Month: October 2016

     Now we have heard tell of Moultine Monck and his deeds, the fall of young Mary, and the musicians’ tragedy.  And there is a final story here to tell.  So let us begin:

Leshy

Part three (part one, part two)

 

      “If able, I would bear it, I do not deny my effort—but the god of Love has conquered me…”

-Orpheus

 

     Quite literally an exact week beyond the consumption of our musical revolutionaries, a young trapper called Stogan Woolverton, that so merry a humble huntsman, sought to marry the fair Yuelle Everhart, the gentrous daughter of a local landowner, Pealcut Everhart—seriously, that was his name.

     Of course, no contemptuous lesser dare endure their child’s positional descent.  Thus, the cavalier Pealcut refused good Stogan his daughter’s hand.

     But the two were ever amid so perilous a mighty whim—love.  The huntsman and his devoted match shared a bond which twisted between what admissible affairs had lately preoccupied their futures, charging their detached marital abandonment.  Since Lord Everhart would have none of this conspicuous charade, he forbade his daughter from indulging her heart’s delight.

     Reclusion overwhelmed the poor Stogan and he would hear not his love’s pleas to meet so as to dissuade his unacceptable attraction.  This was until a midnight visit from the Reverend Edicet.  The daring Reverend offered to wed the two lovers in three night’s time amid the ruins of St. Gibb’s chapel, lest they lose their affectional rarity forever.

     Bewildering euphoria consumed the pair amid lovely contemplation for three long days.  They met on the third night at the chapel with Reverend Edicet and Stogan’s trusty comrade, Nevil, to witness.  Young Yuelle donned her handmade gown while the three men exchanged haunted theories of their necessarily distant venue.

     It was then that Stogan Woolverton happened to spot an abandoned fiddle—the lost device of our third late soldier, unfortunately released amid the swampous flood which carried him away—and began to jest a lighthearted sinfonia.  He stopped when Yuelle appeared from behind a chapel wall, dumbfounded amid his bride’s perfection.  He could hardly speak, let alone produce something of an equivalent grandeur on the violin.

     They rushed to an embrace and encouraged the wedding’s conclusion.  But the quivering Reverend had begun considering how foolish a venture braving the chapel was.  His woe was met with the rousing herald of drum and flute.  Soon enough, the floor of the wood quickened and with its haste crawled the muddy scraps of men.  The Reverend was plucked from among the trespassers first and swallowed into the marsh.

     Stogan and Nevil were seasoned combatants and stout with courage, but never a horde of damned had they encountered.  They resisted the mud with ferocity and hurried Yuelle to high ground.

     But ere they could reach a hill, Berkeley Monck collected the young bride from their clutches and whisked her back into the fog.

     “No!”  And with that, Stogan dove directly into the stream of the dead and fought his way back to the chapel.  Nevil charged closely behind.

     It would appear their valiant efforts afforded a moment of asylum as all about the men retreated.  Even Yuelle stood alone within the chapel walls in utter disbelief.  But her fear had not diminished and the laughter and chimes of young Mary Githblid resonated about the wood in a discouraging revulsion.

     Yuelle turned to Stogan to catch his frightful stare as he clambered upon a felled stone.  Her eyes widened in disbelief as the long fingers of the Leshy folded around her waist.

     “Yuelle!”

     “Stogan!”

     But it was for not and she wept as the Leshy lifted her to his horrific expression.  The creature’s face opened wide and Yuelle thrashed for release, but the Leshy consumed the poor girl with a hideous gulp.

     The Leshy turned to amble back to the swamp and Stogan endeavored a charge, but Nevil seized his arm.  “You will do nothing for Yuelle to die here tonight.  Let us collect our stead and return in might.”

     This hardly assured the enraged hunter, but he conceded to return another time.  There was never a more grimly moonlit walk among friends as Stogan and Nevil’s return to town.

     The fault of Yuelle’s demise it would appear belonged to many: Pealcut’s dismissal of Stogan’s love, encouraging a secret wedding, the Revernd Edicet’s unmanageable terror, Stogan and Nevil’s willing to expose Yuelle to so treacherous a place, and many decades of fearful townsfolk too shaken to test the Leshy.

     And so, to expire the fiendish demon, a mighty hunt was held to flesh out the beast.  The party was over fifty strong and most were filled with dread—a necessary misdeed on so paramount an eve.  There were torches and rifles, crossbows and pitchforks.

     But the torches and machines of men frightened the Leshy not and soon into the night ten men were quickly lost, engulfed by the succubic mire.  Those enchanted to follow Berkeley Monck encountered the Leshy first and were quickly gobbled up to the jestful laughter of Mary Githblid.

     The dozen men with Stogan, and Nevil was among them, ventured to locate the Leshy’s lair.  And soon enough, they did.  With casks of oil and torches ready, the burning of the cave would soon commence.  But the Leshy shed his consumed victim’s spirits like a snake sheds skin, and the voice of Yuelle called to her lover from within the cavern.

     “Men, stop!  Yuelle?”

     Nevil placed a hand on Stogan’s shoulder.  “Brother, it is not your bride.”

     “Be off of me!” He cried, and charged into the cave.

     Down Stogan ventured, into the deep of the mire.

     “Yuelle, where are you.”

     “I am here.”

     Having dispatched the group’s others, the mudland horde, spirituous wonderers, and the Leshy’s grotesque figure hastened to the cave.  The sludge arose with asunder and swiftly drowned Nevil’s men.  He’d no choice but to brave the cavern now himself.

     Nevil found Stogan deep within the cave amid a spectral embrace with the spirit of his lover.  Her kiss pulled from Stogan what life was in him and the stout trapper soon fell to the ground.  He was lost.

     It would be well to say Nevil feared not his newfound predicament, but no man could courageously endure so ghastly a night dispelling all traces of fright.

     The Leshy’s sludge poured into the cave with the foulest of odors and Nevil flailed a futile brawl against his mud-ridden adversaries until there was no fight left within him.  The swamp moved upon the boy and pulled him down.  Nevil caught the hellish gaze of the Leshy and cursed the demon as he plummeted to his doom.  The brave lad’s combative scowl twisted into horror as his wide, disbelieving stare vanished beneath the mire.

     I hope you guys’ve enjoyed these shorts about the Leshy!  Have a wonderful Halloween and be safe!

-Matt

Copyright © 2016 Matthew Bell. All Rights Reserved.

Title quote by Opeth.

Leshy

Part Two

This is part two of a multipart short.  For part one, click here.

     Ayrno Githblid, a strange called man indeed, had produced for his impoverished family fine fish dinners for weeks, plucked from a location evidently untapped.  To be sure, this fishing spot of poor man Ayrno was nearly a mile from the Gibb church ruins.  Most dared not to get so close, but his family’s health charged his actions.  As no harm had chanced him and he had seen nothing evil, good man Githblid indulged his twins’ wish to tag along on one particular morning.

     Todd and Mary were each seven and had a playful disposition, which enlivened their family’s ever unfortunate reality.  But now, Ayrno’s fish stores were turning things around.  And so out they went at day’s first light.  To keep track of the playful children, Ayrno gave Mary her mother’s tambourine and beckoned the twins to stay close and play it lest he lose track of them.

     Two large trout were secured in not even an hour and during that time Todd and Mary made quite the distance into the swamp.  Neither feared the misty wood until Todd hid from his sister to produce a startling fright.

     “Gotcha!”

     That moment buried the seed of the chilling unfamiliar within Mary’s juvenile heart, the aromatic qualities of which beguiled to her tambourine’s melody the Leshy.

     Ayrno Githblid arose for a stretch and harkened to his children.  He had long forgotten his task to keep the tambourine’s song near.  Nevertheless, as he stood, the faint jingles tickled his ears into a smile, reassured of his children’s safety.

     But then . . . nothing.  The children’s father peered into the descending fog but could decipher nothing.

     “Mary!  Todd!  Come here children!”

     Nothing.

     Ayrno dropped his rod and charged into the mist.  “Mary . . . Todd!”  He stopped cold amid the frozen shrieks of his daughter.  “Mary!”

     As Ayrno bounded to her, Todd came running to him in a deathly pale and breathless.  He collapsed in his father’s arms.  “It got her . . . the monster.  I saw it, he . . .  ate her.  Mary . . . she’s gone.”

     The man rose to give chase to what beast dared violate his family, but found nothing.  Even the fog diminished into midday sunshine.

     Ayrno Githblid understandingly only ever blamed himself for the loss of his daughter and he soon turned to consumption.  Amid these treacherous bouts of chemical inebriation, Ayrno would venture to the old Gibb church and call to his daughter.  He recalled seeing the ghostly shadow of a woman moving about the fog.  But when he would call to her, the woman would vanish deep into the bog.

     Even after recovering from bitter mourning, the bereaved father fearlessly ventured into the wood in search for a glimmer of hope.  But not even young Mary’s tambourine was ever recovered.

     It was at Githblid’s request that the perceptible border of the Leshy’s realm was rightly marked in longstanding inks of red and yellow, foreboding adventurous thrill seekers to stay their quests.

     For sixty-three years did those stark alarms keep locals at bay.  And then, following the conclusion of our great rebellion, three of good Washington’s, ‘alayhi as-salām, youthful revolutionary musicians, hoping to hasten home, swifted through the woodland, caring not for the faded flamboyant markers harkening their cautionary steps.

     They became quickly misplaced in the dark of Leshy’s wood and soon enough the tones of the damned resounded upon them.  The ground began to slip and the moonlit swamp produced the silhouettes of shaded faces aghast for empathetic submission.  Then faint giggles and the ringing of paired jingles danced playfully around them.

     The three lads quickened to a sloggish amble, finding St. Gibb’s before the infernal grabbing of felled men’s hands could abduct them.  There, aloft chunks of chapel bricks, the boys awaited dawn’s arrival.

     But a sad sung song amid the fog assured their party’s unlikely survival.  Nevertheless, they peered from behind the tattered church to glimpse the eerie voice.

     “There, do you see.”  The drummer boy pointed into the haze at the pale figure of a woman gently stepping from the tree line.

     “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.” the woman sang.

     The boys continued to watch as the woman moved toward them.

     “The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.”

     “That’s the ghost of Berkeley Monck!” whispered the piper.  “We must be at Saint Gibb’s.”

     “They say she ran off with her lover to marry here, but he abandoned her in the marsh.”

     “I heard the sheriff killed them both and dumped their bodies in the swamp.”

      “Quickly, let us move.  This place is wrought with dread.”

     But as they turned to flee, the boys froze in terror before the ghost of Berkeley Monck drifting beneath the archway, her melancholy gaze upon them, and little Mary Githblid prancing tambourine beside; and they brought with them the swamp, which engulfed the chapel and filled its walls with sludge.  The boys attempted to clamber, but were seized by the mudmen who’d accompanied the flood.  As the swamp retreated, whisking away the poor lads, Berkeley Monck blew a kiss and vanished into the night with little dancing Mary.

     Along once meager channels, the swampy mud-slip thrashed the boys to the mouth of a small cave.  There they were tendered to the Leshy.  He plucked them from his minions and descended his earthly lair, caring none for their youthful pleas.  Great horrors befell the little soldiers as a tasty night’s delight for the guardian of the bog—the Leshy.

 

Copyright © 2016 Matthew Bell. All Rights Reserved.

Title quote by Opeth.

 

     I’ve not yet determined the necessity of an introduction to every post.  To be sure, they certainly help get the juices flowing.  I will, of course, discard this preference amid topical irrelevance if ever I spot so foolish a calamity . . . so how about this:

     The cyclical reality of self-destruction and the pursuit of individuality necessitate one another, the haunting discoveries of which often belatedly manifest.

     Now lemme scare the shit out of you.  This is:

Leshy
The losts’ keeper

If ever you’ve heard of the Leshy
You’ll certainly know to be true
A moment of fear in his woodland
And his smell and taste are for you

 

Part One

     So long ago, in the wee hours of our colonial yesteryears, where a meager brook abandoned its maritime charge and descended amid the earth, a stone church—St. Gibb’s Chapel—was set atop the marshy woodland.  Yet it would not keep.  Small but lofty, this fortification was condemned to regular submersion, its weight being much for the mireous sod.  Lo, the builders ceased construction not—their manifestory Vortigernous persistence saw the sanctuary’s assembly thrice, and thrice it cumbled until no celestial accordance could stay absolute abandonment.

     To be sure, something else plagued St. Gibb’s erection.  Many laborers and artisans vanished during the continued construction.  It must have been a demon to have condemned so holy a venture.  And soon word had spread of a dreadful forest horror—a guardian of the bog . . . the Leshy.

 

     “I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too […] if it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow…”

-Starbuck

     “Stranger, you are a simple fool, or come from far off, when you tell me to avoid the wrath of the gods or fear them.”

-Polyphemos

 

     Now four score before our good man Washington, ‘alayhi as-salām, managed America’s eventual secessionatory declaration, St. Gibb’s ruins had long lingered amid a demonic perception.  And on one autumn’s evening, a clothly Sheriff, called Monck, stole away his wife and her lover to atone their sins before the Abbadonic apparition.

     “And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” quoth the Sheriff.

     Moultine Monck may have been religious but stayed not did this charge his malevolence, for he had his foot upon a stool—the only thing staying the rope around Penson Furst’s neck—his youthfully adulterous deputy.

     “If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman.”

     “Moultie . . . honey . . . I beg you . . . please!”

     Berkeley Monck was not noosed, but rather lashed to a chair beyond the ruins, sobbing for her enchanted lover impending beneath the nearly-felled archway.

     “A righteous man falling down before the wicked is as a troubled fountain, and a muddied spring.”

     And with that, Sheriff Moultine Monck shoved the stool from beneath the terrified boy.  The swinger’s gaze begged the Sherriff’s wife for a long last moment of restrained affection.

     “Creature!” Cried the Sheriff.  “Come upon me and washeth mine life of this debaucherous swine and her dangling trough.”

     The marsh roots crooked and the bog bubbled with the voices of the consumed.  The bound Sheriff’s wife’s desperate shrieks produced only the hastened  arrival of her mudland executioner.  His figure rolled upon the ruins in a wave of swamp and stench.

     “I have tasted the smell of fear in my wood and have gathered here to collect its consequence.  Who is here for me?”

     “Foulest kraken, taketh mine wife and this corpse which lingereth before her.”

     “It fears me not, thus it shall remain.  But this Lilithian Yuki-onna, send her to me.”

     Monck’s foot shoved his wife’s chair as he had her lover’s stool.  “I commit thy soul into this waste and weep for thou not.”

     The Leshy clutched Berkeley around the mouth amid her final howl of misfortune.  “Come hither, tasty child, and embrace what fear thou hast.”

     Sheriff Moultine caught the shimmer of his wife’s tears before the beast’s mouth shut to a gulp and the adulterous bride was no more.

     Since few dared the bog at St. Gibb’s, Sheriff Moultine ever evaded persecution for his deeds.  He died of diphtheria at 74—a ripe old age in those days indeed.

     So grim a tale, should this be the end . . . but it is not—there is more to tell.  Before even Sheriff Moultine departed this earth, another soul joined the Leshy’s spirituous ranks.  But we’ll leave it here for now . . .

 

Copyright © 2016 Matthew Bell. All Rights Reserved.

Title quote by Opeth.

     Greetings, ghastly specian, and welcome to October.

     I’m sorry for my lengthy absence, but producing material before my vacation was a priority.  Publishing material during my vacation was not.  I do apologize and certainly plan for a regular production frequency henceforth.

     Now I know uncountable readers are parched for Kaga’s moonlit desert dessert, but let us not abandon our frightening Octoberian obligations.

     Autumn is far and away a most discernably fabulous time of year, even if you don’t agree, and it concludes, to some extent, with a hastened, if not nearly forgotten, holiday.  Yea, even the profiteering consumer locales replace their ghoulish décor with boughs of holly before our archaic new year’s evening gala hath commenced.

     But do not fret, fellow foul friends, as there are among us those who relish in Autumn’s delight, and we champion candious celebrations.  So brandish thine turnips and prepratorilly harvest boxes of fruitsnacks.  This is:

 

Harvest
Foreshadowing Fan Fiction

 

“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.”

-Voltaire

 

     The Inn at Brynnwood and 11th was a decrepitous wooden mansion—a relic lost amid misfortune while endeavorous profiteers ventured the land around it for fairs, shops, churches, and banks.

     Had I any sense about me, the damp odor dawdling around the hardly-lit foyer would’ve put me off in search of some newer structure.

     But I was tired . . . and the rain.  It so drove me to shelter that I cared not to return to the falling treachery behind—the cobblestone roads outside ran with minor, muddy tributaries, gathering for a midnight flood.

     And so I did not leave, but meandered the crimson carpetway to a tall oaken desk with an ancient librarianesque crone seated behind it.  She scowled over her spectacles as I took a dribble of ink to the occupant roster, which was yet empty.  Beneath ‘evenings,’ I inscribed a 1.

     “Dollar fifty.”

     “Very well.”  I produced the precise charge, and her trembling appendages carefully retrieved it.  She then lumbered to the wall behind her and struggled for the highest key of the lot.  “I’ll settle for a lower room, if you like.”

     “I care little where you sleep, but if you’d prefer a roof and a sound window, particularly amid so precarious a gale, then leave me to my charge . . . our highest room is the soundest of them all.”

     “As you say, madam.”

     The woman prepared a lantern, having infernally caught my gaze as she whispered the match into submission.  She moved from behind the desk and fought the lantern into a forthright stead.

     “If you’ve gathered your things, you may follow me.”

     There were no lights about the place, save our meager lamp, which illuminated our cavernous ascent, ever beyond the mansion’s many doors.

     “Each of these rooms is unfit?” I beckoned, hoping to stay our venture.

     “So enough, lest you welcome an evening shower.”

     My momentary misinterpretation of her meaning proved a revitalizing contemplation, which dissolved facing our final flight.  This last stairway was snug and smelled foul.  I climbed the spire, trailing the dim-lit profile of the lantern-clad woman before me.  Our steps produced a carol of horrific creaks until the last.  Beyond a small landing was a lonely door.

     “Here is your room.” She said, unlocking the door, handing me the key, and hanging the lantern.

     “Do you not require it for your descent, madam?”

     “I shall light another.”

     I’ve no idea whence she produced said replacement, but she’d done so ere I’d fastened the door.  I watched the warm light spill into the room to my boot tips, linger for a moment, and slowly fade away.

     I peered through the keyhole swiftly enough to watch as the light moved down the stairwell until I was sure the woman was gone, after which I secured the lock and tossed my key under a pillow.

     The air was cold and damp, but there was no sign of the rain invading what I imagined to be the attic.  I arranged my effects, kindled a stout candle, and produced my log to record the evening’s strange affair.

     I fell a few dribbles of laudanum into my brandywine and ventured a relaxing conclusion to a troublesome journey.  Once I’d finished with my journal, I extinguished the light and swam into a pleasant trance.

     I woke amid thunder and reached for my pocket watch to find I’d slept for only a few hours.  But then, as I considered my forthcoming struggle to reclaim sleep, I discerned the faint climbing of stairs amid the rain’s clatter.  Was the woman returning?

     I retrieved my key, hastily reignited my candle, and moved to the door.  Sure enough, someone was climbing the stairs.  I fastened my ear to the door.  The stairwell creaking turned into a shuffle across the landing right up to my room and then stopped.

     I fetched a knife and prepared to confront who could only be the old woman.  I rotated the key and the doorknob began twisting with an overwhelming strength.

     “Holy Hell!”  I fought the knob to a halt, waited, and then, knife at the ready, opened the door.

     Nothing . . . no one.  I blinked to a reassured conclusion.  There was nothing.

     I returned to my bed, but did not extinguish my candle.  Despite my opiatic hallucinatory potential, my childlike fears had rekindled into a wretched fright.  Nevertheless, I soon resubmitted to a slumber.

     POP!

     My eyes shot open.  Something was in my room.  There was still light, but I could not turn my head . . . nay, I could not even move.  I glanced down to watch the blanket slowly retreat from my chest.  I gulped, which was met with a heavy breath.  What was happening . . . where was this nightly fiend.  Then . . . the candle extinguished itself.

     Finally I heard the lighting of a match and a soft whisper.  The light approached until the partly illuminated, wrinkled face of the old woman peered down into my eyes.  She brought her hand to my face and I tried to close my eyes, but I could not.  She ran her nails down my cheek and onto my chest whereupon she began unbuttoning my top.

     “Your heart is excited.” She crackled, and began producing a number of tubular vessels from a large cask.  She forced the hoses of one with a blue liquid into my neck.  I dizzily watched the liquid darken as my blood mixed with whatever the vessels contents were.

     “I trust you cannot feel this, young man.  Please stay alert.”

     This perceivably feeble old woman then effortlessly raised me to a seated position against the headboard and ran her middle finger down my breast.  I watched as the nail grew into a wicked device which she used to open my bowels.

     Nauseated, I glanced upward to the woman’s face.  To my astonishment, as she did her work, I watched her elderly facade dissolve into that of a young girl, gleefully removing my organs and gently placing them into glass cylinders of black liquid.  I could do nothing.

     “Please pay attention.” She requested with a sweet youthfulness, pushing her thumb into my chin.

     Her eyes widened and skin paled until she resembled no discernibly earthly thing I’d encountered amid my distinguished taxidermic tenure.

     My laudanum washed into an overwhelming sadness at my life’s imminent conclusion, and at the hands of so foul a creature.

     “Aw, don’t cry.  It will soon be over.  You’re being ever such the big boy.”  Her voice was echoing into a hardly human, atmospheric monotonal-reassurance.

     I watched, but could not feel, as my heart was plucked from my chest and placed, with my lungs, into one of the cylinders.  How could I be conscious?

     “One more to go.”

     This monochromatic, wide-eyed fiend made no expression as she severed my head at the neck.  With a clutch of hair, she pulled me from my body and rotated my face into her empty gaze.  She now produced not even English, but the hums a whale might comprehend, and slowly submerged my head into the bloodied vial of blue liquid.  I could do nothing as my ears filled and vision muddied.  I was kept conscious by some magic and entrusted with only the most minimal faculties, ever to gaze through my amphibious reservoir at the shelves of poor fools before me.

     Happy October Everybody!

-Matt

Copyright © 2016 Matthew Bell. All Rights Reserved.

Title quote by Opeth.