retrieve the stolen container and attempt to restore the memory sectors that hide the rest of my mission data.”

“Will you hurt anyone?” Daniel asked. “As part of your mission I mean?”

The robot considered the question, presumably searching among the corrupted sectors of its memory to see if the answer was retrievable. Finally, it answered.

“I am to carry out the mission with minimal contact with any people. However, should I be in a position where I am required to defend myself, I am allowed the use of non-lethal force.”

The robot may have been lying, but Daniel was reassured to a large extent by the completeness of the answer.

“What do you need for repairs?” he asked.

Liam Sharp's God Killers

2009-04-18T18:11:00.003Z

I'll state up front that I know Liam personally, so you can read this review in light of that bias. However, I will say that my bias only extends to the point that if I thought the book was a piece of crap, I wouldn't have reviewed it at all.

God Killers by Liam Sharp

An ambitious first novel that succeeds more often than it fails. Sharp's Machivarius Point, the main story (at 200 pages) in the book is what might have resulted if Robert E Howard and China Mieville had produced some strange offspring through eldritch means.

The main characters of Sharp's novel occupy the fictional space somewhere between David Gemmell's Druss and Ian Graham's Ballas. Much less heroic than Gemmell's flawed protagonists, Sharp's creations manage to be much more appealing than Graham's, both in terms of likability and with regard to the complexity of the characters.

Never short of ideas, possibly the biggest weakness of the story is that the rich tapestry Sharp weaves is not as fully explored as it could be. On the flip side, the narrative approach he has taken forces the reader to engage with the book on a more intellectual level and to that extent what might be a flaw according to traditional storytelling is perhaps a fascinating and not unsuccessful approach to bring a different approach to constructing a heroic fantasy saga.

At times a thoughtful meditation on the horrors of war, while simultaneously being a testosterone-fueled barbarian saga, the writing manages to transcend the apparent limitations of its genre and is one of the more literary approaches to this type of subject matter that I've read. Definitely not for the squeamish though, as should be expected from something with such a clear message that violence is not a pleasant business and certainly not a heroic one.

The remaining stories that take up the final part of the book continue to showcase Sharp's literary ability and range from the broad comedy of Death and the Myrmidon to the M John Harrison-inspired weirdness of Metawhal Alpha.

Finished Again

2009-04-11T20:51:00.003Z

So that's the ending rewritten with something I'm much happier about. Now I need to shift around earlier parts of the story so that everything fits - fortunately it's not too much, but I think a little more set-up in a couple of places could probably take the randomness out of later events.

I'm also debating whether to change the hero's name. On the plus side, if I choose to use it as part of the title then it'll be more distinctive than what I've got at the moment. On the negative side ...

Actually there isn't much of a negative side - as long as I manage to change every single occurrence. I've changed characters' names in the past and on the odd occasion missed one or two alterations. Fortunately it's always been picked up by my readers, so I don't think I've ever embarrassed myself by sending anything out with the wrong names.

It might also be time that I started looking at possibilities for publication. There's already one potential avenue open, so perhaps it's time I sent off an email ...

A Better Ending

2009-04-05T19:24:00.002Z

Over the last week I've finally figured out the climax of my novel. I'd already written it once, had a couple of people read it as it was and neither of them seemed to mind it (I had comments about the denouement - but that was a different matter).

I wasn't comfortable with it though. Not enough really happened compared to previous parts of the book, the hero's solution was both passive and relied a bit too much on luck and the setting was king of boring.

So I went back and changed some details about the location - it used to be a small, fairly dull village in the middle of some woods that's home to the bad guys, now it's a coastal village with a history of smuggling and a darker look to it.

I also decided that rather than have my heroes captured by the villains, which is what happens in the original version, I'd have them actively sneak into the village (and I even managed to come up with a good explanation of why they needed to on top of that).

So far it was better. I had a mission for the heroes, I'd eliminated the coincidence factor and I'd made a more interesting setting where I could stick some sort of climactic battle. I'd even come up with my main protagonist's solution to the problem - I was going to give him a force field that he cleverly invents/repairs.

Writing it proved to be a slightly different matter. First part worked fine. Then came the mission to stop the bad guys.

Halfway through I had an idea - about a secret part of the town - and that seemed a cool idea.

Then writing that, I had a better idea of what to do with the force field. I'd also introduced two other super science gadgets - just on a whim - and suddenly I figured out how to use one of those and the force field to create a neat solution to one of the heroes' problem.

And then while trying to figure out how to make a revelation about the ultimate villain of the piece less anticlimactic than it was, I realised that I was making a huge mistake in again providing a passive solution. I had an idea of setting something up for a future novel (assuming I ever finish with this one) and while it made sense, it wasn't a very dramatic resolution. And in solving that problem, I created an even better climax than I'd originally anticipated.

Plus the third of my gadgets miraculously provided the solution to that final battle. In fact it couldn't have been a neater solution than if I'd planned it.

Only it was a bit too neat. So I've had to make it even harder for my protagonist by breaking the gadget.

I'm much happier with the revised ending - at least I will be once I finish writing it. But I never would have come up with it if I hadn't been my own worse critic.

Even when other people think you've done a good job, it doesn't mean that you can't push yourself to do better.

Holograms

2009-03-31T17:07:00.005Z

Quick question: in the Star Wars universe where folk are smart enough to build spacecraft that can travel faster than the speed of light, where they've created laser guns and lightsabres, where children create cognitive robots and pod-racers in their spare time, why is it that the most powerful organisation in the galaxy can't create a hologram with decent resolution?

Those things look like the holograms that used to be sold in Athena back in the 80s.

Copyright Notice

2009-03-17T13:54:00.003Z

In light of my previous post about copyright on the net, I came across author Karen Traviss's copyright notice on her website.

Well written in plain, easy to understand and despite what she's telling people, quite friendly language. Probably still won't make a huge difference, but at least you can't say you haven't had fair warning when the letters from the lawyers come around.

In fact it was such a good notice warning about stealing intellectual property I was tempted to reproduce it in its entirity for my site.

Now where's my emoticon for irony?

Copyright and the Internet

2009-03-16T12:29:00.002Z

An interesting analysis on why the newspaper industry is doomed.

Obviously file-sharing and free distribution of copyright material if taken to its extreme will mean that there's no money to be made in copyrighted works (unless those works can be produced in a format that prevents copying and free re-distributions (such as sculptures - I'd like to see one of those on Pirate Bay)).

Which will leave us with only the enthusiastic amateurs able to produce work - or the publicly funded bodies such as the BBC (assuming the licence fee hasn't been abolished by then).

In the short term, the convenience of the portability of books and newspapers (until/if ever e-readers take off in a big way) and the spectacle of big screen projection (until home cinema can match it) give a certain amount of protection to written works and film - and the fact that not all of the world's book/music/film consuming population practices file sharing. But as the technology continues to expand and as file sharing continues to gain in popularity, the current models for rewarding the creators of copyrighted works are going to become less and less effective.

So what are the options?

More public funding following the BBC model - perhaps some sort of entertainment tax - if you own a computer/digital reader/DCD burner you have to pay a licence fee to pay for the creation of content to watch? That was after all how the BBC's licence fee came about - to pay for programming on that newfangled device, the radio.

Plenty of problems evident with that model, but I do think it's a good argument for not abolishing the BBC's current funding just yet.

More product placement - or films entirely sponsored by companies. Certainly one way to increase the amount of commercial interference with art - and if the economic model is viable, I can certainly see this happening. It already has with various mini films produced for the Internet - so why not full length commercials with the likes of Indiana Jones and the Temple of McDonalds, or Star Wars VII: Attack of the iPhones?

An increased interest from artists in live shows. Although you can record theatre, concerts, etc, you can't reproduce the experience (yet). As a writer isn't it better if I earn a fee per performance of my play rather than getting no royalties from the illegal sharing of my book?

Public sponsorship - you want the next JK Rowling - well she's not going to publish it until enough people pay her upfront for it. Similar to the BBC licence fee, except here the money's going direct to the creator of the work. There will still be people getting it for free, but those who really want to read it (who would have bought the book in a non-file sharing world), will presumably still be willing to part with the cash. Of course this relies on having a significant enough readership in the first place.

Artists don't get rewarded and only create works of art for the sheer joy of it. Which means a lot less stuff from your favourite author who now has to work at the local supermarket to put bread on the table rather than being able to devote the whole working day to producing the next Discworld/Kay Scarpetta/Jack Ryan book.

None of those are solutions that I'd be happy with as they're either putting the patronage of the arts within the control of an even smaller group of people than we have currently, or they're introducing a fairly severe form of artistic Darwinism that selects work that best appeals to the lowest common denominator, not that necessarily encourages good work (although the two are not necessarily different).

I think it'll probably take much smarter people than me to come up with something that works. The fact is that as file-sharing increases, we're probably going to see an awful lot of different models tested. Most of them won't work. Some will, but we won't like them. Eventually we will find a new equilibrium, but without a doubt we're going to see sustaining a career in the arts become more difficult than it is now.

Why couldn't I have just wanted to become a plumber?

Star Wars Marathon

2009-03-08T19:02:00.003Z

Over the last couple of days I've sat down and watched (as opposed to standing up and watching) the Star Wars prequels again and a couple of episodes of the Clone Wars CGI cartoon.

I've noticed that I've started to wince a little less at some of the dialogue in the prequels. I think repeated viewings have helped me build up a tolerance to it. Or perhaps it was because I was also rewriting part of my novel at the same time (don't worry, I've made sure there's no bleed over) and I wasn't paying any attention.

There were a couple of things I thought (or perhaps re-thought) while I was watching:

Not all of the dialogue is bad. If you squint at the screen, plug up one ear and hum along with the Imperial March, it doesn't all sound that bad. Actually, there was even one romantic scene (or part of a scene) where I almost believed the dialogue between the two characters. Which was then spoiled by the bit that followed immediately after. It's like that all the way through - there are little gems of dialogue struggling to get through, but they're swamped by all the crap.

It still looks absolutely fantastic. As a visual director I think Lucas is superb - he's just very bad at directing actors, decent characterisation and writing dialogue. All the character stuff basically. The action scenes when no one is talking are superb. And he's continued to create (with a lot of visual designers helping) a fascinating universe. Naboo and Coruscant (which I know was created before the prequels, but it was the first time on film that it was properly explored) easily hold their own with the likes of Bespin and Tatooine.

The music easily holds its own with the first trilogy. The Otog Gunga themes are perfect old-school science fiction and the main themes Williams has invented for the three films (Duel of the Fates being the only one I can name off the top of my head) are brilliant. This is the John Williams who should be composing for the movies - not the guy who scored War of the Worlds.

Half the problems I have with the films would be solved if Anakin had been half a decade older in The Phantom Menace. It would certainly make the love story in Attack of the Clones more believable - not to mention allowing for the final battle to be more than 'oops'. There are a whole bunch of other things that I think could be changed in the films that would still leave the story intact, but would present it in a much better way. That's the thing that makes the prequel trilogy so frustrating to me - a few relatively easy fixes and it could have been so much better.

Still, it's easy to backseat drive - and even easier to fix the problems with someone else's story than it is to write one of your own.

Clone Wars cartoon on the other hand I have no complaints about - except that I would have liked to hear a few more of the actors from the films providing voices. Anakin (despite sounding quite a bit different) and Padme are fine as they are - but Ian McDiarmid had such a distinctive voice as Palpatine that it's a shame he wasn't used. Oh and I'm still not sure about the end theme - I like the way it starts, but I'd have preferred they went with a different tune rather than the disco version of Williams' theme that's been used.

Internet v Legitimate Media

2009-03-05T11:21:00.003Z

Snopes.com is one of my favourite websites. If you haven't come across it yet, it takes various rumours, urband legends and chain-email claims and tries to validate those that are authentic, or debunk those that are not. Here's an example about the evils of aspartame.

Shows you shouldn't trust anything you read on emails or the Internet. Which is why having legitimate journalists ferreting out the truth about things is so important and why newspapers and broadcast media are so much more reliable if you want the straight facts.

Or not.

Second time in two postings that I've referenced Charles Stross - I'm really getting lazy.

The link, for those even lazier than me who can't be bothered to click on it, is about a recent widely reported story about the cancer-inducing effects of tiny amounts of alcohol on women. At the time it sounded a little screwy to me and Mr Stross, who has bothered to do a little bit more research than I could, has highlighted several things wrong with the story. Which the reporters couldn't be bothered to check.

Of course if they had then they wouldn't have had the scare-mongering headlines they could use to sell their papers.

There are a couple of books that deal with this misreporting - Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner covers the misuse of statistics, usually caused by a lack of understanding about what they're actually telling you (or not as the case may be). My Trade by Andrew Marr looks mostly at newspaper journalism and gives a journalist/editor's view on the background behind the stories.

And the lesson in all of this is: you can't trust anyone to tell you the truth. You have to find it yourself.

I should have gone into writing greetings cards.

Being Late

2009-03-02T15:32:00.003Z

Charles Stross commenting on George RR Martin's late delivery of the latest volume of his forest-endangering fantasy epic.

It's just as well I'm not published yet because it's taking me months to rewrite the final chapters of my novel. Although instead of writer's block or conflicting commitments, I've only got my own laziness to blame. And the fact that writing this thing has gone from being very easy to incredibly hard. If I had fans, I'm sure they'd end up vilifying me too.

Also ...

2009-02-02T15:00:00.003Z

For those who don't know where the blog title came from and for those who ended up here looking for Firefly stuff (sorry but this is about as much as you'll get).

From "Trash" written by Ben Edlund and José Molina.

Political Correctness and Character

2009-01-23T21:17:00.003Z

I think it's all too easy to bash political correctness as a bad thing. Certainly it keeps the tabloid papers going on slow news days, so for that reason alone we should perhaps be grateful. Beyond that though, I think the quest to avoid using language to denigrate people because they are different from the perceived norm is not an unworthy one.

However, in this attempt to avoid giving offense and to make sure that people are treated as equal, we've clearly lost the plot (which will be no news to followers of aforementioned tabloid publications). This isn't because it's no longer kosher to use racial slurs, derogatory terms for disabled people (or should that be differently abled (note my spell check is telling me that abled isn't even a word, which shows where politically correct language can get a bit too far up its own backside)), but because it seems that the behaviour arising from it has stopped treating those groups as real people.

Case in point (and the reason I started this post): there's been a recent poll conducted on behalf of the BBC and Channel 4 to look at how disabled people felt about their portrayal on television.

Shockingly the survey came up with the following findings:

Disabled people wanted to be portrayed realistically by programme makers - warts and all.

They wanted to see less targeted programmes - they found programmes focusing on disability to be a turn off.

They wanted to see more disabled people in regular programmes.

The fact that we need a survey to point out the bleeding obvious suggests how far we've yet to come. Unfortunately those trying to follow the politically correct line often still fail to see the real person behind the disability or the differently coloured skin.

In terms of writing I think it's important to consider characters in this light. Writing tends to swing from negative stereotypes to positive stereotypes. Both betray the truth and both fail to properly meet the requirements of the audience and of the minority group being portrayed.

Of course if we could get away from thinking about creating characters who represent a minority group and start thinking of them as characters who represent people then I think we'd be some way along the road to finding the right balance.

Why not writing is sometimes the best course of action

2009-01-17T18:56:00.002Z

I've been sitting on my (allegedly) finished novel for a while now. Although I'd written the thing, been through every single word to check for errors and rewritten the end, I still didn't feel as if it was ready.

So I waited.

While I was waiting, I struggled to figure out what I was expecting from the wait. After all I had a good idea of where it went wrong and I had a few ideas about how I could fix it. But something in me balked at the idea.

I was probably just being lazy, not wanting to face writing any more words for the story. After all it took me weeks (months?) before I wrote the epilogue chapter that it so desperately needed. However, a couple of days ago I realised that I was wrong with my idea of where the story went wrong. It actually went wrong about a chapter before the place I though needed rewriting. At least if I start the rewrite at that earlier point, the alteration to the story should flow a lot easier.

And that was what I'd been waiting for. The reason I've been sitting doing nothing about sorting out the story was because I was making it too hard for myself. Rewriting at the later point would have been more effort for less reward.

Sometimes it's good to be lazy.

Plot Points and Character Arcs

2009-01-13T14:29:00.002Z

Brief anecdote: several years ago when I was still using online sites to get feedback on my writing one of the people reviewing a script of mine congratulated me for hitting the first pinch point on exactly the right page. He then proceeded to take me to task for not getting all the other points on the right pages.

One of the things I could have pointed out to him at the time was that due to my funky formatting, what he was taking as page 27 was probably closer to being page 25, so I missed the initial pinch point too. I didn't bother to mention it though.

A recent thread on Wordplay has been concerned over a different screenwriting term - whether there's a need to have a character arc in every story. I'd like to question whether there's a need to use the term 'character arc' at all, let alone have one.

There's a lot of terminology that gets thrown about regarding screenwriting especially, other writing not so much. Much of it seems to derive from self-help books that are more often written by screenwriting analysts rather than successful screenwriters.

As a result I'd put much of it on the Helpful to Writers Scale at somewhere around 3/10. Character arcs, plot points, pinch points, or whatever new terms the latest writing guru has created to sell his/her book are all useful if applied AFTER the screenplay has been finished and taken with a pinch of salt when doing so.

And that's only if you know you have a problem with the story but can't quite put your finger on what's wrong. Although frankly if that's the case then I'd suggest ditching the script and starting on your next one because you probably either need distance or more experience to solve the problem.

Where all these wonderful terms should be ignored (I'd say must, but that starts to sound like I'm inventing rules instead) is in actually writing the story. It's certainly important to understand how to pace a story, how to create compelling characters and so on - but slavishly ensuring that you tick off every single box in the Screenwriter's Workbook is not going to guarantee anything more than the appreciation of the other terminology slaves.

Paragraphs

2008-09-13T21:44:00.002Z

Finished the grammar/spelling/typos readthrough of the novel. I've moved onto going through and adjusting the paragraphs. This is a hold-over from my screenwriting where one of the general rules of thumb is to have no block of text that's more than four lines long.

I've noticed I have a habit when I'm originally drafting my novel of using long paragraphs. Actually I have a habit of using no paragraphs originally, as I'm writing longhand in a notebook and trying to cram as many words onto as few pages as I can - otherwise I'd be using dozens of notebooks rather than the two I managed to fit my novel into.

When I typed up my novel though, I do put in the paragraphs. Not as many as I should though, which is why the second run-through. One nice thing about this go through is that I don't have to dwell on every word, like my first edit/rewrite. Paragraph lengths is all about making the story easy to read - too long a block of text and the eye becomes lost in it. I also try to keep sentences short for similar reasons - that's taken care of by my reading-out-loud run-through.

So, if I scan the page and notice some of the paragraphs looking a bit bulky, I take a closer look to see what I can rearrange. Sometimes there's nothing that can be done - the paragraph is a series of consecutive thoughts that can't be broken up (except maybe be completely rewriting it - which I have done when it suits).

Most of the time though, there's a natural break. Sometimes it's when a character starts another action. Sometimes it's just about changing the emphasis slightly.

What I have noticed is that I'm fighting against this notion I have that paragraphs are supposed to be a sizable length - a certain number of sentences (for some reason four always springs to mind). What you notice if you look at a number of novels (modern novels - don't even think about trying to emulate the size of Dickens' paragraphs) is that a lot of paragraphs are no more than one or two sentences long.

Which is what I've been trying to do with this post.

It may seem like sweating over the details, but guiding the way the reader experiences the tale is the storyteller's key role. And the size of my paragraphs are one of the ways I try to do that.

Narrative Prose

2008-08-29T18:03:00.004Z

I don't know what exactly is doing it, but my computer's becoming increasingly slow. It's probably something to do with my anti-virus software, or something in one of the Windows security patches, but my technical ability has been far outstripped by progress in computing (or is it regression as I'm sure all the new 'advances' are actually designed to make things worse than they were before).

Anyway, while I wait for my computer to do whatever it is that it's supposed to be doing, I tend to turn a book off one of the shelves behind me (I have three bookcases in the little room that I've turned into a writing room, nine shelves of which (and a bit of floor space) have been given over to my meager reference collection).

As I'm in the process of rewriting, I thought today that I'd pick up John Braine's Writing a Novel and flick through it in search of some words of wisdom. I used to read quite a few of the self-help writing books - less these days after I started realising that many of them were trying to teach me things that I know are wrong - or at least wrong for me.

The chapter I stopped at and grabbed a few sentences from has the same name as the title of this post - Narrative Prose. The first sentence reads:

My working-rule with narrative prose is the same as for dialogue: if it can't be read aloud, it's no good.

Since I've started working on the current draft of my novel (third if anyone cares to know), I've been proceeding by reading every line aloud. This serves two purposes. Firstly, it forces me to dwell on every single word, whereas if I read it silently (without moving my lips!), I'd probably be skipping over words and allowing my brain to fill in some of the gaps - which is absolutely pointless if you're trying to proofread.

Secondly, and in keeping with Braine's rule, it allows me to check the rhythm of the sentences. If I can't speak it out loud, then it's likely that I've twisted my prose into some torturous shape that will probably obfuscate the meaning - or at the very least cause readers to stumble while they try to make sense of what I've written.

For the record I don't check these posts after I've written them, so expect all sorts of gnarly word constructions.

I also believe that there's something pleasing in reading prose that falls into the patterns of speech. As Braine points out slightly further down the page, behind every story there's a person (he uses the term man, but I'm much more PC than him!) telling the story. A short story, novella or novel is the written analogue of the narrated story - certainly if we take it back to how written language developed. And sometimes it's good to get back to the roots of the situation and remind ourselves just why we do things a certain way.

Bad Dialogue

2008-08-24T20:33:00.002Z

Here's a line I'm struggling with at the moment:

“I was. However I felt it would be a more efficient use of my time to turn it to our advantage in more than one way.”

Pretty awful, eh?

One of the problems with writing dialogue is that what works on the page doesn't necessarily work when read aloud. Not that I'm claiming the above example works well on the page either, but it's a problem with a lot of stuff that I've read. My first method of dealing with unwieldy dialogue is usually to reduce its word count - after all people don't follow the strict rules of grammar when talking and don't always use proper sentence structure, so paring back the dialogue can help make it sound more natural.

A particular issue I have with the above sentence is that the character speaking is non-human - a robot in fact - so there needs to be a degree of formality to the dialogue. However it doesn't read as formal - it reads as clunky. It's too long for a start - which is my next trick, cutting up the dialogue into several sentences.

Third solution I tend to fall back on quite a lot is cutting the sentence completely. Often when something reads wrong, I find it's superfluous to the story. However, if I ditch this one, I then have to rewrite, or excise, the following eight sentences, which seems like a bit much just because I'm struggling with finding a better way to rewrite that sentence.

Here's the quick and nasty rewrite version if I wasn't worrying about the formality of the sentence

“I was, but I thought I could could kill two birds with one stone.”

Not sure my robot is going to be using an idiom like that. So what I need is something that conveys the same concept with the same sort of brevity, but which uses plain English.

"I was, but I saw the opportunity to increase the benefit to us."

It's not going to win any prizes for great dialogue, but at least it reads faster, is a lot clearer and is not inconsistent with the voice of the character.

Editing Mood

2008-08-23T20:24:00.002Z

Originally I'd intended this blog to be a place where I could stick a couple of short stories and point people at them, but as I haven't written anything new recently, I thought maybe I'd throw a few things down about what's going on with my writing. At least that way it might encourage me to work harder.

At present I'm just over halfway through rewriting a novel that I'm hoping to have published sometime in the next year. It has a potential home, although I'm not going into any details (or putting too much home in that) as there's every likelihood that something will go wrong - such as me not finishing my editing work!

I have to confess that I'm terrible at finishing anything - I have the desire to be a perfectionist, but not necessarily the drive. So I'll tinker with something for ages, but will often abandon it in an unfinished state because I don't feel up to the task of making it as good as I believe it can be. I'm bad enough when it comes to editing short stories; it's so much worse when I'm dealing with 100,000+ words.

What's made this even worse today is that the part of my novel that I've been revisiting is uncannily similar to something going on in my life at the moment. Which is particularly odd as I wrote that part of the story about six months ago. I'm not going into details as I've never believed in living my life for all on the Internet to read, but it makes it a bit harder to edit when I'm having to deal not only with making that section of the novel readable, but also with the emotions that it's stirring up.

The part of me that's always a writer says "Now if only I can get some of those feelings on the page."

The part of me that's not a writer wants to be able to walk away from it all and play Overlord on my Xbox.

At the moment, the call of the Xbox is winning.

High Concept Visuals

2008-06-30T18:20:00.005Z

As Bill Martell keeps mentioning my idea for what I called high concept visuals, I thought it might be of some use to post a bit about them. This was written with an audience of me in mind, as I was trying to figure it out for my own use, so if it's a little rough around the edges, that's why.

High Concept Visuals

As in High Concept ideas (HCIs), the notion of the High Concept Visual (HCV) is a visual idea that can be easily described, which will suggest in the reader’s mind a movie that must be seen.

HCVs include Bullet Time in THE MATRIX, the moonlight skeletonisation of the pirates in PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN and the time travel effects of the recent adaptation of THE TIME MACHINE.

Alone an HCV does not guarantee a good film. What it should guarantee are cinematic sequences in that film that haven’t been seen before.

As with HCIs, the HCV can be an amalgamation of previous visual systems and perhaps may be created by combining two visual systems that the audience is familiar with into a different form. THE TIME MACHINE uses time lapse photography as a basis for its HCV, but also adds a reverse zoom effect, which is seen with the sequence that starts on Earth in the past and ends up on the moon colony in the future.

The reverse zoom effect is also used in Men In Black as the end, starting with the Earth, moving out into the galaxy and then ending up with galaxy as a marble in an alien child’s hand. Although a very interesting visual, it is not an HCV, as the point of view is straight forward and consistent, even if the end is unexpected.

HCVs are not about using special effects to create something more realistically than has been done before, such as the dinosaurs in JURASSIC PARK, they are about creating written scenes that dictate a visual style that is not reliant on an effects breakthrough to provide novelty. Judging from the script alone, the dinosaurs in JURASSIC PARK could have conceivably been created using stop motion, animatronics, or animation had CGI effects not been used.

An HCV is not just about using a special effect in a different way either. The effect must be essential to the story and the characters or the environment. Trick photography (the bomb’s POV in PEARL HARBOR, the slow motion explosion in SWORDFISH) can make a shot more interesting, but if it is a staging decision rather than a story decision, it is not an HCV.

HCVs relate to several different concepts. Often an HCV includes several of these:

PERCEPTION provides a visual representation of the characters’ senses, or their thoughts.

In THE MATRIX the audience sees how Neo (Keanu Reeves) perceives the world of The Matrix, where the slow motion of bullet time isn’t just used for effect, but as Neo’s real-time perception of the world. The concept is expanded upon further when Neo’s abilities grow so that he can actually see the code of the Matrix when he’s inside.

In THE FISHER KING, the fantasy sequences show the audience what the world looks like through the eyes of Henry Sagan/Parry (Robin Williams) and provides insight into his delusions.

CSI provides a visual realisation of the character’s thoughts as they describe the possible results of their evidence, from reconstructions of how the crime might have happened, to illustrations of the physical effects of body trauma, such as a gunshot, from inside the body.

A BEAUTIFUL MIND uses a similar concept to the FISHER KING and CSI, where the thoughts of John Nash (Russell Crowe) are first shown to the audience as he works out various problems. This visualisation of his thought processes also throws out a subtle clue to his schizophrenic delusions, which are also shown on screen.

Other examples include GHOST and THE DEAD ZONE.

TRANSFORMATION can occur both to characters or to the environment. In some films, such as FREQUENCY, where transformations resulting from changes to the past create changes to both the characters and the environment, it happens to both.

Transformation itself is not enough to be considered an HCV, so there must be at least one other element at play. The Transformation in an action film, for example, usually has some effect on the outcome of the climax, often increasing the danger the protagonist is place in either from his own ill-timed transformations (VAN HELSING where Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) keeps reverting from werewolf to human in his fight with Dracula (Richard Roxburgh) whenever the full moon is obscured), or through the untimely transformations of the antagonist(s).

In some cases transformation will be tied into the defeat of the antagonist (the defeat of Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) in HOLLOW MAN once he has become partially visible).

Other examples include THE MASK and COOL WORLD.

Environmental transformation can be used to indicate a change caused by time or travel (THE TIME MACHINE), an unearthly environment (Heaven as a painting of an Earthly location in WHAT DREAMS MAY COME), or a manipulation of the environment (such as the water powers of the aliens in THE ABYSS).

JUXTAPOSITION creates unusual combinations of visual elements, either by directly linking them by placing them on the same screen (such as the black and white/colour mix of PLEASANTVILLE), or though intercutting between two different views of the same event, such as the inside-the-body, outside-the-body action sequences of INNERSPACE.

Bridgetown

2008-03-02T08:41:00.003Z

This is a script for a proposed comic book called 'Bridgetown' that sadly never saw the light of day. Although I do have a very nice first page for it drawn by David "Barkmann" Cerqueira.

PAGE 1

Panel 1

The lower part of a cart wheel takes up most of the panel as it travels along a rocky mountain road.

A rabbit peers over the bottom of the panel in the left hand corner..

THATCH (unseen but sitting at the rear of the cart): How much further is it?

Panel 2

Pull back from the previous panel’s view. Both of the cart wheels are now visible, along with the legs of the ox pulling it.

The rabbit in the foreground can now be seen in full. His back is covered with a tiny leather saddle, an armoured pixie, looking like a miniature St George, rides on top.

BULL (unseen but sitting at the front of the cart): Give it a rest, Thatch!

Panel 3

Side view of the cart (pulled back from previous picture). Sitting up on the front bench are BULL and GOOSE. They’re brothers, but there‘s no real family resemblance. Both look like the animals they’re named after. Bull has a thick neck, a punched-in face and looks as if he bench-presses cattle. Goose is thin with a long neck and a beaky nose.

The cart carries a load of turnips, mostly under cover, but one or two can be seen poking through.

On the backboard of the cart rides Bull and Goose’s younger brother, THATCH. A handsome lad with the healthy frame of a young man who’s grown up bailing hay, his blond unkempt hair makes his name appropriate.

Low on the ground the pixie-mounted rabbit faces off against a lizard.

In the background, fir trees.

GOOSE: You can’t blame him, Bull. His first time in Bridgetown after all.

Panel 4

Rear view of the cart. Thatch watches the pixie, now behind the cart, skewer the lizard with a miniature lance.

BULL: He doesn’t have to ask every mile.

GOOSE: How much further is it anyway?

Panel 5

Front view of the cart, looking over the ox’s back.

Thatch has turned his head to face front as he listens to his brothers.

BULL: Not much .

Panel 6

Same as previous, except this time Thatch’s eyes are open wide in wonder.

BULL: In fact, I think it‘s safe to say...

PAGE 2 AND 3

Full spread

The cart in the bottom right corner stands at the top of a steep hill that winds its way down the fir tree covered mountainside to two wide portcullis gates (both presently open), which in turn lead onto Bridgetown. Bridgetown runs from centre bottom to top left.

A giant bridge, it is covered in hundreds of buildings, including a castle in the centre. Nets, rope bridges and hand cranked elevators line the sides. There are even some houses fastened to the undersides of some of the bridge’s giant arches.

The architectural styles are predominantly European Middle Age on the nearest side, however there should also be influences of Oriental and Arabic architecture. The far side of the bridge has a stronger Oriental style to it - however, as the bridge is so long, it’s hard to make out.

A river runs out the left side of the bridge (the right is obscured as the bridge is so high), moving towards the upper right hand side of the picture.

BULL: ...we’re here.

PAGE 4

Panel 1

The cart passes through the left-hand portcullis gate. A guardsman stands sentry duty.

Thatch has turned so that he can see where they’re going.

Panel 2

Side view of the cart passing a tavern - “The Bridge‘s End”.

Panel 3

Three dancing girls, dressed in translucent silks, stand with their backs to us in the foreground of the panel. The cart passes in the background. Thatch watches them with his mouth agape.

Panel 4

The cart passes underneath an arched bridge into the market area - colourful tented stalls line the route. It has the look of an Arabian market.

PAGE 5

Panel 1

The brothers unload the turnips from their cart onto an empty stall.

Panel 2

The brothers stand behind the stall, looking bored. There’s no one else in sight.

THATCH: Does it get any busier than this?

Panel 3

A crowd surrounds the stall. Goose hands out a turnip over the heads of the people standing at the front of the stall.

GOOSE: Busy enough for you yet?

Panel 4

Just one customer now, holding the last of the turnips. The stall’s empty now.

Bull takes money from the customer.

PAGE 6

Panel 1

Bull counts the money into piles.

BULL: Right, that’s the last of it.

Panel 2

Bull drops a few coins onto Goose’s outstretched palm.

BULL: Half for you, half for Thatch. Okay?

GOOSE: Time to hit the bridge.

Panel 3

Goose drops a couple of coins onto Thatch’s outstretched palm. Thatch watches, screwing his face up with disappointment.

THATCH: Is this it?

Panel 4

Bull and Goose. Bull looks serious, Goose has a grin plastered across his face.

BULL: We need something left to show for our trouble. Dad would skin us alive if we spent it all.

GOOSE: You’ve got enough for a skinful of wine and a cheap tart.

PAGE 7

Panel 1

Bull and Goose stride off into the distance. Goose half turns his head to call behind him.

GOOSE: Come on little brother, keep up!

Panel 2

The milling Bridgetown crowds separate Thatch from his two brothers. He struggles to keep up, but there’s no way he’s going to find them in the crowd.

THATCH: Hey, wait for me.

Panel 3

Bull and Goose walk with the crowd at their backs, Bull checks over his shoulder.

GOOSE: We lost him yet?

BULL: Reckon so.

Panel 4

Goose slips Bull some coins.

GOOSE: Here’s your split of Thatch’s money then.

BULL: I couldn’t have kept a straight face.

GOOSE: You need practice to lie properly.

Panel 5

Bull and Goose walk off, arms around each other’s shoulders.

BULL: Now let’s go get pissed.

PAGE 8

Panel 1

Thatch walks down a narrow stairway in-between two buildings, descending into the darker parts of the town.

Behind him, at the top of the stairs, KAT, an attractive young thief, dressed in makeshift leather armour, runs in his direction.

THATCH: Bull! Goose! (small text) Could have sworn I saw...

Panel 2

Kat shoves Thatch out of her way.

Behind them at the top of the stairs, two gang members, BREVIS and FLEX chase after her. Both of them have bald heads. Both of them have a black handprint tattooed into their scalps as a symbol of their gang membership.

KAT: Coming through.

Panel 3

Brevis and Flex run past Thatch on the steps.

PAGE 9

Panel 1

In the street at the bottom of the stairs are another two bald, tattooed gang members, POL and NAIL. POL, steps out to intercept Kat.

The pair chasing her pass Thatch on the steps.

POL: Hold it, Kat. You owe us money!

Panel 2

Kat shrugs.

KAT: I don’t have it.

Panel 3

Pol pushes Kat onto the ground.

POL: Other ways we can get it out of you.

Panel 4

The four gang members surround Kat. Pol bends down to grab her arm.

POL: Lets see if there’s a girl under all that dirt.

PAGE 10

Panel 1

Thatch rolls his sleeves up, ready to protect the girl.

THATCH: Get your hands off her.

Panel 2

Thatch wades into the gang members, throwing an uppercut to Flex’s jaw.

Panel 3

In the foreground, Kat picks herself up. Flex lies on the floor behind her.

PAGE 11

Panel 1

Thatch punches Brevis in the nose. Nail raises up a cudgel.

Panel 2

Thatch grabs the cudgel in mid air.

Panel 3

Still holding the cudgel, Thatch pulls Nail closer and knees him in the stomach.

PAGE 12

Panel 1

Pol comes up behind Thatch. He holds a knife close to his waist, intending to stab Thatch in the kidneys.

Panel 2

Holding her hands together, Kat smacks them into Pol’s back. Thatch half turns, looking surprised.

Panel 3

Thatch grabs a cudgel from another, while punching a third in the gut. Kat smacks both her fists into Hans’ back.

Panel 4

Thatch and Kat stand over the fallen bodies of the gang members. Kat kicks the prone Pol in the side.

THATCH: Not very tough, these city lads.

DIRK: (off panel) Not very bright, these farm boys.

PAGE 13

Panel 1

A large panel - it should take up most of the page, leaving room for three fairly small panels along the bottom.

Thatch and Kat stand in between two clusters of gang members. Weapons are drawn - it looks nasty.

Dirk, the leader, stands with the group on the left. He has a dagger in his hand.

DIRK: Too stupid to know when they’ve fallen into a trap.

Panel 2

An arrow flying through the air

Panel 3

Dirk’s hand, the arrow through it. The knife drops from his grasp.

Panel 4

Dirk holds the hand with the arrow through of it in front of him. Still in shock, the pain hasn’t hit yet.

PAGE 14

Panel 1

Thatch and Kat stand in the centre of the panel. Surrounding them are Dirk’s band. Surrounding those are a new gang - the thieves.

Archers crouch on the top of walls, their arrows aimed at Dirk’s gang.

Panel 2

Kat reaches for Thatch’s hand.

KAT: Don’t just stand there.

Panel 3

Close up on their hands clasping together.

KAT: Let’s get out of here!

Panel 4

Still holding hands, Kat and Thatch run. The two gangs clash in the background, the tattooed gang clearly losing to the thieves.

PAGE 15

Panel 1

The fight no longer in view, Thatch and Kat stop for a moment. Thatch leans against a wall. Kat stands bent over, her hands resting on the top of her legs as she catches her breath.

THATCH: That was lucky.

KAT: Not so much. Spike was waiting for me there.

Panel 2

Close on Thatch’s face.

THATCH: It was a trap? Then you weren’t really in trouble?

Panel 3

Kat kisses Thatch’s cheek.

KAT: It was very gallant of you to come to my rescue.

Panel 3

Thatch scratches his head.

THATCH: Then I guess I...

PAGE 16

Panel 1

Kat grabs Thatch’s hand with both hers, pulling at him

KAT: Come on.

Panel 2

Just holding on with one hand now, Kat leads a confused-looking Thatch.

THATCH: Where are we going now?

Panel 3

Kat smiles at Thatch. a mischievous look to her eye.

KAT: You did me a turn. Thought I should return the favour.

PAGE 17

Panel 1

They pass underneath a stone arched bridge. On top of the bridge, a drunken Goose makes out with a painted tart who can’t be younger than fifty.

THATCH: How do you mean?

Panel 2

Midshot of Thatch and Kat, the bridge and Goose behind them.

KAT: Figure a country boy like you could do with the guided tour.

PAGE 18

Panel 1

Kat and Thatch cross a rope bridge. In the street beneath it, Bull is being sick in the gutter, much to the amusement of a group of drunken revellers.

KAT: Unless you weren’t done taking on the gangs of Bridgetown single-handed.

THATCH: I think I’m done for the night.

PAGE 19

Panel 1

Kat and Thatch approach the base of a tower. A primitive elevator, a cage attached to a chain winch, stands next to it. WINCH, a man with tree-trunk-thick limbs stands by the winch. He raises a hand in greeting to Kat.

KAT: Hey Winch!

WINCH: Still picking up strays Kat?

Panel 2

Winch peers forward to look at Thatch.

WINCH: At least this one doesn’t look like he’s got fleas.

Panel 3

Kat puts her arm around Thatch and squeezes close.

KAT: This is my very own knight in shining overalls.

Panel 4

Winch and Thatch shake hands.

WINCH: Going up?

Panel 5

Kat looks at Thatch, a hungry expression in her eyes.

KAT: I hope so.

PAGE 20

Panel 1

Kat steps into the cage. She holds out her hand to a hesitant Thatch.

KAT: Come on.

Panel 2

Thatch looks wary.

THATCH: Is it safe?

Panel 3

Kat grins, her hand still outstretched.

KAT: Where would the fun be if it was?

Panel 4

Thatch takes Kat’s hand.

PAGE 21

Full page

The cage halfway up the tower, Bridgetown laid out beneath it.

PAGE 22

Panel 1

The cage elevator at the top of the tower. Kat helps Thatch onto the roof.

KAT: What do you think of my town?

Panel 2

Wide across the page, Kat and Thatch looking across the town from on high. Thatch turns his head towards Kat.

THATCH: It’s beautiful. Just like...

Panel 3

Same as previous panel, this time with Kat pulling Thatch’s head towards her.

KAT: Just shut up and kiss me.
Panel 4

Same as previous panel, this time Kat and Thatch are having their movie happy ending kiss.

PAGE 23

Panel 1

Worse for wear, Bull and Goose stagger down the street, holding onto each other for support.

Bull stretches out his free arm to gesture, almost as if he’s telling a story about a fish that got away.

With his free hand, Goose cups his chest to indicate large breasts.

BULL: ...then after I’d drunken them all under the table...

GOOSE: ...should have seen the jugs on her, I’m telling you...

Panel 2

Thatch leans against the cart, waiting for them, a slightly dreamy look in his eyes.

THATCH: Hey guys.

Panel 3

Goose points at Thatch in drunken fashion.

GOOSE: Hey little brother. What you get up to?

Panel 4

Goose climbs up at the front of the cart. Bull climbs into the empty back, where all the turnips had been . Thatch sits at the back.

THATCH: Just a bit of sight-seeing.

BULL: You take it for the first bit. I’m going to lie down here for a while.

Panel 5

Side on view as the cart drives through the gate.

GOOSE: You can come up front with me for a bit, little bro.

THATCH: No, it’s okay, I’m good here for now.

PAGE 24

Full Page

Rear view of the cart, which has passed through the gate. Thatch raises a hand to wave at Kat, who crouches on top of the wall above the gate, watching the cart leave.

For the Trees

2008-01-18T18:28:00.001Z

This story should have been published in Mam Tor's Event Horizon No 3, but unfortunately EH folded before it could see print.

James was woken that morning by an insistent tapping on his window. The image of someone standing on the roof of his extension, drumming against the glass, came unbidden into his mind. Of course it couldn’t be, that was just his paranoid imagination talking. Birds, it had to be birds, he tried to convince himself. Yet, even with this rational explanation in mind, he still could not completely dispel the notion from his head.

There was only one way to persuade himself that this was not the prelude to his home being invaded by some demented psychopath. He eased himself from his bed, squeezing out from beneath the duvet and crept across to the window, careful not to alert whomever or whatever was tapping.

He flattened his cheek against the wall beside the window, trying to peer out without disturbing the curtain. Unfortunately, it lay flush against the wall, so he was forced to twitch it back, just a little. Hopefully the slight movement would be taken for the stirrings of a breeze within the room.

Peering out of the crack, he jumped as a gnarled finger hit against the glass. He steadied a hand across his chest, as if he could force his heart to return to a slower rhythm. The finger had been thin and brown. It was no bird. It wasn‘t a person either. The cause of the tapping was a the narrowest point of a branch, swaying against the window.

He should have been relieved. He might have been, had it not been for the simple fact that the only tree in his garden stood next to the back fence, well outside reaching distance of his bedroom window.

He jerked back the curtain, so hard that one of the plastic hooks snapped off the rail. Upon seeing the source of the questing branch, he was almost certain that he was still in a half-doze, improperly awoken. It had to be a remnant of his dream, his befuddled mind misinterpreting the play of shadow and light upon the glass.

Except the fast beating of his heart, the cold rush of adrenalin through his veins were assuring him that he was more awake now than ever. What he was seeing was real, no figment of his imagination.

There was a tree, spouting through the roof of his extension, bursting out like a fairy tale beanstalk.

The branches filled his view, making it impossible for him to see beyond the tree.

Was this some freak occurrence, a stray incident of nature gone insane? He would not put it past his bad luck to have such a thing happen only to him, to his house, but somehow he doubted that this unnatural occurrence would be restricted just to his home
James backed out of the room, quite unable to take his eyes away from the sight. He fumbled for the door behind him that led into the spare bedroom. Opening it, he backed into the room, only turning his gaze away from the tree when he was well inside.

He went over to the window, pulling back the curtains to look outside.

James lived in an end of terrace house in the centre of town. Outside lay Camberley Street, a fairly busy thoroughfare, lined by terraced houses, behind which lay yet more terraced houses. That was the view that greeted him every time he looked out of his window.

Not today.

Today, Camberley Street no longer existed. At least not in any form that James recognised.

The houses opposite were still there, although many had been overgrown with ivy and other green climbing plants. The road on the other hand had disappeared completely, replaced by trees, bushes, grass. An entire forest had grown up overnight, outside his front door.

After staring at the trees for long enough, he went downstairs and did what anyone would do when faced with a mysterious forest on their doorstep; he turned on the TV.

Static.

It was only a few moments later that the power went out.

***

James did not know his neighbours, except to acknowledge them with a nod whenever they passed going in or out of their respective houses. Some of them didn’t even merit that, just an embarrassed meeting of the eyes every once in a while. Still they said there was nothing like a crisis for bringing people together. James decided to put that axiom to the test and walked next door. When he opened his front door, he half expected the forest to have vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, but it was still there.

During the short walk to the house next door, he felt as if he was being watched, a sense of eyes fixed firmly upon the back of his head. He peered into the tree line, but could make out no presence there, human or otherwise. Yet the feeling persisted.

The front door to his next-door neighbour’s home was ajar. He resisted the temptation to barge straight in and rang the doorbell instead. As the seconds passed with no response, he grew increasingly uncomfortable under the imagined gaze of the watcher in the trees. Persuaded forward by this fear of what lay behind, he pushed the door open and called inside.

“Hello, is anyone there?”

A cry from inside provided the answer.

“I can‘t get up!”

It was not the most auspicious response, but it was something, a sign of life. James stepped cautiously inside, prepared to run at the slightest provocation. The call had come from the upstairs floor. He proceeded up the stairs, each step carefully taken, trying to make as little noise as possible, as if he might alert some terrible thing to his presence.

“I can’t get up!”

The second cry, as plaintive as the first, provided James further guidance once he had reached the top. Drawing a deep breath, he pushed down the handle of the door from behind which the cry had come. He threw it back, ready to fight or flee, depending on what he found there. The sight that met him caused him to freeze on the spot as conflicting signals to his brain denied him movement forward or back.

A tree grew in the centre of the room, having pushed its way through the lacquered floorboards. It had pierced the wooden slats of the bed, shredding the mattress, to continue its growth through the ceiling.

James’s neighbour had met with a similar fate to the bed‘s. He hung in mid-air, impaled upon the branches of the tree. The wood threaded through his arms and legs, twisting around them, bound so tight that where blood covered flesh and wood, it was impossible to spy where one began and the other ended.

A further three spikes of wood punctured his torso. Only a little blood leaked around the edges of the wounds, as the wood worked to plug the holes. A final spike had entered his left ear and exited through the top of his skull. For all that, he was still alive, although what sort of life was left was open to debate. Brain damage, madness brought on by his predicament, or a combination of the two had left him in a drooling, unfocused state.

“I can’t get up!” he cried again.

It was enough to snap James out of his frozen reverie. He stumbled from the room, promising to return with help. Little caring of the terrible state in which he left the man, he fled the house, all rational thought gone.

He stumbled, blind with fear, through the very forest that had brought this end to his neighbour. He tried not to dwell on the image of him hanging there, tried not to think of those four desperate words that were all that remained of the man’s vocabulary, yet he could not get them out of his head.

It was instinct that took him to the local railway station. The steps he took every weekday morning as he commuted to work were those that he now followed, his mind incapable of conscious thought while those memories continued to terrify him. The station was surrounded by trees, but the building itself appeared untouched.

The automatic doors to the station opened as he approached, the power outage having not affected them; presumably the station‘s electricity supply came from a different circuit. That there remained vestiges of civilisation might have consoled him, had he been in a state to be consoled.

The ticket hall was empty, the barriers open. Not following any particular plan, but instinctively seeking an exit, a means to escape this nightmare, James walked onto the platform. It too was deserted.

His senses returning, he thought to see if anyone else was present.

“Hello?” he called.

There came no response. If there were any people within hearing range, they were not ready to make themselves known.

Something squished underfoot. He jerked his foot back, faintly nauseated by the squelching sound that accompanied this withdrawal. He looked down at the glistening brown substance that had invaded the platform. Mushrooms!

There was something decidedly unhealthy about them. Moist, patulous in form, they appeared as a disease infesting the surface of the platform. As he backed away from them, James became aware that the shape they took was not entirely random. It almost appeared to be clustered in the form of a body, two arms, two legs and...

A face, part of a cheek, an eye and a nose, protruded from a clump of mushrooms. The eye stared blindly, the life gone from it.

It was not the only cluster of mushrooms to have infected the platform. All along its length, body-shaped groups littered the ground.

Even now the fungi were creeping towards him, intent on making him the anchor for their mycelium; the mushrooms he had pulled his foot from had closed the gap between him and them. James turned and ran for his life.

Reaching the ticket hall, he stopped to consider his options. He had left the mushrooms far enough behind to be safe for the moment. The way ahead, on the other hand, looked far from safe. Leaving aside the trees’ propensity to impale sleeping neighbours, there remained the question of what further horrors sheltered beneath their canopied boughs. James was certain he did not want to find out. Unfortunately, the way behind was closed to him, leaving only one other direction he could take.

He supposed that he could remain in the ticket hall and wait for help to arrive. How long it would take and whether there were any rescue services intent on scouring the forest for survivors would depend on how far the forest had spread. Which meant that he could be waiting anywhere between a couple of hours and forever. If the experience of other countries dealing with disaster relief was anything to go by, the last thing he should do was trust the authorities to provide a timely solution. He decided to brave the trees after all.

Presumably there must be others like him who had not woken up impaled on a tree and who had not succumb to carnivorous fungi. While some would still be holed up in their houses, some must have ventured out into the forest in search of food, assistance, safety. Strength in numbers, that was the key.

The question of where he might find these others was answered by a thick cloud of smoke drifting above the trees. It could have been a fire generated by no human intervention, but he chose to believe otherwise. It was the clearest suggestion of other living people he had yet seen. He had his direction, so he set out towards it.

Leaving the station, it was impossible to be unaware of how quiet the world had become. All the sounds of everyday life had vanished: no cars, no trains, no people. He almost wanted to cry out, just so he could be assured that he had not gone deaf. His instincts, however, told him to remain quiet. The last thing he wanted was to draw the attention of some predatory organism intent on stripping the flesh from his bones.

Among the trees, something stirred, rustling through the undergrowth. James took a step back, prepared to return to his shelter in the station. He caught glimpses, between the greenery, of dirty brown fur moving low to the ground. Rats!

James steadied himself, taking a deep breath to calm his nerves. Despite the feelings of fear and disgust that the thought of rats brought, he could not afford to become paralysed by the fear of a few over-sized rodents. Unlike the trees, there need not be anything unnatural about the presence of the rats. They were probably just survivors, emboldened by the presence of all this extra cover. Still, it unnerved him to think of them moving unseen through the forest.

He made good headway through the trees. At times the branches occluded the sky so he couldn’t see the smoke. He worried that he might become disorientated and wander off in the wrong direction. Certainly there was no use relying on the buildings as reference points; most of them were made unrecognisable by the vegetation that surrounded and engulfed them. He could have been walking past his own door, unable to recognise it.

Fortunately, the lack of recognisable landmarks did not prove a real threat to his navigational abilities. Each time the sky made its reappearance, he found he had not veered too far off course. At least his sense of direction was unaffected by the bizarre events of the day.

As he drew closer to the smoke, he discovered he no longer need to rely on keeping it within sight. Its smell conveyed its location just as effectively. He felt his heart quicken as he considered what he might find. There just had to be people, holding back the forest using one of mankind’s oldest tools. The thought that this might be an accidental fire was so bleak as to not warrant consideration.

The atmosphere thickened. Smoke particles, caught in rays of sunlight, crafted a ghostly atmosphere to the forest. James worried for a moment that the fire would provide an impassable barricade, that he would come so close to finding other people, only to be turned away at the last.

He need not have worried. Ahead he caught sight of a most welcome figure. Silhouetted against the smoke, a man stood, waiting. James felt the muscles in his chest unclench; it was as if he could breathe again.

“Hello!” he cried out.

The figure did not turn. For a horrible moment he though that like his neighbour, this ‘survivor’ was just another pin cushion for a tree, only one caught standing rather than sleeping.

“Hello?” he called again, more hesitant this time.

The man turned and waved. A tremendous weight passed from him. James hurried over, the forest a peripheral image in his rush to reconnect with humanity. He had almost reached the man when a hurtling form crashed into him, knocking him to the ground.

His head smacked hard against a tree root. The pain was intensive; it felt as if a spike had been driven through his temples. The world grew dim around the edges; unconsciousness beckoned.

He could still see the man who had waved to him. Two other figures had come upon the man, attacking him. Helpless, James watched through the fog of injury as the newcomers raised shovels and hacked into the man. The blades of their makeshift weapons lopped off his arms, split open his torso.

Then they decapitated him.

Even then they weren’t finished. They continued their attack on the separate pieces of the man’s fallen body.

Although he knew he had to be next, James found he could do nothing to halt his slide into darkness. Consciousness slipped from his grasp. His final thoughts as the light fled were of the irony of the situation. Threatened by the dangers this green Armageddon had thrown his way, it was his own species that would see him dead.

***

He wasn’t dead.

He had a splitting headache, but he most certainly wasn’t dead.

He cracked an eye open, by way of a test. Light flooded in, hammering all the way through to the back of his skull. He instantly screwed the eye shut again.

The next time, he pulled a hand up to shade his eyes before opening them. The pain was still there, only not so intense. A watchful face looked down upon him, made indistinct within the light.

“Sorry about that. I didn't know you'd go down so hard.”

Female. The voice was female. He had been shoved over by a girl?! Memories of his childhood escapades on the school playground came flooding back inappropriately .

He took a moment, before responding, to study the owner of the voice. His initial impressions, formed by her soft girlish tones were swiftly disproved. Her build was what might be termed solid. She was tall with muscles that would put most men to shame. Not that she could be called manly by any stretch of the imagination. He had heard the terms ‘statuesque’ and ‘Amazonian’ being applied to women in the past; this was one occasion where it was truly deserved.

It took James another couple of seconds to notice the two figures lurking behind her. His eyes widened in nervous recognition. There was no doubt in his mind that these were the two who had been hacking the man...

“It wasn’t a man.”

The woman’s statement interrupted his train of thought so neatly that he wondered if she was reading his mind.

“That was what you were thinking, wasn‘t it?” she asked. “That we’d killed him and then we’d start on you, yes?”

“It had crossed my mind,” James muttered, feebly.

***

The line of people - what used to be people, James corrected himself - stood at the edge of the trees, just beyond the reach of the flames. They made no menacing overtures, but they didn’t have to; their mere existence was menace enough.

“And they’re all dead?” James had to ask the question again. It was proving too much for him to accept, despite all he had already seen.

“All of them,” Ruth confirmed. “Just puppets.”

“Pinocchio‘s Revenge,” Tony added, unhelpfully.

Not satisfied with staking people to death, or letting them be consumed by mushrooms, the trees had sent roots into the dead bodies, reanimating them. The gusto with which Tony and his accomplice, Paul, had attacked the waving man had been necessary to ensure the corpse remained dead.

“We learned the hard way with the first one,” Paul explained. “Cut his head off and he still got back up, grabbed Allan and...”

He pointed to where one of the trees stood, a maw in its trunk wide-open, awaiting sustenance.

“You’ve either got to sever all the tendrils inside them,” he continued. “Or the main root. But that’s a lot thicker and by the time you’ve cut it, you're already fertiliser.”

They stood in the grounds of the local cathedral. Mercifully they were free from plant infestation. The trio of survivors had been working hard to keep it that way, hence the fires.

“There’s not enough soil for the trees to take root, what with all the crypts and passageways under the cathedral,” Ruth explained. “So they sent the bushes in.”

“You make it sound like a war,” James mentioned, watching Paul uproot a newly sprouted shrub.

“The war’s already over. We lost while we were sleeping. This is just survival.”

“Looks like we’ve got a lively one,” Tony announced.

James looked to see where he was pointing. One of the people-puppets had made it through a gap in the fires. A long, dark toot trailed after it, the string of its puppeteer. Tony picked up a spade and charged it.

“He’s very enthusiastic,” James commented.

“He told me he’d seen Dawn of the Dead seventeen times,” Ruth replied.

They watched in that awkward silence that near-strangers know best, as Tony dismantled the corpse.

“How long do you think it’ll take for them to rescue us?” James finally asked, by way of making conversation.

Ruth looked at him uneasily.

“What?” James asked.

She opened her mouth, as if to reply, but decided against it. She shook her head instead.

“It’s better you see this yourself.”

She led him into the cathedral and up a tightly spiralling staircase within one of the edifice’s two towers. They progressed in silence. James considered trying to elicit more information from her, but decided that it would be more productive to save his breath for the climb. Halfway up he developed a cramp in his leg and had to stop, leaning against the side of the stairwell.

“Is this really necessary?” he asked. “Couldn’t you just tell me?”

“You won’t accept it until you see it with your own eyes,” she said. “I didn’t.”

The cramp eased somewhat, so they continued. James had already figured out what Ruth was going to show him; he hoped that it wouldn’t be as bad as he feared.

It wasn’t.

It was worse.

They exited onto the flat roof of the tower. From their vantage point, they could see across the whole of the town and some way beyond. The villages that stood across the river estuary from them should have been visible from where they stood; they were gone, swallowed up in the green that covered practically everything within sight. Not even the water had survived the green taint; the river mouth was choked with vegetation.

“It’s everywhere!” James said, unnecessarily.

Ruth nodded.

“No one’s coming to rescue us, are they?”

“Probably not.”

James looked over the side of the parapet. It was a good distance to the ground. Idly, he wondered how long it would take a falling object to hit the paving slabs below.

“The cathedral has a well,” Ruth said. “The water’s still fresh. Some of the trees have fruit. The ones that aren’t trying to kill us.”

“You think we can survive here?”

“I think we could try. There’s really only one other option.”

She looked over the side of the tower.

It was a wrench for James to move away from the edge. The scale of the drop was hypnotic.

“Fruit?”

“Apples. At least. And I’m sure there’s more we can eat.”

***

As night approached, they took refuge inside the cathedral, staking out their space in one of the upper galleries. While they didn’t expect to see any trees growing out of the cathedral floors, they weren’t prepared to take any chances.

Sleep took its time coming and when it did, it was a fitful affair. At times it had the consistency of a fever dream, when James could not tell the difference between waking moments and nightmares. The rumbling of his stomach did not help either. Despite being famished, he could not bring himself to eat any of the apples that had been gathered. They were just too green.

When he first heard the noise, the wet bursting sound, he couldn’t be sure whether he was dreaming or not. At least not until the screaming shocked him fully awake. Which was when he realised that the screaming was coming from his own throat.

The trees had been unable to gain root within the cathedral grounds because of the paucity of the soil. They had found a way around that restriction by seeking root in a different type of soil. A miniature tree, about three foot in height, more red than green, had taken root in Tony’s stomach. The bursting sound had been its sudden and forced passage from his gut into the open air.

Tony’s body writhed about on the floor underneath the weight of the tree. It was impossible to tell if he was still alive, or just moving about as a result of misfiring nerve impulses in his cooling body. At least it was impossible to tell until he sat up.

His eyes were wide open, but vacant. Nobody was home, at least not in the conventional sense.

“It’s the tree!” Ruth said. “It’s doing this.”

Tony’s mouth flapped open noiselessly, as if he was attempting to talk by the mere effort of moving his lips.

“He’s trying to say something,” James said.

A rustling came from deep within Tony’s throat, shakily resolving itself into something not too dissimilar to words, although they made no sense and only approximated human speech in the most rudimentary of fashion.

“Asht... col...”

A spade, thrust into Tony’s chest, ended the attempt at communication. James scrambled back to avoid the spatter of blood and sap.

Paul pulled out the spade and chopped down again... and again... and again.

“What did you do that for?” James shouted. “He could have told us...”

“That we were going to die?” Paul screamed back. “We know!”

“They might have been willing to negotiate.”

It was a stupid thing to say, but even so James found he couldn’t stop himself voicing the thought. He wondered if this was the start of some bizarre form of Stockholm Syndrome. Was thinking he could reason with the trees the early signs of a downward spiral into madness, or was he exploring a real possibility?

Paul turned the blade of the shovel to point at James.

“They ripped him open!”

“Paul,” Ruth spoke calmly. “Put it down.”

Paul looked at the shovel in his hands, noticing his friend’s blood painted across the handle and blade as if for the first time. He dropped it as if it had scalded him, before collapsing to the floor. He wept.

“You,” Ruth turned on James. “Shut up! If you want to talk to the trees, go outside and do it.”

None of them returned to sleep after that. Keeping vigil until dawn, they watched each other for any sign of change. Even when daylight arrived, their worries still remained.

“Did he eat anything yesterday?” James asked.

He had been mulling over the sudden appearance of the tree. He was sure it hadn’t just miraculously sprouted from thin air.

“Apples,” Paul moaned. “Both of us. We were hungry.”

James looked across at Ruth. She shook her head; she hadn’t eaten them. He persisted with questioning Paul.

“Did you eat the cores? The pips?”.

Paul miserably shook his head.

“Did Tony?”

Paul nodded this time. Realisation dawned.

“You think I‘ll be all right?”

James didn’t want to raise false hope, but trees grew from the seeds, not from the flesh of the fruit. It seemed a fair conclusion to reach.

“If nothing‘s grown yet...”

Relief flooded Paul’s face.

“Well thank...”

He convulsed. Clutching at his stomach, a look of panic invaded his eyes...

...and he threw up the half-digested remains of the previous day’s meal. He groaned. Wiped his face.

“Thought I‘d had it there for a moment,” he muttered.

Which was when his head exploded in a mess of red and green.

***

James stood at the edge of the forest. After the tree had taken over Paul’s body it had tried to speak to them. As before the words had not been ones they could understand. It was clear that they formed part of a language of sorts though. Sentience lay behind the actions of the forest. Whether each plant acted as an independent agent, or as part of a collective mentality remained to be seen.

What James was about to attempt terrified him, yet he didn’t see that they had any alternatives. The idea that they might be able to reason with the trees had not left him, if anything it had grown stronger with seeing the Paul-puppet struggle to communicate. Ruth had tried to talk him out of this. Standing there, he was beginning to wish that she had succeeded. It was not too late to turn back, but it seemed now he had come this far, he might as well see the experiment through.

“I‘ve come to talk,” he whispered to the trees.

The rustling in their leaves carried echoes of his words deep into the forest. After a while, James felt a rising pressure, an awareness of an unseen presence, something huge beyond his understanding. He felt his bladder go, but he was beyond embarrassment; it was simple acknowledgement of the overpowering terror.

Yet somehow he managed to remain upright, his knees trembling, but not buckling.

The leaves in the trees rustled again, in unison this time, as if the whole forest was shivering. They seemed to be saying... yes.

One of the trees bent over, bowing down as if to examine James. In turn he looked up at it, waiting. It reached out a branch. James responded in kind by reaching out his hand, palm extended to show he meant no harm. He tried to not shake too much.

The branch touched James’s hand, almost gingerly as if afraid it would spook him. He watched with a sense of wonder, the terror dying down to a more manageable level. Here he was making contact with an alien intelligence, even though it was one of terrestrial origin. It was a moment that would, under any other circumstances, have gone down in history. As it was, it would be left forgotten, unless the trees themselves carried memory of times long past.

“I wanted to -- ”

A spike of wood shot through his hand, the contact changed from tentative to forceful. Reflexively, James tried to pull away, but couldn’t. Tendrils of wood wrapped around his wrist, trapping him there as the tree forced its way inside him.

The initial sharp pain was replaced by a creeping numbness as the tree seeped into his body, chloroplasts and corpuscles mixing in a union of sap and blood. James felt the anaesthetic infusion spread to his head and as sensation left him, so did the world.

Cut off from his senses, he felt his mind expanding, spiralling out into patterns strange and wonderful. He floated through a dreamscape of disconnected shapes and colours. The forest was present as a single entity, enveloping him, whispering to him in the voice of the leaves. He heard the words and couldn’t understand them, yet he knew the meaning laced between them, knew exactly what he was being told.

The forest burned. Not with the pitiful fires lit by the human survivors, but with the memory of all the burning of all the forests across the Earth. It had burned since man first set out to tame the world he infested. It burned with the destruction of the ancient European forests, reduced in size until they were little more than scruffy parkland. It burned with the razing of acres of woods, as corporations cleared grazing land for beef cattle. It burned with the forests poisoned by defoliants during war and toxic waste dumped during peacetime.

Trees died and with each one the forest died all over again.

James felt humbled, overwhelmed with the shame that he was part of this.

“But we’re not all like this,” he tried to tell it.

The forest understood.

It just didn't care.

"We can change."

Disbelief. James was not sure that he believed that either. There had to be hope though, didn’t there?

"Some of us can?"

Why should the wood offer mercy?

"We can be useful."

The forests survived long before man. What use to a tree is a walking piece of meat?

James had no answer to give. He was no diplomat, no wise negotiator. There might have been words to sway the trees, but if such words existed, they did not lie with him. What could he possibly offer the trees?

Then he realised, he had already offered it.

"Without us, who is there to worship you?"

The forest considered this.

***
Ruth ran to meet him halfway across the cathedral grounds. She stopped short of embracing him. He saw her reaction to the changes made to him. His skin was a darker hue, its texture rougher, harder. His hair had changed too, tinged with green, it had thickened, become more feathery.

"What happened to you?"

She could not hide the horror in her voice. He found that he couldn’t care less.

"The forest and I managed to come to an agreement."

"What do you mean?"

"We have to leave this place now."

"And go where?"

James pointed into the forest.

"There are other survivors."

"How far? Will we need supplies, food?"

"The forest will provide."

She was already jumpy. Something in the tone of his voice, his choice of words, must have alerted her to the danger. She ran, heading back to the safety of the cathedral.

James sighed. It would have been so much easier if she had just come with him. For a moment he considered not pursuing her. After all, she had saved his life. But it was only a moment he hesitated. Really he had no option. The trees had told him to do this; his agreement with them was conditional upon it. She had been party to the burning of trees; she could not be part of the bargain.
So he followed. Somewhere along his path he picked up a shovel. It wasn't necessary for what he had to do, but it would make an easier ending.

"I don't really have a choice," he told himself. “I have to do this.”

For the trees.

Theseus

2008-01-02T17:25:00.002Z

The ship held the future of Athens in its wooden embrace. Theseus, Prince of Athens, heir to the throne, rode in the prow. The salt-laden air stung his face with its furious lash, but he refused to turn his gaze away. There it lay, the island of Crete. A peaceful coast have the lie to its true nature, the doom of all Athenians. If events continued as they had the past twenty years, Athens would be sucked dry of its youth, all victims to the appetite of the beast that lay inside the palace labyrinth.

Theseus had barely become acquainted with his father before volunteering to join the cream of Athenian youth travelling to Crete. Born to a woman of ignoble birth, the result of one of his father’s legendary dalliances, Theseus had come forward to claim his birthright a scant matter of months before the departure. Having only female progeny by legitimate alliances, King Aegeus had welcomed Theseus with open arms. Medea, Aegeus’s paramour of the moment had been less than enthusiastic. After a poisoning attempt failed, she had fled with Medus, her wretch of a son, for parts unknown.

Ironically, her actions had cemented Theseus’s position at court. From usurper, he had swiftly moved to blameless victim. The forgiveness he had then offered Medea, when his father had given her life over to him, had seemed magnanimous in the extreme. It had therefore been all the more shocking to the court when Theseus had volunteered to be among the annual sacrifices Athens offered.

Aegeus had been distraught to say the least, suddenly gaining a son, only to lose him almost as fast. Theseus had persuaded his father that not only was the mission necessary, but that it was survivable, if among the youth that were sent to Crete were those trained in the art of war. He was not sure Aegeus had been convinced entirely, but he had been granted permission to travel to Crete.

Theseus had been unsure of what welcome would be awaiting them on the island’s shores. Whatever he might have guessed, the welcome they did receive was completely unexpected. From the moment the ship put in at the harbour, they were treated as honoured guests. Crowned with garlands of flowers, they were carried to the palace in litters. There, in the central palace courtyard, they presided at a great feast. Tables were filled to overflowing with fruits and meats and the bounty of the sea. When they were sated, they leaned back on cushions and watched as the entertainment began. Dancers and musicians filled the square with colour, movement and song.

After they were done, two handlers led a young bull into the centre of the square. Silence descended on the Athenian youths as they considered their own fate. An insult? Theseus wondered. Yet why the charade of exalting them above all others at the feast? It must instead be tradition, he decided. A symbol of the festival’s purpose.

The handlers left the bull in the centre of the courtyard, while they retreated to its peripheries. Four Cretian youths, two male, two female, devoid of all apparel, sprinted out to take up positions around the bull. A server leaned over to explain the purpose to Theseus.

“They will leap the bull to tire it out before carrying out the fatal blow. It requires great skill to avoid being trampled or gored to death.”

Theseus barely took in the man’s words. Instead he found his attention drawn to one of the bull-dancers. There was a poetry to the way she moved that he had never seen before, each step a sensuous exercise, delicate yet assured.

“Who is she?” he asked the server.

“Ariadne. King Minos’s daughter.”

The following moments were ones Theseus experienced in a haze approaching delirium, yet which he would recall in his dreams until his dying days. The male bull-dancers wrestled with the bull, while the two women took it in turns to leap over the beast, somersaulting across its back. The other woman was competent and certainly attractive enough, if the lewd remarks from the other Athenian men were anything to judge by, but Theseus paid no attention. The fearless lithe movements of Ariadne hypnotised him so that he was deaf and blind to the rest of the world.

His attention did not go unremarked. One of the male bull-dancers murmured something to Ariadne. She glanced Theseus’s way. Their eyes met and he felt himself falling into the depths of those vertiginous brown orbs. A smile, a flick of the hair and she danced off to throw herself across the back of the bull once more.

The Athenians were housed in one of the palace’s towers, ahead of their descent into Minos’s labyrinth the following day. As befit the son of a king, Theseus had a room to himself. The bed was so luxuriously soft, he found himself asleep almost as soon as he lay down.

He dreamed of Ariadne, which was why when he awoke he first thought he was still dreaming. She stood in a shaft of moonlight, just as naked as she had been when leaping across the bull. Wordlessly she slipped underneath the covers of Theseus’s bed.

“How did you get here?” he asked.

“The gods sent me.”

Theseus awoke just ahead of the dawn, the sun still below the horizon, but already lightening the darkened sky. There was a space in the bed where she had been, the impression a physical memory of their night.

A skittering noise from outside drew Theseus to the window. Looking below, he saw a monstrous shape climbing down the wall. The body was that of a monstrous spider, but where the head should be, instead there was a human torso, a twisted centaur-like form. Theseus’s breath caught in his throat, only a rattling hiss escaping. The creature reacted to the almost imperceptible sound, turning its head sharply.

It had Ariadne’s features.

Turning away from him, the Ariadne-spider scuttled into the shadows and out of sight.

Overcome with... with what? Shock? Horror? Revulsion? Theseus sat down on the floor and stared at the wall, which was where the guards found him when they came for him at dawn.

The slab of stone ground into its place at the top of the stairs, covering the entrance to the labyrinth. The sacrificial victims carried torches to light their way, but nothing else that could be considered a weapon. Theseus cast his eyes around the tomb-like structure in search of anything that could be used for defence, but there was nothing but solid stone walls and bare sand. The hopelessness of their situation did not prevent him from bending over and picking up a fistful of sand.

“What do we do now?”

The question came from Tellus, one of the young soldiers Theseus had included in his party. Theseus thought for a moment before answering.

“We track the creature to its lair. If we die, it won’t be because we stood by waiting for our end.”

Finding the creature’s lair was not as easy as Theseus might have hoped. He had thought to track it by its spoor, but the passages of the labyrinth all appeared identically undisturbed.

“Perhaps it erases its marks,” Lydia, one of the seven maidens, suggested.

“Or if it’s so intelligent, perhaps it wears cloths on its hooves so it doesn’t leave a mark,” one of the men sneered.

Theseus considered the man. Cleon was his name, he recalled. Not one of the trained men Theseus had selected; Cleon was one of the few members of the party chosen by the lottery. Volunteers had been scant among the army, so their party had been bolstered by those picked by the Fates. Theseus could easily discern why the Fates were content to see Cleon meet his end in Minos’s labyrinth.

Theseus nodded at Lydia, acknowledging her comment.

“It has to be a possibility. Or perhaps you have a better explanation, Cleon?”

“That there aren’t any marks because this man-bull doesn’t exist. They probably dump us down her and let us starve to death.”

“And then come down to erase our tracks?” This time Lydia was the one doing the sneering. “Why bother?”

Unseen by any of them, a shadow detached itself from the wall and grabbed the nearest of the men. His abrupt cry drew the attention of the others just in time for them to see him being yanked back into the darkness.

“What in Hades was that?” Cleon’s face had lost all of its colour.

They swung their torches at the darkness, forcing the shadows to retreat.

Nothing but bare walls.

A clattering of hooves behind them caused them collectively to turn around.

Again, nothing.

“Not very bull-like, hiding in the shadows,” Theseus taunted.

A low grunting came from one of the darker parts of the passage.

“I think you’re making it angry,” Lydia said.

The creature charged at them, full pelt. Its sights set on Theseus, it lowered its head to gore him with a set of wickedly sharp horns.

Theseus raised his sand-filled fist and released, neatly stepping aside as he did so. The creature charged past him, through the cloud of sand. It pulled to a halt, rubbing furiously at its eyes.

“Take him now,” Theseus ordered.

The four remaining soldiers, Cimon, Tellus, Erastus and Hippias stepped forward. Reversing their torches, they hit the creature. Almost as soon as they had started, they were joined by Lydia and Meri, one of the other women.

Blinded, the creature stumbled in one direction then another, trying to fight its assailants, but only able to grasp empty air. Eventually the battering took its toll. The creature collapsed to its knees. Theseus stepped up behind it, grabbed its horns and yanked. The snap of the neck echoed across the walls.

The danger passed, Cleon’s recovery of his wits was rapid. “That’s the mighty Minotaur? Doesn’t look like much to me.”

“Which is why you were cowering behind everyone,” Lydia said.

“There wasn’t room around the thing with all you hanged up on it. If I’d had the chance...

“Handy that you won’t have to prove it as we’ve killed the only...”

“This isn’t the Minotaur,” Cimon announced.

“Bull head, human body, what else is it?” Cleon asked.

“This is only a juvenile. I grew up on a farm, I know cattle.”

“I’ll bet you do.”

Cleon’s comment earned him a sharp look from Lydia.

“If this is a juvenile, then the Minotaur must be breeding,” Theseus reasoned.

In the quiet that followed Theseus’s statement another sound could be heard - breathing. It had the heavy snort typical to livestock.

“We’re not alone,” Lydia said.

“Spread out,” Theseus ordered. “Form a circle.”

They did as they were bade, holding back the darkness by flickering torchlight. Around them shadows danced on the walls. Some were merely the result of the play of torchlight, others were much more sinister of appearance and intent.

“How many are there?” someone, one of the women, Theseus didn’t know which, whispered.

“What I wouldn’t give for a sword,” Cimon announced.

As if waiting for that cue, a heavy bundle hit the ground in the ground in the centre of their ring. The sound of metal clattering metal was instantly recognisable. A cloaked figure dropped down next to the bundle, startling the Athenians. The figure pushed back the hood that covered its face, revealing the features of Ariadne.
"It's all right, she's a friend... I think," Theseus said.

"I thought you might need these." Ariadne bent down to unwrap the bundle.

One of the shadows took that moment to charge at them, not willing to wait for Ariadne to reveal her gift.

Ariadne reached into the pack, drawing out a sword. She threw it to Theseus, who caught it by its hilt before turning to ram the point of the sword into the creature's chest.

While Ariadne passed out the rest of the swords, Theseus pulled his own from the chest of the creature. He swung it around to lop off the beast's head.

The remaining bull-men charged as one. What followed was a battle Theseus best remembered in fragments of action: swords hacking, limbs flying, horns goring, death and dying all around. At one point he thought Ariadne had reassumed her spider form to dispatch one of the beasts, but it could have just been a trick of the flames.

The battle over, they counted up the casualties. Erastus and Hippias were both dead, as were two of the women whose names Theseus had failed to learn. Lydia provided the answer to him.

"Paenoia and Salamia."

Theseus nodded his thanks; it was important to mark such things.

There were injured among them too. Most of the injuries were superficial. Tellus proved more of a problem. He had been gored through the chest. The injury had not proven instantly fatal, but judging from the ever widening pool of blood beneath him, he would not survive the day. The question of what to do with him hung on everyone’s lips, but all were unwilling to entertain the options they had open. In the end, Ariadne took it upon herself to provide the solution, but she would not carry out her self-appointed task with the others looking on. Theseus ordered them to turn away, but he kept his eyes on her.

Ariadne's legs thickened, transforming into the body of the giant spider. Her robe spread out so that the join between human and arachnid could not be seen. She opened her mouth, revealing a set of fangs that showed the changes were not limited to her lower body. With those teeth, she gently punctured the skin of Tellus's neck to inject what Theseus assumed was a swift acting venom. Certainly Tellus's relief from pain came immediately, the release into death following only a short while longer. Ariadne assumed human form and nothing was spoken of Tellus's end.

The journey into the labyrinth was smoothed by Ariadne's knowledge of its twists and turns.

"The labyrinth is much like a web," she told them. "And I have an affinity for webs."

As they proceeded, she told the tale of the Minotaur. She told of how her Pasiphae, her father’s first wife, had been cursed by Aphrodite with an insatiable lust for the White Bull of the Sea. She told of how the queen had ordered Daedelus, the inventor who would also design the labyrinth, to fashion a simulacrum of a cow, into which she climbed. She told of how a year later (the gestation time for god-bulls being different to humans), her baby had torn itself free of her womb with its prenatal horns.

"And what of your mother?" Theseus asked.

"It is said my father was seduced by Clotho, spinner of Fate's tapestry. Nine months after the seduction she returned and presented him with a child."

"You?"

Ariadne nodded.

"The spider?"

"An aspect of the spinner."

By this time they had come to the centre of the labyrinth. Theseus determined that he should go on alone.

"If I should die, then you must take whatever steps necessary to defend yourselves," he told them. "But I have it in mind that I should face this Minotaur alone. He did not ask for this fate, this life underground, but suffers it because of the capriciousness of the gods. I will face him as a man and as a man I shall see him end."

He did not add that the wounds the others carried would only prove a hindrance. Nor did they confess they fully understood the reasons he had not spoken. The rest was welcome and none of them desired to meet the creature who had spawned the demons they had fought.

Only Ariadne continued on with him, telling him that she would not interfere with his plans.

"But there are others who would need my ministrations and I would not have that task fall upon you."

Unlike the rest of the labyrinth, the centre of the maze where the Minotaur dwelt was well furnished and full of light. Openings, placed in the ceiling high above, allowed the passage of the sun, creating shafts of light that punctuated the strangely opulent chamber.

Sitting in kingly fashion on a throne constructed from olive wood, red velvet and human skulls, the Minotaur regarded his visitors. Behind his throne, chained to the wall, sat seven women, all naked, all in the final stages of pregnancy. They looked up at Theseus with desperate eyes. A desperation born out of fear for this man-beast, no doubt, Theseus thought.

“So this is the man who would make an end of me, man-to-man,” the Minotaur said by way of a greeting.

“And who would free your captives.”

Theseus indicated the women behind the throne. The Minotaur laughed.

“They’re not my captives. They’re the prisoners of Minos, just as I am, just as you are.”

“Minos didn’t put them in chains.”

“The chains aren’t to keep them trapped here; they’re to keep them hurting their babies when the moment comes.”

“What moment?”

The Minotaur lowered his voice to a guttural growl. “When my children tear their way free from their mothers’ bellies as I tore free from my own.”

And Theseus understood the meaning that lay behind the women’s desperation. Not fear of the Minotaur, fear of his unborn progeny.

“Monster!” he snarled at the Minotaur.

“For doing what comes natural to me?”

“For tormenting them with their fate.”

“Oh, that.”

Without a word of warning, Theseus charged the Minotaur. The Minotaur leapt from his throne of skulls to meet the attack. Bone and metal clashed as the Minotaur used his horns to parry Theseus’s blow. Metal won out, as the sword cleaved the Minotaur’s left horn in two.

Bellowing in primal agony, the Minotaur reached out and grabbed Theseus. His thick fingers dug into Theseus’s chest. Crying out in pain, in anger, Theseus shifted his still steady grip on his sword and plunged it into the Minotaur’s side.

The bull-man threw Theseus to the ground and pulled the sword free. With it still dripping his own gore, he swung it overhead, intent on plunging it through the top of the human’s head.

He stopped, a look of surprise came over his monstrous features. A bruising pain inflicted his abdomen; his strength appeared to be leaching out of him. He looked down to see the cause. The broken piece of his own horn jutted out of his stomach, where it had been thrust by the human, tearing across his abdomen. The light grew dim, darkness swam across his eyes, as his viscera spilled out of him, along with his life blood.

Theseus rolled out of the way as the Minotaur crashed to the ground. Standing up, he surveyed his fallen foe, before retrieving his sword. He turned to the women, intent on finding a way of easing their journey into the next life, but the job had already been done.

“I have spared them the agonies to come,” Ariadne told him.

Theseus bowed his head in mournful acknowledgment.

They left the maze the same way Ariadne had entered it. An entrance had been installed by Daedelus, as insurance against the possibility that Minos might have him imprisoned within. From there they hastened to a rocky inlet where the ship that had brought them waited, unseen by any Cretian patrols.

Underway, Theseus stood at the prow, his bull-dancing, spider-princess at his side. He was unsure of how he felt about her now. Much of her allure had disappeared when her secret had become known to him. Still, there was plenty of time to come to a decision before they reached the shores of home.

He glanced at the sails, billowing darkly against the night sky. Black they were, to hide the ship’s presence as it sailed through the hours of darkness. He remembered the promise he had made to his father before departing for Crete.

Black sails, he thought. Must remember to do something about that.

Bullets and Banshees

2007-07-26T19:55:00.001Z

The following is the first part of a short story due for publication in late 2007/early 2008.

The Lexington Hotel on the corner of Michigan and 22nd was difficult to miss. The brick and terracotta structure dwarfed the surrounding buildings, reducing them into insignificance. Nevertheless, the cab driver still saw fit to announce it as we pulled up at the front.

"There you go, miss. Lexington Hotel."

"Thank you." I reached for my purse, intending to tip the driver.

"You don't need to do that." The driver waved at me to stop. "Fare and tip both paid for in advance. Be more than my life's worth to hustle you for any more."

As I stepped from the taxi, I looked around to gain my bearings. The trolley line ran outside the hotel with a stop nearby; I would be able to get back home easily enough. I would have ridden it to the hotel, had my prospective client not insisted on sending the cab.

Even though I had chosen to wear my Sunday-best frock, I felt distinctly under-dressed for the occasion, as I stepped into the hotel lobby. Bedecked in crimson and gold, it was a far grander place than those I usually frequented. I felt as if every eye was on me as I approached the reception desk, although I knew this to be just my own paranoia. Yet the beady gaze the rat-like reception clerk gave me made me wonder if there was reason behind my paranoia. I must confess that his unwelcoming expression threw me off my stride a little.

"I have an appointment to see a Mr. George Phillips." It was barely a whisper, my voice betraying me at the vital moment.

"You'll have to speak up," the clerk sneered. His gaze lingered derisively on my dress, but he refused to make eye contact. Clearly I had been judged and found wanting.

"An appointment." My voice cracked this time as I tried to keep a lid on the annoyance I felt at this creature's prejudice. "With Mr George Phillips."

The clerk's demeanor changed immediately. The snotty tones dropped from his voice; his body language took on a more subservient mien.

"Mr Phillips, yes, right away madam."

He lifted a telephone receiver and dialed a single number.

"I have a miss ..." He ran his finger down a page in a ledger open in front of him. "Sara English to see Mr. Phillips."

He listened intently for a couple of moments before replacing the receiver in its cradle.

"You're to proceed to the fifth floor."

He indicated the bank of elevators across the lobby from us.

"Which room?" I asked.

The clerk laughed nervously. "All of them."

Upon arriving on the fifth floor, I was met by two sharply dressed men. Neither of them had the look of a reputable gentleman: their faces looked battered, in the manner of boxers; and there was a leer to their expressions as they regarded me. They insisted upon checking the contents of my purse, but stopped short of patting me down for concealed weapons, which was gallant of them, if a little naive.

Frankie, the broader of the two men, who had the physique of a boxer to match his crooked nose and cauliflower ears, led me through into the suite of rooms. We passed through into an office, where a widely proportioned man with thinning black hair sat in an armchair reading that morning's newspaper.

"Mr Phillips?" I ventured.

"If you like," he said as he lowered the paper to look at me.

I stifled my response. The features of the man in front of me were immediately recognizable, considering he was the most famous man in Chicago and a regular feature on the front pages of the city's newspapers, including the one he had been reading.

His name was not George Phillips; it was Al Capone.

"She clean?" Capone asked.

Frankie nodded.

"Then get lost. I want to talk with her alone."

Frankie nodded. Backing out of the room, he closed the doors, leaving me alone with the man considered to be Public Enemy Number One.

"Take a seat." Capone gestured to a two-seater sofa. "Something to drink?"

I shook my head as I sat. "No thank you."

Capone sat facing me, not saying anything for a moment. I shifted in my seat, my levels of discomfort rising until the realization hit me: the most-feared man in all Chicago was nervous about telling me his problem.

"Ray tells me you're the real thing," he finally said.

I nodded, unsure how I should respond. "I was able to help Mr. Manelli with his problem."
Capone leaned forward in his seat. "I got similar ... issues."

"I'm sure I could try to ... "

"No!" Capone hammered his fists against the arms of his chair in a violent outburst. Had I not been seated, I would have jumped back several feet. "I've had enough hucksters 'trying' to help. You're genuine: prove it."

My heart was racing, but I was resolute that I wasn't going to let it show. "I need to know more about the spirit," I told him as calmly as I could. "What appearance it takes, when and where it appears."

The tension dropped away from Capone. The act of taking his problem seriously seemed to have gone some way toward mollifying him.

"It's a dame ... a woman," he told me. "She's all dressed in black ... a long flowing black dress. I been seeing her every night since I did that stretch in Pennsylvania. First she'd appear at night outside my cell. Now she takes to floating outside the hotel. And what's worse is that noise she makes."

"Noise?"

"Yeah. Broad wails as if someone capped her kid."

Capone could not have failed to notice my reaction. I am sure that I must have blanched as white as snow.

"You know what I'm dealing with?" he asked.

"A banshee."

"Then you can help."

It wasn't a question. I wasn't sure I should tell Capone that the banshee’s cry traditionally foretells the death of the person who heard it. On one hand I didn't think he'd take the news well; on the other he had survived for more than a couple of nights after hearing the wail, suggesting there was something unusual about his situation. Either Capone had some form of unusual protection, or something else was holding the banshee back. Whatever the case might be, it meant that there was some room for me to work. It was possible that I would be able to help Capone after all. Even if I couldn't, the chances were that he would be dead, in which case I didn't exactly have to worry about his response to my failure.

"I can help."

Capone smiled briefly before adopting a more business-like manner.

"What do you need to get started?"

On my request, I was shown to Capone's bedroom, where I was left alone. The windows looked out over Michigan Avenue and some way beyond, but my interest was not in the view, at least not the one outside the window.

The concept of a third eye, one with oracular powers, goes back into antiquity. There are a number of spiritualists who claim to have this ability, although I've yet to come across one who actually manifests their third eye. Most claim that it's about spiritual reality, not what can be seen with regular sight. However, my third eye is real enough that its plainly visible in the middle of my forehead when I use its sight. Anyone attempting to touch it though, as many have, would only feel the unbroken skin of my forehead. The prodding is irritating; unfortunately some people don't seem to be able to satisfy their curiosity unless they can stick their grubby fingers all over everything.

The eye is illusory, an outward manifestation of my abilities. Despite its unreal qualities, it does manage to set me apart from the majority of the charlatans claiming to practice the esoteric arts. At the very worst it serves as a neat party trick.

It does have its drawbacks however. Aside from the aforementioned prodding, it has also had the regrettable effect of scaring a number of people. It sent my own mother into a screaming fit when she saw a third eye blink open in the middle of her seven-week old baby‘s forehead, at least so I've been told. Despite my extraordinary mental powers, I can't claim to be able to remember the incident.

Settling into a cross-legged position (not entirely necessary, but I find it comfortable), I closed my eyes and let all the tension drain from me. I blocked out my awareness of the things around me: the noise from the traffic outside the hotel, the scent of Cuban cigars lingering in the air, the press of the carpeted floor against my rear. My third eye opened with a rush of awareness.
I had been told that with my real eyes shut and my third eye open I look like the Cyclops of Greek myth, but it was a sight I'd never seen for myself. The illusion that creates the eye is one of the mind and unfortunately cannot be photographed.

It felt, as it always does, as if a whole new world had been revealed to me. I could see the trails in the air left by people passing through in the past; I could see shadows cast by the future. I could also see the points at which the spiritual realm pressed up against our mundane world.

The building was home to several ghosts: guests who had checked out of life, but not the hotel. Some of them had passed peacefully, leaving little but the faint waft of memory to mark their passage; others died violently, leaving a psychic tumult in their wake. Several floors beneath me, the basement perhaps, a dark stain, the scene of some unspeakable crime no doubt, spread its cancerous tendrils throughout the hotel, tainting everything with its malignant essence.

More pertinent to my purpose there, I could see the trace left by the banshee: where it had been and from where it had come.

Capone lent me his limousine and two of his bodyguards, Frankie and a slimmer, weasel-faced man: Hymie. I had been prepared to take a cab, but he had insisted.

"I want her taken care of properly," Capone had informed the two men. "If there's so much as a hair outa place, I'm taking it out of your hides."

I suppose the threat was supposed to reassure me; it only had the effect of making me feel sorry for Capone's two men.

The Cadillac was a beast, luxurious to be driven about in, but a beast nonetheless. Frankie, who had elected to ride in back with me, informed me about the alterations Capone had made to it.

"Bullet proof glass, back and front," he said. "Inch thick steel plate. You could unload a Tommy gun into her and you wouldn't see a dent. Tires will run even if they're flat. And then there's this."

He opened a hidden compartment to reveal a stash of weapons: handguns, Thompson machine guns and even, Heaven forfend, hand grenades.

"Never get caught on the hop in this beauty," he said, resealing the compartment. "So, if we run into any trouble ... "

"Hopefully it won't come to that," I interrupted, not wanting to even consider the unleashing of that arsenal for my benefit. I already had enough wandering spirits to deal with in my life; the last thing I needed were a load more, created because of me.

I had Hymie stop the car several times as I rechecked where my sight was leading us. It would have been possible while moving, but it was so much easier to take a proper bearing while not ducking in and out of Chicago's traffic with Hymie using language at the other motorists that would make a sailor blush. The route we took meandered in a northerly direction, heading into what Frankie informed me was the Irish gangs territory.

"Eventually they'll all roll over for Al," he informed me. "But for now they're still causing trouble."

Irish would make sense, I thought, considering the banshee was an Irish spirit. How could such a thing be raised though? My understanding was that the banshees only sang to herald the deaths of the Irish nobility. I couldn't be certain that my facts were accurate though. Unlike other spirits, I had no real knowledge of banshees. My awareness of Celtic spirits sprang from the books I read, many of which were contradictory.

"Stop here," I instructed Hymie, wanting to once more check our bearings.

He pulled over to the side of the road and again I slipped into my meditative state. The first time I had done so in the car, Frankie's shocked gasp had brought me straight out of it again. Subsequently he had managed to still his reaction to the manifestation of my third eye. I could tell he remained uneasy though; he hadn't managed to look at me directly since.

The world opened up to me and immediately I could tell something was wrong.

"We have to go. Now!" I yelled.

Startled, Hymie froze, not sure how to respond to my sudden order. Frankie solved his quandary for him. "Drive! Back to the Lexington."

The attack, when it arrived, came out of nowhere, literally. The air several car lengths ahead of us rippled and bubbled, busting open to expel a number of riders on ferocious black stallions. Both riders and mounts were clad in dark brown leather armor. Steam snorted from the horses' nostrils, a sight made all the more terrifying by the fact that it was at least 70 degrees outside.

Hymie spun the wheel around, sending the car into a barely controlled spin. Jamming his foot on the gas pedal, he did his best to put as much space between us and the new arrivals as possible.

Frankie gaped through the rear window at the riders who were urging their horses forward in pursuit.

"What the hell are they?"

My third eye still open to the perceptions of the unseen world, I opened my other two eyes to look at Frankie.

"It's the Wild Hunt."

"They won't be so wild after I'm done with them," Frankie said.

He pushed on a lever attached to the rear window. The whole assembly folded down, giving him a clear line on our pursuers. Pointing his Tommy gun out of the hole where the window had been, he opened fire. The signature ratatattat sound of the gun filled the car. I clapped my hands over my ears to block out the noise; my third eye disappeared along with my concentration.

"Keep the car steady, Hymie," Frankie growled. "I can't hit these mugs if you keep juddering about."

"You wanna come up here and drive?" Hymie threw back.

Frankie resumed firing as the Hunt closed the gap between us. Despite the larger target, Frankie's aim seemed to be no better.

"I'm hitting them," he announced. "But it ain't having any effect."

"Iron!" I realized. "That's the only thing that can hurt them."

"Why didn't you say so before?" Frankie responded. "Hymie, give them some smoke."

Hymie pulled out an unmarked knob on the dashboard. Thick black smoke poured out of the tailpipe.

"Burns oil," Frankie explained to me. "Should give us the cover to make this work."

I peered into the dark cloud tailing us. I could just about make out the indistinct forms of our pursuers.

"They're still gaining on us," I told Frankie.

"Not for much longer."

Frankie slid open a small hatch in the middle of the floor between us. I glanced back behind; I could see the green glowing eyes of the horses.

"Whatever you're going to do ... "

Frankie upturned a box over the hatch. Roofer's nails spilled out into it. They rattled underneath the car.

"Pipe runs underneath the car," Frankie explained. "Use it for puncturing tires."

The sound of hoof beats chasing us abruptly stopped.

"Cut the smoke," Frankie ordered.

Hymie depressed the knob. Within seconds the air behind us cleared. There was no sign of the Wild Hunt. They had vanished along with the smoke.

Capone paced angrily, in danger of wearing a trench in the thick carpet that covered his study floor. He stopped and pointed a shaking finger at me.

"If this is a way of you extorting more money from me ..."

"Mr Capone," my tone was cold, business-like, in complete contrast to how I really felt. "I can assure you that obtaining more money is the furthest thing from my mind. At the moment it's my well-being that I'm more concerned about. Calling up the Wild Hunt is not some parlor trick."

"And you two." Capone rounded on Frankie and Hymie. "How can you go along with what this broad is saying?"

"I swear it's the truth, Mr Capone," Frankie said. "Miz English was the one who saved us from them."

"How?"

"The Huntsmen, like most of their kind, are vulnerable to iron," I explained.

"Iron? So I can get rid of that banshee by sticking her through with a poker?"

"I doubt it's that easy, Mr Capone. The temporary loss of a single banshee would likely prove little deterrent to your adversary."

"Temporary loss? I thought you said they were vulnerable to it."

"It can hurt them," I replied. "Even send them back from where they came. But it won't kill them."

Contemplating this, Capone strode over to the window, where he looked out over the city. His stance was that of one who owned all that he surveyed. From the lawmakers to the law-bringers, Capone ran Chicago. His hold over the city might not be complete, but as far as it counted, the city belonged to him. How this loss of control must rankle, I thought. Here was something over which he had no power.

"These things don't like iron, huh? Hymie, get to Diversey Park. I want enough iron rounds for all our boys. If these Irish ... things want a war, we'll give them Armageddon."

After Hymie had left on his errand, Capone turned to me.

"You'll stay here. You're hired on as my ... spiritual adviser for the duration. Frankie, get her set up with a room."

I knew it best not to argue, but I couldn't let Capone run roughshod over my life without the slightest protest.
"I don't have any of my things here," I told him.

Capone scowled. "After you're done with the room," he said to Frankie. "Run her back to her place so she can pick up what she needs." He paused for a second, thinking. "And then take her over to Marshall Fields and let her buy whatever else she needs. On my account.""

According to the clock in my hotel room, it was two minutes past midnight when the wailing began. I had slept for a couple of hours earlier in the evening following my shopping expedition, but I was wide awake now. Blocking out everything but the wail, I slipped into the light trance that allowed me to access my abilities. Prepared, I stepped to the window and threw it wide open.

Floating around the building, the banshee's attention snapped onto me. She hung in mid-air for a moment, before floating over to my window. She had the appearance of a young woman, long flowing copper locks, wide green eyes and wore a long green dress that came down past her ankles, trailing behind her like gossamer in the wind.

"What do you want here?" I asked.

The banshee, staring straight into my third eye, answered, entranced. "Capone's soul."

"Why haven't you already taken it?"

The banshee frowned, then shook her head, breaking free of the spell. "Beware mortal." She pointed an accusatory finger at me. "You play with forces beyond your ken."

With those words of warning, the banshee floated away from the window to resume her wailing lament.

"I'm sure I haven't heard that before," I muttered. All manner of spiritual nasties had attempted to warn me off in the past. I was still here; most of them weren't.

A window above me, on the fifth floor, banged open. A gun barked, loud into the night. The shot found its mark in the center of the banshee's forehead. Her wail diminished rapidly, as did the banshee, until all that was left was a faint echo in the wind. Then that too was gone.

"How'd you like them apples!" Capone shouted from above.

His window banged shut. I closed my own more gently, wondering what effect his action would have. Two hours later I found out as I was woken from a fitful sleep by a caterwauling from outside. I rose from my bed and dragging my bedclothes with me padded over to the window. This time it was not a single banshee lamenting the forthcoming death of Al Capone, but rather an entire chorus of them.

I returned to my bed. Stuffing a pillow over my head to block out as much of the noise as I could, I tried to return to sleep.

Bleary-eyed and in desperate need of a pot of thick black coffee, I joined the assembly in Capone's office. Out of everyone there, only Capone seemed to have had as bad a night as mine.

"Explain to me why I'm the only one who heard that racket last night," he asked me.

"The banshee's lament is only intended for the ears of one person," I answered. "So only you, or someone sensitive to the spirits would be able to hear them."

"You heard them too?"

I nodded. I caught a fleeting expression of relief cross Capone's face that he was not alone in his experience, but it disappeared so quickly that I wasn't sure if I hadn't just imagined it.

"All right," Capone announced. "This is what we're gonna do."

Fog rolled in off Lake Michigan, blanketing the Graceland Cemetery. Frankie peered out through the windshield of Capone's Cadillac, using his sleeve to wipe away the condensation forming on the inside of the glass.

"I don't like the look of this," he grumbled.

I was forced to agree; I was sure there was a preternatural quality to the vapor. I could have checked it out with my third eye, but the attack by the Wild Hunt suggested that someone had taken notice of the use of my ability and was taking steps against it. As an attempt to avoid this unwanted attention, I was using techniques that required a less conspicuous use of power. By holding a small brass pendulum over a city map, I had used simple divination to locate the cemetery, letting the pendulum be led by the power pouring out of it, rather than my own power. It was less reliable than my sight, but given the sheer amount of power being used, it was unlikely that I was mistaken in my identification of Graceland as the focal point.

"You want to turn back?" I asked. It was worth suggesting the option; I couldn't see how this could possibly go well for us.

"Only if I want Al using my head for baseball practice," he replied. "Okay, if we're doing this, let's get on with it."

There were twenty-one of us in all. In Hebrew numerology twenty-one was considered to represent wisdom. Not that Hebrew numbers were going to help us much. In Celtic numerology, as a product of three, twenty-one would be considered a number of power. Perhaps that was a better sign.

We came into the cemetery by way of the entrance on north Clark Street, fanning out once inside. Frankie kept close to me. I wondered which of us was supposed to be reassured by the other's presence.

"What are we looking for?" he asked.

"An altar. It'll have a circle surrounding it, possibly salted and probably with a couple of triangles inside it."

"Ain't going to be easy spotting it in this." Frankie looked around at the fog.

"That's why I have this." I set my pendulum swinging. It favored a direction north across the cemetery. "This way."

As we ventured deeper inside, the fog worked to isolate us from the rest of the city, so that Chicago became nothing but a memory. Phantoms, conjured up by the fog, played at the edges of our vision. Optical illusions, they nonetheless had everyone twitching at every gust of wind. A scratching sound somewhere beneath us only added to the atmosphere of poorly concealed terror.

A skeletal hand thrust itself up through the fog, breaking free of its bonds of grass and soil. A hail of hot iron greeted its arrival as all but three of the gangsters fired upon it, blasting it back to its resting place.

"Save your ammo," Frankie ordered. "We don't know what else is ..."

He didn't have the opportunity to complete his sentence. All around us the graves gave up the dead. The gangsters fired upon them, instinctively drawing into a rough circle. I took shelter in the center, scraping my own circle in the cemetery soil with my shoe. Inside the circle I drew an inverted triangle with a line bisecting it a third of the way down, forming the Celtic symbol for earth.

I crouched down over the triangle, swinging my pendulum over it, tracing the lines in the air. Trying to make the pendulum follow straight lines, when it naturally wanted to move in circles wasn't easy, but it did the job well enough for it to work.

"There's too many of them!" yelled Charlie, one of the younger members of Capone's crew.

I glanced up from my work. The press of animated cadavers, some of them nothing more than bones and rags, threatened to swamp the gunmen. Even with the automatic fire of the Tommy guns tearing them apart, every corpse mowed down was replaced by two new ones, like the heads of the Lernaian Hydra. If I didn't hurry and finish my work we'd all be dead, regardless of the weight of the firepower.

I swung my pendulum faster; the motion lines it left grew stronger, more definitive. They began to glow with a life of their own, forming a burning triangle in the air above its counterpart in the cemetery soil.

Overwhelmed by grasping hands, one of the gangsters fell to the onslaught of walking cadavers, dragged down into the fog. His screams were barely audible amid the cacophony of machine gun fire, which was some small blessing. The circle of guns drew in a little tighter around me, increasing my already screaming sense of claustrophobia.

I stopped the pendulum moving with my free hand. Even without the tracing action, the motion lines remained floating in mid-air, a bright light in the gloom of the fog-filled cemetery.

The reanimated dead overwhelmed another of the gangsters, several of them jumping on top of him at once. The others opened fire on them. A bullet finished the hapless gangster instead of the dead. Rather than fall over as the life left his body, the gangster's corpse was instead held up by the press of the dead around him. A moment later he moved again, his body animated by the same force that infected the rest of our assailants. Moving in an uncoordinated fashion, he brought his machine gun to bear on me.

I froze, my muscles locked in a spasm of fear. My ritual was still unfinished; his bullets would not only take my life, they would be responsibly, directly or otherwise, for the death of everyone with me.

The dead gangster pulled the trigger.

Grandma's House

2007-07-26T19:44:00.001Z

Grandma’s House

Originally published in Mam Tor's Event Horizon Book 2 with illustrations by Emily Hare

“Stay on the path, stay on the path,” Red muttered to herself over and over.

It was good advice, if only she’d been able to keep it. The problem was the path was no longer there. A bridge was supposed to take it across the river that ran through the middle of the woods. Unfortunately, all that remained of the bridge were two broken ends on either side. The recent rains must have swollen the river to such an extent that the timber supports had given way. The river was more or less back to normal now, it was a shame the same could not be said for the bridge.

Red had two options: turn back or find another place to cross. Turning back would mean she had failed; until she completed the journey she would not be recognised as anything more than a child. Crossing elsewhere meant using the ford that lay about half a mile upstream. That meant her journey would take her a mile off the path. The route was not an unfamiliar one, but she had always taken it with her father, during the hours of light, never alone, or in the middle of the night.

The pact ensured that no traveller using the path would come to any harm. Oaths signed in blood enforced the bargain, the old magic to all intents and purposes impossible to break By travelling off the path at night, Red was putting herself in harm’s way. The wolves would have no compunction about attacking anyone travelling through their woods, even if the travel was necessitated by the path being impossible to navigate. Nature, red of tooth and claw, did not have any sense of fair play.

By keeping to the banks of the river, Red hoped that she could mitigate the danger. Unfortunately while the wolves might prefer the shelter of the trees, they did not hesitate to venture into open spaces when it served their needs. Some of the bolder among the woodland breed would even venture into the village from time to time. After all, that was how Millie’s boy was lost, stolen by an opportunistic forest wolf.

The village men had organised a hunting party, tracking that particular wolf to her lair. She had lost a son of a similar age and had sought to replace him by stealing Millie’s child. The boy was unharmed, although from the moment of his return it had been obvious that he had been changed.

He had grown into a sullen child, shunning the company of his peers. His return to the forest was almost inevitable. Two days shy of his ninth birthday, that was exactly what he did. Millie had begged the men to track him down and bring him back again, but they had refused.

“He’s got the forest in him now,” Red’s father had said. “And there’s no turning a forest wolf into a town hound.”

The journey away from the path started uneventfully enough. Red hadn’t expected to encounter any problems right away. After all, with the path only a short distance away, it would be counterproductive for any lurking wolves to attack her while she still had a good chance of escaping. Perhaps if they were patient enough, they would wait until she reached the midway point at the ford when she would have to run half a mile in either direction to reach safety.

She almost turned back as she considered these possibilities, so convinced was she that they were lying in wait for her. However, the woods were large enough that there was every chance she wouldn’t come close to a single living soul during her midnight walk. She could easily be scaring herself for nothing.

“A surplus of imagination is what you have, m’girl,” her father would tell her; that and “Stop living in what might never be, it’s hard enough just living in the now.”

Red disagreed with her father, something she was finding happened more and more these days. Her mother put it down to the awkward nature that came with growing up. Red wasn’t convinced by that either. She didn’t think she was being awkward, she had just grown to realise how stupid her father could be. She still loved him greatly and respected him for the way he had brought her up; she was just convinced that he was completely and utterly wrong about certain things.

Still in one way her father was right, she did need to stop dwelling on those things that were beyond her power to change and concentrate on those that she could. For instance she couldn’t stop the wolves from being there by worrying, but she could plan ahead so that she could escape if they were waiting for her. She figured that the river was her best bet as an escape route. It was deep enough that she wouldn’t break her neck if she jumped in, even from a height, and it was fast enough to facilitate a quick getaway.

A crunch in the undergrowth drew her attention. She jerked her head around trying to spot the cause. She peered into the trees, trying to distinguish shadow from substance. Her imagination filled in the details of faces and forms lurking just beyond her sight. Another crunch came. This time she directed her focus to where she was sure it originated. Nothing moved, not a sight, not a sound. She held her breath, not dar5ing to make a noise, lest she startle or attract the source of the noise.

A rabbit bolted from the trees. In her sudden fright and just as sudden relief, she tried to inhale and exhale all at the same time and ended up hiccupping instead. At least it hadn't been one of the wolves. Her reaction speed had been so poor that she would have been devoured from nose to toes before having so much as a chance to consider flight.

The pregnant moon played its light across the shallows of the water; she had reached the ford. It was no coincidence that Red travelled during the full moon. The tradition that had her traipsing through the woods in the dead of night was connected to the time of the moon. The heavenly body was a symbol of the monthly cycle, the feminine tide of blood and fertility. Its passage symbolised the journey that Red had undertaken as she moved from childhood into womanhood.

The moon was also linked to the wolves, at least according to the stories told to frighten the children. They might have been more frightened were they to learn that the danger from the wolves didn’t just exist for the three days of the full moon, but all month long. The transformation the wolves underwent was one of choice, not of lunar pull. It was true that the wolves treated the moon as a sacred object when it was in ascendance. However the link was purely spiritual, there was nothing physical to it.

As she waded into the river there was no sign she had any company, save that offered by the silent presence of the forest’s trees. She splashed noisily across the ford in wilful disregard of both her fear and all common sense. She exalted in the sensations of the pebbles beneath her feet, the water lapping up her legs and the wind picking at her hair and clothes. This was living, this wade through the moonlight-flecked waters, not knowing if she would be around to see the dawn.

Across the river, she calmed down, the full moon fever having abated somewhat. Her sense of self-preservation once more rose to the fore. She re-examined her situation. She was half a mile from the safety of the path, in the middle of wolf haunted woods, her feet were wet and cold and there was no turning back anymore. Satisfied with her reality check, she continued on her way.

She had been walking for no more than a few minutes when she discovered that her plan to follow the river had run into a snag. Her chosen path was blocked by an impenetrable barrier formed by a cluster of deformed trees twisted into one another, thorny brambles surrounding them. There was no chance of going down to the water’s edge either. The riverbank sloped upwards to form the start of the gorge over which the broken bridge used to pass.

There was only one way forward - deeper into the forest.

Red held her position relative to the moon. Whatever else might happen, she had no intention of getting lost in the woods. Unfortunately her best intentions came to naught as the bending boughs of the trees soon obscured the night sky so that she could no longer rely on it for her bearings. All she had left to judge her path was her own sense of direction.

As she navigated her way through the trees by this blind sense, she came across a clearing. Again she could see the moon, and judging by its position in the sky, she had not strayed too far from her intended path. It was while she paused to take her bearings that she saw the wolf moving out from the shelter of the trees at the far side of the clearing. Red bent low, hoping that the creature wouldn’t see her. The wolf strode into the centre of the clearing, raising his head to gaze at the moon and he howled.

He was a magnificent beast. Red marvelled at the movement of his muscles under his pelt of dark fur, restrained power, like a spring waiting to uncurl. Red wondered what he would do if he caught her. The strength of his arms could easily rip her apart. A shiver of fear ran deliciously down her spine, as she alternated between terror and arousal. The feelings were not new to her, but never had she felt them together, never so strongly.

She could visualise the waves radiating off her body, her presence overpoweringly overt.
The wolf twisted his head around, seeking something out in her direction. He had felt it too! Red felt almost dizzy as the contradictory emotions collided in a maelstrom of fear and desire.

“I know you’re out there,” the wolf growled, deep in his throat.

Red held her tongue. Conflicted between her instinct to flee and the magnetic pull of the wolf, she chose the middle option and remained hidden.

The wolf sniffed the air, tasting her scent on the breeze. He sighed with deep satisfaction.

“Young, fresh, female. Guess where you’re going at this late hour, under this full moon.”

He sniffed again, drawing the air deeply in, as if enjoying a gourmet feast.

“Such a shame to waste your prime flesh on that shrivelled old harridan. I think perhaps I should do the honours instead.”

He moved in her direction, his steps measured, full of that barely controlled power. Red couldn’t put off the decision any longer, unless she wanted him to make it for her, but she wasn’t willing to cede that responsibility. She slowly rose almost hypnotised in his presence, a sacrificial bride to this this creature of fang and claw with his deep voice and his smells of sweat and fur and forest and blood. His upper lips curled, revealing those unsheathed fangs in all their glory. The thick redness of a fresh kill stained his lips, flecked his muzzle. He was intoxicating.

Red ran.

The wolf was taken aback for a moment, surprised by this apparently sudden change of heart. Had he been quicker off the mark, he could have taken her there and then, but he was too late. Red ran into the cover of the trees. While the wolf might have had the advantage of speed in the open, she knew that the twists and turns dictated by the greenery would reduce that advantage by some degree.

Even so, she knew that she would not long keep from his reach. Her only hope lay in the path being near enough for her to make before he could close the gap between them. She dodged between tree trunks, aware now that the river was running on her left, guiding her back to the path. Behind her, close now, almost within reach, the wolf crashed through the vegetation, all subtlety lost as he abandoned himself to the chase.

“Smell so good,” he growled, close enough that he might have been speaking directly into her ear.

Red refused to turn, knowing that doing so could cost her the race. Ahead her finishing line, the path, appeared. She dug into her reserves, put on an extra burst of speed and... snagged her foot on a tree root. She stumbled headlong into a denuded bush, the bare twigs scratching at her skin, tearing at her clothes. She rolled out of it to come face to face with the wolf.

“Hello, fresh meat,” the wolf said.

Red was unsure what would come next, whether she should fear or welcome it. She wouldn’t find out. As the wolf drew its head back, a flash of silver passed across her line of sight, taking the wolf’s head with it. The man-like body of the wolf, capped by a bleeding stump of a neck, remained in position for a second longer, before collapsing lifeless to the forest floor. Red gasped, too shocked for any other reaction.

A large, hairy, but human hand reached down to help her up. She took it and was yanked to her feet like a cork from a bottle. She overbalanced into the thick embrace of her rescuer.

“Easy there.”

He set her right, letting her stand unsupported.

“Are you all right miss?”

Red nodded, unable to find her tongue for the moment.

Her rescuer looked to be in his twenties, perhaps with as much as a decade over Red, perhaps less. He was powerfully built, a tree trunk of a physique. His axe, the flash of silver that had passed before Red’s eyes, gave away his profession; he was a woodsman.

“What are you doing out here at this time of the night?”

“I’m v-visiting my grandmother,” Red managed to stutter. “She lives in a cottage in the woods.”

“Well, it’s no time of day for a young lady such as yourself to be travelling through this forest,” the woodsman told her. “How old are you anyway? Fifteen?”

“Seventeen!” Red replied, her fear displaced by indignation. It was the age of majority in those parts and she was not going to let this stranger think of her as a child.

Obviously the answer was pleasing to the man, as he grinned foolishly at her. “Well even so, you shouldn’t be going about unescorted at this time of night.”

“Perhaps you could walk with me the rest of the way to my grandma’s house.”

“I’m sure I could at that,” he replied, trying to appear nonchalant.

Without a backwards glance, Red walked off in the direction of the path, knowing that he would follow.

“So why are you travelling in the dead of night?” he asked after catching up with her.

“It’s tradition.”

“What sort of strange tradition requires midnight hikes through monster-infested woods?”

His reply was mocking. Red shot him a hurt look. He backed off immediately.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult your customs. I just don’t understand why you would need to do something so dangerous.”

“It’s not dangerous if you keep to the path. The wolves can’t bother travellers on the path.”

“I wish I’d known that before I stepped into the woods. That’s the second of those brutes I’ve had to kill this night.”

“There was another?”

“Aye. Evil looking brute. Eyes as dark as his wicked soul. He would have done for me in an instant had I faltered. So, can you tell me more about this custom, or is it something strangers aren’t supposed to know?”

“It’s customary among my people that when someone comes of age, they’re initiated into the rites of adulthood by their oldest living relative. The Journey of the Moon is one part of that initiation.”

“Journey of the Moon?” The woodsman looked up at the full moon. “That’s why you’re out here on your own?”

Red nodded. “I’m supposed to make the journey by myself along the path. Only the bridge must have washed away, which was why I was walking through the woods.”

“Is it all right me being here then?” he asked. “My presence doesn’t invalidate the ritual or anything?”

“No. You’re a stranger to us, so it doesn’t matter you being here.”

“So what else does this initiation involve?”

“There is the Kiss of Welcome and the Sharing of Flesh. My first act as a woman is to find a man.”

“I see.”

Even though they were only lit by the moon, Red could still see the darkening of the woodsman’s cheeks as the blood rushed to his face. She touched his arm.

“I’m hoping I won’t have to look too far.”

The woodsman was spared the need to fumble for an answer; their destination was in sight. In the middle of a clearing in the woods, next to the path, stood a cottage with a thatched roof and gabled windows. A white picket fence surrounded the tidy rows of a vegetable garden; a cobblestone pathway neatly bisected the garden, running from gate to door.

“You need to remain here,” Red told the woodsman.

He nodded and settled down to wait.

“Will you be long?” he called after her as she walked up the garden path, but she was thinking so hard about what was to come next that she forgot to respond.

Red knocked on the front door.

“Come in, dear,” a voice called out from inside. “The door’s on the latch.”

Red pushed the door open and stepped inside the cottage. The interior gave the lie to the rustic charm of the outside. It felt more like cave than cottage: dark, claustrophobic and drafty.

“I’m in the back, dear,” the voice called.

Red walked along the narrow passageway that wound itself through the house. Candles, stumps of red wax perched in recesses along the walls, provided a flickering illumination. The pulse of the light was almost rhythmic; Red found herself keeping in time as she walked.

The passageway seemed unusually long, even with its surprising twists and turns. Red was sure that the cottage she had seen from the outside couldn't have contained it. She finally came to the end: a wooden door. She was about to knock when the voice called out again.

“Come on through, come on through.”

The room beyond, curtained with red silk sheets, was no better lit than the passageway. Smoke from the candles spread across the room lent a hazy pall to the atmosphere. Wooden tables, cabinets and shelves held all manner of macabre bric-a-brac ranging from petrified monkey paws to rune-covered skulls.

In the middle of the room, a shawl covering her legs, a gnarled old woman sat in a gnarled old rocking chair. She peered at Red over a pair of wire-framed spectacles.

“Come closer dear, these eyes don’t see so well.”

Red moved nearer to the old woman, unsure of what to expect. The old woman scrutinised her closely. Red blinked in surprise, she was sure the woman’s eyes hadn’t been so large a moment ago.

“Your eyes...”

“You’ll have to bend closer,” the woman said. “My ears don’t hear so well any longer. Now why are you here?”

Red bent to speak into the woman’s ear.

“It’s my time of majority.”

Red jumped back, startled. She knew that the woman’s ears hadn’t been so long a moment before.

“Then I welcome you with this kiss.”

The old woman opened her mouth, revealing rows of large, sharp teeth.

Then she leapt out of her chair to sink them into Red’s arm.

The woodsman had waited at the bottom of the garden, far enough from the cottage that when he heard the first scream he hadn’t been quite sure that was what it was. By the time the second came, he was almost at the front door, close enough to be certain.

The screaming had stopped by the time he reached the back room, but the cause of it still remained. A wolf, stood over the body of the red-headed girl. It wiped a paw across its bloody muzzle.

“So you’re the one who’s been killing my boys in the forest.”

The voice was that of an old lady. Distantly the woodsman noted that it seemed strange coming from those jaws. His eyes flicked to the body of the girl and back again to the wolf.

“In defence of myself for the first. The second only after he tried to hurt the girl.” He wasn’t sure why he was talking with the wolf. It must be the shock of it all, the coherent part of him considered. The rest of him just thought about taking his axe and putting an end to the life of another murderous wolf.

The wolf cackled in response to his statement. “Hurt her? Hump her more like knowing those randy buggers. That’s why they won’t let them in town. No manners whatsoever.”

The woodsman swung his axe back. “So it’s only you who kills children?”

“Only to bring forth the adult.”

As the woodsman swung his axe, his legs were yanked from under him. He crashed to the ground, his weapon flew across the room as his chin met the floor.

Red let go of his legs and sat up. The woodsman turned to see her leaning over him.

“Now we share flesh,” she told him.

There was just enough time for the woodsman to say one more thing.

“My, what big teeth you have!”

Extract from The Tourist Guide to Hell

2007-05-18T21:44:00.000Z

Where to Stay

Hell does not have any tradition of hospitality whatsoever, unless one includes the type of hospitality that involves flails, nails being driven into eye-sockets and the over-use of red hot pokers; however the recent change in management style has seen a number of guest houses and hotels spring up. While the options are still fairly limited, there is enough to cater to most traveller’s tastes. Prices vary from the extortionate rates charged by some of the palaces that accept guests to the extremely cheap flop-houses that don’t actually offer a bed, but do offer a line to lean against while sleeping.

The accommodations selected have been chosen for their good value, excellent facilities, or location. Where indicated, hotels may also meet the needs of a more discerning clientele. Should a traveller be disturbed by loud screaming throughout the night, or not relish the opportunity to have their genitals nailed to a board, then it is advised to steer clear of these establishments.

Beelzebub’s Palace. This sumptuous palace in a Medieval style offers much to the traveller willing to pay extra for luxury. Built c.1130 AD, the palace was originally intended for the Lord of Flies, however he only stayed in it for two nights before ordering the architect boiled in pig fat and a new palace built closer to the centre of Dis. Master bedrooms come with hot and cold running succubae as standard. One word of warning: the pool is not for swimming. Unwary guests have found themselves short a limb or two after a quick morning dip.

Cthulhu House. A themed hotel built specifically for tourists. Cthulhu House offers the Disneyland approach to vacations, presenting a more sanitised version of Hell. Indeed it is even rumoured that Uncle Walt himself had a hand with the initial designs, although the Walt Disney Company‘s press office categorically denies any suggestion that its founder is anywhere south of the Pearly Gates. Guests are greeted by a reasonable facsimile of Howard Phillips Lovecraft at main reception and taken up to rooms in either the Miskatonic or Dunwich wings of the hotel. For the more discerning visitors, an extra £500 per night will allow them to stay in the Arkham Suite (straightjacket optional).

Pandemonium Hotel. A welcoming, if noisy establishment. The Pandemonium Hotel was first opened to cater for travelling demons and as a result has easy access to Dis Central Terminal. The west wing of the hotel has been redesigned to accommodate human tourists and rates are quite reasonable. For cheaper rooms, it is possible to rent suites still intended for the more Hellish denizens, but travellers are advised to use the communal showers as those installed in the rooms tend to only be suitable for guests with acid-impervious hides.

The Bates Motel. Another themed hotel, although without the charm of Cthulhu House. The Bates Motel can be found on the main road out of Dis and is one of the better stops outside of the capital city. Accommodations are fairly basic, but of an acceptable standard. Special rates are available to transvestites. A cheaper rate is also available for cabin number one, although travellers are advised that the savings made are not worth the risk of a mid-shower visit.

The Flogged Sinner. A guest house in the old tradition. Very popular with the S&M set, although these days it also caters to a wider clientele. The inn provides one of the better breakfasts in Dis, the whipped omelette and the flailed partridge being particular delicacies.

Eating Out

Travellers are advised to ensure they take sufficient supplies to last their stay. While the restaurants in Hell cater for all palates, those with anything less than a cast-iron stomach will find it difficult to keep down their cordon bleu fare when the eater at the next table may be tucking into a dish of suckling paedophile. However, eat outside of the main dinner hours of 4-10 pm and the experience can be well worth the awkward timing.

The best restaurants in Dis can be found in the Glutton’s Quarter. Intended as punishment where over-eaters would be forced to eat until they literally burst ( a sight far more unpleasant than the one portrayed in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life) , the quarter has given rise to some of the best chefs on any plane of reality. Open 24 hours a day, it’s best to time your visit to the moment when the gluttons are still on their early courses. Breakfasts are usually safe, save in the few cases where there are still some late night eaters whose stomach staples have not yet burst.

Outside of the Glutton’s Quarter, there are cafeterias on most main streets. The food served in these establishments tends to be plain fare, often cooked with a little too much brimstone, lending to a rotten egg smell to much of the cuisine, but there are rarely any customers exploding at the next table. For those customers not interested in cannibalism, the long-pig-in-a-blanket is definitely off the menu. It is also worth checking the ingredients used before ordering the soup du jour.

When travelling outside of Dis, it is strongly advisable that tourists eat only the food they have brought with them. Most eateries cater to demonic tastes and usually involve some form of cannibalism. Travellers are reminded that even though Hell permits such practices, the International Convention on Infernal Travel allows for the prosecution of all tourists once they are back on home soil. A chain of roadside restaurants has recently opened under the banner of Pit-Stops to provide tourists with non-human fare, but there have been issues regarding food contamination. If any dishes are labelled “May contain nuts”, it is advisable to steer well clear of them.