They Lurk

They Lurk

Death of St. Innocent. 1530.

Black Death. Artist Unknown.

 

Memento Mori.  Daniel Preisler. 1650

In the early morning hours when first shift wakes up  a PSA played on every radio and phone screen. Even the TV lost its sound, a green bar flashed across with code and abbreviated agencies. A tone beeped before the message began playing. A robot voice said,

THIS IS A PUBLIC SAFETY NOTICE

Reports of Unidentified Persons have increased throughout Hitchens County. Residents are advised to lock doors and windows. A Large Concentration of Unidentified Persons has broken up and are moving towards the following counties. Saunderlund County. Torchlight County. Wilkroot County. Residents are advised against approaching any person who appears injured, confused, or displaying unnatural behavior. Stay indoors or find shelter immediately until the Emergency is over. 

Coffee maker steamed. Fang sipped it, but it burned his lips and he spilled it over his shirt.  Work boots fell apart. Pin and needles in his spine, so he took a pill. Take a pill with a dirty glass of water. With kids sleeping before school, the TV is still on washing their pale faces with flashes of eye-catching color. Grocery list on the empty fridge, with baseball photos and drawings. He looked outside, waited for the womanto return, but she didn't. Things flow like a river, somethings stay after being washed up, somethings belong there, living or dead.

 “It’s been awhile.” Mr Fang said nursing the stitches. The wound still felt fresh and moist. It drained pus and blood every morning. He wondered how well he’d be able to handle the machines but if no one else showed up, he’d be the one to do it.

. He was the gravedigger and landskeeper for the cemetery on the hill by a town of 900 souls so removed and remote that Amazon can’t deliver packages there. The newest bridge went up over 100 years ago. The people are either so aged that they’ve forgotten about the rest of the world, or they are intentionally laying low, repelled by the forces of greater society that gave up on its mislaid ruins long ago. Yet it’s graveyard was immense, ornate, and perched in a neat trench overlooking the hill top. The strange folk of the village said that the burial grounds used to be an important spot to watch the river. That senators and even warlocks built homes here and were interred in the soil of the graveyard. Something about purifying the waters of evil spirits, Fang didn’t really believe stories like that. 

. He got up everyday just before first light just so he could watch the fog in the trees and the foxes in the grass. Sometimes he’d catch them resting on the stones. Maybe if he did it fast he could get back home before anyone one saw him out during emergency hours. He turned the TV off and ate his breakfast.  

“Guess we hunker down until the Patrol says it’s okay to come out.” 

He rolled his eyes. It still hurt where the doctor stitched his wound shut. The boy who did it, his old lady’s son, walled himself off from the cops and held out in his barricade until he passed out from dehydration. Now this. And it was probably over nothing. A couple of scared old women.  

 Out the window, long lawn, wet grass, open fields, no dangerous people lingering with blood dripping from their mouths. He had stones to mount and grass to mow. Bones to collect and store. Last time this happened was more than fifteen years ago. They stayed in the basement one sunny day, did nothing, nothing happened to them, and in three days the emergency was lifted. Two people were killed, most people still had to go to work, the few that witnessed them couldn’t even see what was attacking them but for a shadow stumbling in the mist. 

Just stick to the procedure, cops will search around, and it will be over. Soon. 

However his face fell into his hands. The other day he had left the backhoe and two loading buckets out on the cemetery grounds. He got tired and hungry, figured he could store it today, so he took the keys with him and went home. He tapped his toe and thought about it, checking the curtains. He saw no danger yet.. He could run down there, put the backhoe and loading buckets back, and make it home before sunrise. So he put on his coat and darted out into the early morning dark.

As he drove down the highway, around the brick streets, gravel roads, over the bridge, he saw one in the field. Then two in the mist, and three more appeared in the middle of  the road.. They staggered with short steps, falling over creases in the ground, carrying bones with the meat gnawled off.. 

“That’s Uncle Robert.” 

Fang remembered the day of the man’s funeral. He still wore the suit they buried him in.

Mr. Fang drove up the countryside as pale light broke through the dark clouds over the hills. The strangers wandered from their positions in the field. One now wandered along the road, picking at roadkill. The other two fell into the ditch and got stuck in the drainage pipe. He had to slow down behind a truck. They waited for a group of about 6 to cross the road. 

“It’s more than last time.” Mr. Fang told himself. 

A while back they had sightings of a few in a barn. That night a homeless man had fallen asleep under the bridge to the graveyard, and he missed the emergency broadcast. He slept into the night, and was dragged into the creek, where he was disrobed and murdered, then eaten until only his bones were left. 

More recently, a few had been sighted in the river. A man drove to the edge of the river. He rested his car at a sandbar, he rolled down the windows, swallowed a bottle of pills and fell asleep. They got into his car, and murdered him too. They did such a thorough job on his body, that cops only found the puddles of blood on the seats and floor, and one single finger embedded into the steering wheel. 

The Patrol just issued another PSA but didn’t close school. Businesses opened, people drove to work. It was just a few sightings, and they found the ones who had murdered the men within that day. Many questioned if it was even a real emergency. Maybe something else killed the men, and the Patrol is just covering something up. 

Everyone in town had a different story for what had happened, each one contrived before the emergency was declared. Who saw the men who were eaten was a conversation topic like whose husband was cheating. 

Both victims got buried in the graveyard on the hill. Fang couldn’t be certain as he never knew them too well, but he thought he saw them there in the group on the road. 

The music on the radio all had the same message. 

"Residents should avoid the deceased."

Fang drove around the lingering bodies. He drove through the village, to the top of the hill, and up to the old road. It was narrow, dripping wet, and quiet. He pulled up to the garage, unlocked the door to bring in the machines. 

From the hill top he could see for miles. He saw nothing from the summit. The ground below looked just as it usually did. He could see the river, he could see the homes waking up and traffic sparkle in sunlight as it appeared on the highway. 

“Did they say three groups?” Fang thought as he wheeled the machine back inside.

From the countryside to the river, he watched out for a sign of them.

Something dark moved in the river water. At first it looked like a heap of trash floating to the top of the current. But it moved AGAINST the flow. It sank, and rose. Hands reached from the murk and broke the foam. Fang  thought it was just a cloud or a patch of fog, but it moved, it squirmed, and bodies crawled up to the bank. He could hear moans blowing up in the wind. Hundreds of them. Mud coated bodies, bloated and swollen, bursting on the sandbars, tangled together. They drifted downstream, pale and contorted by the pressure of the whirlpools. Other had no skin, just gray bones wrapped in a rag. Their shredded clothing hung from their arms and necks and trailed behind them like weeds. 

The river carried them gently to the shore. A body hit the bank. He slapped and sank into the mud. When he emerged, his entire body was a cast of muck and backwash. Others followed him. They tangled together on the bank. Legs caught in ribcages, fists stuck in mouths. Dark smelly water leaked from their eye sockets. 

Fang watched them break free and wander up the hill. The winds carried their voices nearer to him. Whispers. Then moans. Then a hundred voices speaking at once, rising and falling with the river like some ancient death ritual. 

The ones he noticed lost their balance or their footing, and they slipped and fell back down to the water, where they let the water take them down to the bottom again. Then one appeared at the gate. Others walked behind the road. They crawled in silence leaving black trails behind them. The ones that could walk went towards the roofs under the early morning moon, its light glistening on their bodies. The river kept carrying the rest down and down and down. 

As if the dead belonged there all along. 

Film Review: Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead

Film Review

 Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead

 

This film would've fit nicely along with the other Chicken-Horror experiments here, but it's so damn over the top with it's gross outs that the only responsible thing to do is warn anyone from showing it to their friends. 

Take away the gross outs, and what you have left is watchable. As it stands, the film wastes no time getting into the heart and stomach of the audience. Once there, it begins it's mischief. It looks like a B movie from the 70s, it's got musical numbers, but I can't for the life of me determine who this film is meant to be for. I've come to the conclusion that it's just a prank to play on unsuspecting people who don't know what they are about to witness. 

It's not the blood, not the love making, it's not the chickens, it's not even the anti political correct slant, it's the shit scenes. The shit scenes. That's exactly what they are and they linger with me even as I try to sanitize my mind by writing this review. They are exactly what they sound like and they go on for ages. I guess that's the appeal of a Troma film.They "go there" wherever other fim makers fear to tread. 

I stopped at the shit scene because it was repulsive and offensive. A overweight man drops his trousers and goes to the bathroom with the camera in the toilet. Nothing is left to the imagination in the diarrehea nightmare that comes after. It goes on for ten minutes if its ten seconds long. It went on and on. The joke is clearly on me, and it wasn't going to get better. 

This movie is not a 0 out of 10. It is a solid 1. It's a real film that someone crafted.It's got funny jokes. If not for the gross outs, what we'd have is a decent B grade Chicken Horror film. I wanted to like this film, but if I wanted suck this kind of thing up then I would've gotten a job in the sewer. 

This movie is for the movie fan that is bored of everything out there right now, and needs something pungent and not afraid of controversy. 

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzEA5R0XHOQ

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0462485/

He Doesn't Bite

 

He Doesn’t Bite

V jumped rope in the alley behind the row of large empty houses.

Skip, skip, skip.

From the kitchen window she heard the sound of her mom chopping chicken feet.

Slice, Slice.

She swung the rope over her head and skipped.

The knife sliced the flesh from the skin of a chicken heart.

The girl skipped and skipped, her black hair masking her eyes, her shoes bouncing on the leaves by the gutter, she smiled at other kids but let her smile drop when she noticed they wore different clothes and spoke in a strange dialect. All alone she hopped and let her heart race. The rope scraped the pavement. The knife scrapped the cutting board. Her shoes skidded on the driveway.

The knife sliced her mom’s finger and blood poured over the sink. The girl looked back to find the kids, and athe rope hit her ankle. She stepped to catch herselt but he rope held her heel back, and she tumbled to the ground.

V parents moved here. She hated it so much. So far at school she only got bossed around by indifferent teachers and pushed down by the other boys and girls. She didn’t eat meat. She didn’t believe in things like science or the stars. The doctors told her she had Aphasiac Sensory Deprivation Disorder. She wore a crystal to negate it’s effects. The crystal around her neck protected her as the ground twisted and smacked her on the back of the head. The rope wrangled her by the neck. Knots tangled around her head, wrists, and ankles. An old man stood watching her from the other side of a chain link fence. A leash in his hand.

It looked like a dog at first, but it had horns, and chewed the links of metal fencing. It panted hard. It’s entire chest heaved with steam. It’s eyeballs kept moving, following something invisable, over their heads.

It opened its mouth, and large fangs unfurled.

“He doesn’t bite.” the old man assured her.

V noticed that both man and hound were looking at her. Not as someone who needs help getting up, someone who needs to get home to get her scrapes treated, but as someone with a precious stone hanging off her neck. They both glared with hunger, trembled with excitement, sweated with anxiety over it’s ability.

When the crystal saw them, the hound began tearing the fence apart and barking. The old man let go of the leash and started ripping the links apart. His arms reached through, then his legs. Long, sliced apart by the metal rings, the flesh peeled away to reveal the muscles to V. She screamed when she saw that the calf, the hind legs of muscle, didn’t lap up the bones of the leg and arm. They constricted around his upper leg, but his body didn’t jump. The calves tensed up, but the knee didn’t drive forward. The tendons of the bones slipped out of the socket. His movement lagged.

V had seen enough. She got the rope off her head and neck, then broke it from her ankles and wrists. The crystal on her neck made a metalic ringing. She beat it down the road, down the trail, to the backyard where she crashed into the door and barged into the kitchen. She told her about the old man and the hound.

Her mother was furious at her. She didn’t listen even as dark clouds gathered outside. Even as V pointed to the spot where it happened, where the fence was down.

The crystal turned black.

The fencing outside had huge holes in it, like something had taken a big bite out of it.

At the back door, V heard it.

Scratch

Scratch

Scratch.

“Go upstairs.” her mother said.

“Why? Is that…”

Her mother grabbed the knife and pushed her daughter into the pantry.

She peeked out the window. There stood an old man, open wounds on his hands and arms. A hound at his heels. The dog panted.

“He doesn’t bite.”

The Alchemist

The Alchemist 

by Graham Swanson

A second body was found one hundred years after the first one. A mercury arc rectifier burst at the old electric plant. But it was no accident. 

It takes 5 seconds to die in liquid mercury. First it causes the skin to boil until it melts off, then it causes eyeballs to explode. A person with these burns can still be saved however. The fatal stage is asphyxiation. It damages the respiratory pathways from the mouth and nostrils to the lungs and stomach. The body goes unconscious, and death follows. 

The first body they found died in about 5 seconds. They knew it was no accident. He didn’t slip and fall. He was dipped by the ankles, pulled out, dipped in again until the skin peeled from his face, and finally dropped inside where he sank to the bottom, and was dead before the sludge from the body even arose to the surface. 

The second body survived for 15 seconds. 

Rumor among the strange folk was that what we call liquid mercury has been known since the times of Ancient Egypt, and is actually the seed water of Gods. A Detective examining the remains found the two dead bodies didn’t behave as how victims of chemical burns should. The mercury hardened into shapes of horned creatures, or solid chains. He looked deeper into the tissue. He found FINGERS that clasped around the wrists of the dead.

The bodies seemed to not only regenerate, but grow strange things. Like a shield of bone around the chest that covered the neck and chin. 

They tried to incinerate the bodies, but no matter the temperature, the corpses remained intact. 

Puzzled, he turned to an Alchemist who hid out where no one could interrupt his experiments. A place with no electricty, where timezones don't add up. The Alchemist laughed when he told him the story. He didn’t explain the behavior of mercury like how the Detective expected. Instead the old man brought out a crumbling book from the Renaissance. Inside were dense paragraphs in old Greek on one page with a Latin copy on the other page. Notes were scribbled inside for an English translation someday. But what the Alchemist showed him were pictures of terrible monsters, and silver bowls at the throats of warriors.

"They called it Liquid Silver. It's older than Rome. Older than Egypt. Older than the names of Gods. Human weapons don’t work against them. They had to use a secret power from the heavens. Liquid Silver is what they use to defeat them in their war with the Underworld.” 

The Alchemist pointed to the hand made drawings of ferocious toothed, winged faery creatures, with the heads of birds, and the udders and horns of cattle. 

When the Detective returned, the bodies had changed even more. They grew wings, spikes, spear heads, armored collars. The only explanation he could think of came from the words of the Alchemist. That in the times when man waged war with the underworld, that human warriors would swallow liquid mercury and transform into a warrior capable of fighting the demons. 

The Detective looked at the straight pearl white teeth of the corpses. They seemed to snarl at him. 

The Detective turned back to old lore from the Alchemist. The Alchemist stood by the glass tubes that contained blue sprites of energy. A mercury rectifier arc. He explained to the Detective that before roads and powerlines, once winged demons- or terrible angels- scoured the plains, and lay ruin to the hamlets and cottages of their ancestors. 

“Look into the rectifier”  The Alchemist bade him. 

The Detective was compelled to do so as he heard screams and ancient languages coming from the blue energy placed between the glass cylinders. What he saw inside looked like the corpses with their wings and spears, but more refined, emerging from the fumes, suddenly every memory of growing up in these plains- his friends, school, the playground- HE was there. His eyes were wheels of fire. His voice a trumpet blast. His hand, cold to the touch. He soared over their heads as the moon floats over entire hills of ants. 

The creature the detective saw in the rectifier was not limited to inside the room. He also existed outside and beyond. Within his very consciousness, and without its abysmal presence, he feared he could no longer return to a life unknowing what the Alchemist had shown him in the glass. 

“That there is the God of the Underworld! What we call liquid mercury is sap from his offspring.”

The Detective hurried back to where the bodies were kept cold, and locked away. However when he got to the mortuary, he found the windows shattered, the door blown off the hinges by the wind, and a huge hole in the roof. The hole went through the floor below, to the basement, where even the drawers where they keep bodies were torn open, and the dead were left to walk free. 

The two corpses were gone. 

The Detective remembered the lore of a village destroyed by the angels. He hurried to get there. Its best days had passed. The homes sank into the earth, heaps of bricks still lay in the grass. Walls of broken down cars and farm equipment stood against the side of the uneven, dirt road. Strange folk with black eyes stood on their porches with pitchforks. He stopped his car.

"Where did they go?"

An old woman pointed a long gnarled finger towards the fields.

On the edge of the fields was a crater.

Records told of a tornado that tore the sky open, uprooted the trees, and leveled the homes down to the foundation. However the old folk seemed to recognize the shadows of the demons that swept overhead. They told stories of lightning that struck so hard that it vaporized the trees, houses, and people. The Detective came to the crater in the ground where the storm hit so hard that it vaporized everything its lightning touched. In the middle he saw curtains of debris and mist and dust sweep across, and in the middle stood another mercury rectifier arc. One bigger than any human hand can manufacture. Blue light poured from the glass cylinders. He heard a scream from within. He saw the perfect teeth inside.He saw a smile.

Then it occured to him. That the bodies had not DIED in the mercury. They had been RECHARGING.

There and then he saw the wings cut through the gusts of shadow and murk. He saw himself flying over the hamlets, looking down at the people, remembering how small they once appeared to the mighty warriors of the sky, how much he remembered enjoying seeing it from flight.

   The Detective heard his own voice in the blue light. A creature stepped forward. Behind him something landed hard. Then another, and another. Until the moon vaporised in a cloud of blue light. Across the fields and praries,old machines began to wake up.

Most Haunted Soccer Stadiums: Estudio Nacional

 Most Haunted Soccer Stadiums: Estudio Nacional 

Santiago, Chile

by Graham Swanson

Estudio Nacional Julio Martinez Predonos is not just a soccer stadium. It is a former concentration camp that detained "undesirables" was used for infamous propaganda showcases. Showers, lockers, tunnels became torture chambers  during the reign of Military Dictator, Augosto Pinochet. Members of  the Chile National soccer team were asked to seek family members  trapped inside. During his reign, the Chile National Soccer Team played FIFA's infamous "Ghost Match" against a USSR  team that refused to show up. When one player refused to shake Pinochet's hand on camera, his mother was kidnapped by the miltary government and tortured. 

Dark History

Built in 1938. Hosted the FIFA world cup in 1962. It was rebuilt in 1964 after an earthquake. In 1985, it was the site of a protest. One year later, the election that removed Pinochet from power was held there. 

 Chile National Soccer Team plays here to this day.

The stadium/detention center held up to 40,000 prisoners. Im memorial, a section of bleachers are left the same as they were in 1973, and are left fenced off and unoccupired. 

It is said The tunnels where prisoners were kept are haunted by the voices of the incarcerated as well as guards. There’s a musician who’s fingers were cut off and forced to perform, it is said that his voice can still be heard.

The government has done a lot to clean up the image of the stadium. The rumors are probably just echos and imagination from a dark time ringing into the present. 

Or there’s a living reminder underneath the statdium who remembers the terror.

Third Eye pt II

Third Eye II

by Graham Swanson 

Ralph wrapped his Third Eye. too much flooded his vision. Even when he closed his predominant eyes, the third stayed open and it showed him sights both beautiful and horrible. He saw wings on the gas station clerk. He saw a child as an old man.But he kept it hidden. Hidden under wraps and bandaids and the brim of a hat. He hoped it would halt the power of the Third Eye but he could feel it pulsing in its socket. He could still see outlines though the gauze, and the hat he wore quickly became tight and hot. 

The Third Eye tried to focus, and when it couldn't it hurt his eyes, his mouth, his ears, and skull. Sometimes it opened on its own, and closed on its own. But then he saw a woman running for mayor. He saw her on fire. So bright was the flame that he saw it through the wrappings. The eye focused so hard that he felt a screw twist into his brain. He made a doctor's appointment. It hurt so much that he decided the sight was not worth the pain and embarrassment. The x-rays came in. The doctor didn't believe what he saw.

"I want it removed." Ralph told him.

"That's the strangest defect I've ever seen." The Doctor pointed at the x-ray with a pen. "It's not just connected to your brain, but your other eyes, your tongue, your ears, your fingers... even your nervous system." 

He left the hospital followed by visions from everyone inside. On the way home he passed the burned grounds of the church. The eye twitched under its bandages. 

-

 Ralph didn’t feel so random anymore. Everywhere he went he felt eyeballs focusing on the splash of color on his shoulder. He kept it under a bandage under a gauze wrapping under a ball cap. Still he felt them stare. As if the third eye called to them. When it wanted out, it throbbed in its socket like a key stuck in the lock, it pulsed until Ralph’s head hurt, sending ripples of shiny silver and crimson down his field of vision. At times it even pulled at his brain  as it tried  to open.

Like when he walked past the yellow tape. He could still smell the ashes of the church that burned down. The Third Eye felt like it was cracking his skull open. Even as he walked past. He hoped the eye would relax and shut again, but he felt its pupil scratching at the fibers he bound his forehead with.

Then while at the fast food place, he saw a cute girl. Big eyes, long back, windswept hair, small nose ring. He wondered if the eye could tell him anything about her. While ordering food he took the cap off, and loosened a layer so he could see her shadow through the fog. But the eye remained shut no matter how hard he tried to get it to open. The encounter only weirded the girl out.

“What happened in that fire?” Ralph asked the eye.

He drove to the gas station. The eye became alert here. He saw a trucker stuck in a tornado. He saw a cop with his foot stuck in a bear trap. He saw a young boy with a red mark on his forehead. Then he saw Mrs. Tabitha Slugger walk through the doors. Ralph loosened the bandage again. It didn’t just pull to be opened as it had before. He could feel its pupil widen, as if a ratchet loosened on his forehead. It wanted to see her. So Ralph bent his head that way, it could see the outlines of flame, the spikes of a torture bed, and the door or an Iron Maiden. A man in a shadowy hood, high and pointed, stood behind her.

“Fuel on pump 4” She said to the gas station clerk.

The clerk has bright, heavy wings protecting his body.

Ralph almost didn’t notice because he was using his third eye to focus. But in his normal vision, Mrs. Slugger held a business card. Before he left she left it there.

“Slugger for Mayor.”

The mayor closed the pool down last summer. It was the only fun activity for kids to do in town, and doing so was widely unpopular. He hid from the public ever since they caught him watering his grass at 4am during the water restrictions. Vandals even came along and poked holes in his hose.

Ralph watched Slugger leave. He thought he saw the pointed headed man hold a needle in his hand.

Ralph stepped aside to hold the door open for her. She smiled. The pointed headed man glared in silence.

They chatted.

"Haven't seen you since middle school. Good luck. What are you going to do about cleaning the burn site up?"

"Ralph! I haven't seen you since middle school. Terrible what happened with the old church.The current mayor should've had something done long ago."

The Third Eye turned so fast that everything in color spilled into a new hue, a new tone, then a new color all together. The fire Got so big when she mentioned the old church that Ralph almost ran away holding his head. He sucked down his soda to suppress the anxiety. 

"What can you do?"

-

He made it home, swimming in sweat from the summer humidity. It kept going up and up. Water limits implemented daily. What did trickle out of the sink was gray and bitter. He bought bottles of water and hoped a storm would break the heat someday.

But more exhausting than the heat was the tension under the Third Eye. Once the door was shut, he checked the windows, then closed the curtains. He took off the hat and unpeeled the bandgages. The eye still didn’t open. It lay there rolled up in fluid and flesh as soft as cotton. He rubbed it with his palm. He massaged his temples. He felt the eye start to split.

He walked into the bathroom, flipped on the switch, and stood in front of the mirror. The eye liked the mirror. It came open and rose to the surface of the socket. Its eyelid unfolded and a bright pupil opened up in the glare of the mirror.

It loved the mirror. Every chance it got it scanned the mirror. It looked deep into itself, ogling its own cornea. Ralph not only saw his own haunting shadow, but he almost sank into the glass. A million Ralphs stood alongside him. Each one asking a different question, but receiving the same answer from a great golden eyeball that was the size of the sky.

Knock knock went the door.

Ralph knocked over items on his sink. He opened the case behind the mirror and took out another bandaid. He shut out the light, covered the Third Eye, and hoped the visitors would go away, but they didn’t. They kept knocking louder and louder. He took the first thing he saw. A cardboard box. He set it over his head, and answered the door.

At the door was the redhead from next door. She yawned and held him a broken TV remote. A teenage girl who was always getting in trouble. With her around, the eye sank into the socket and rolled up in a blanket of tissue.

"My mom wants to know if you can fix this. Can I see your eye?" 

"Let me see." He took the remote. "Can't, it's shut for the day." 

In the vision, the girl was outside the church when the fire started. She saw hooded men. The same ones that followed the mayor.

"Why are you breathing so hard? It's open and but you're coverinng it up."

"Have you been to the old church? Do you know what happened?" 

The girl looked away and ran away from him. As she did he could hear screams of angry bones. It came from the old church. 

-

Ralph sat beside the clear water of a muddy creek. Cliffs above him where the water once carved deep edges on the rocks above the trees. It was once a passageway for whales and mammoths. Now unless it rained up north, it was too shallow to fish in. 

He wondered what this eye meant. It came open when he crossed the flame-scared ruin of the abandoned church. It was like a drill into his head. It drilled deep into his brain meat, into the cone of spinal neurons. It hurt him until his hands balled into fists. It still hurt even when the eye closed. He cried from the pain. Tears streamed down his cheeks. 

It reminded him of his days working in the limestone quarry. How the guys would play croquette with their hammers. Tapping stone blocks and sending balls rolling to holes in the dust coated gravel. 

He plucked a worm from the thawed mud, and hooked it onto his rod.  He hoped to relax here and contemplate the sights of the Third Eye. More so, if it was connected to his brain and eyes and ears and tongue and fingers, then it must be possible to control. 

He tried to close his eyes but something kept them up. He covered them with a blindfold. He put gum in his mouth so that it would stay shut. He plugged his ears, and put on gloves. Once closed, the Third Eye unfolded from its roll of gray matter, fat, and fascia. He cast the line into the deep end where the ground washed away a century ago. The line sank beneath the gap where no light touched the bottom.

He spent hours talking to fish, to the rocks at the bottom of the water, to the leaves of the tree he leaned against. The third Eye finally awoke. It peeled open and rose from his skull to bask in the sunlight. He felt dragonflies whizz by. He felt the dandelions waver in the breeze. He felt sand shake off his jeans when he uncrossed his legs. Hawks high above him soared by. He felt their eyes on him. He spoke to all things and to something he could not speak to. Some things wander in the sunlight, but some things are not just hidden from it. They appeared to Ralph clouded in shadow and blood.

He opened both eyes and tore off his blindfold. The Third Eye saw it and focused so hard that the hemispheres of his brain crashed together. Pumps of raw vessels over his scalp became highways of pain. The stone hammers of the quarry hit his skull on all sides. He screamed out into the country sky so loud that farmers got out of their trucks to hear it. 

It was there. He saw it. 

A white hand floated in the water.

Muddy footprints led up the rocks.

Ralph followed the steps from the quiet of the creek, to the scorched ruins where gashes in the skeleton of the old church screamed back. 

 A few weeks before this news broke, I wrote a story, "Burning Churches" about an abandoned church. Then a national news story emerged involving an arrest at an abandoned church in Western, Nebraska. Why do abandoned churches occupy such a powerful place in the Midwestern imagination?

A sacred place is in ruin. 

People don't agree on what to do 

Some hope to restore it

There's no people with memory of attending. We assume it's the old or those who have moved away, or were too young to remember. Whoever took care of it probably perished. 

It symbolizes our past. It reminds us that nothing is forever. Spirituality is maybe broader than walls. Without people to host it, it's just a ghost. 

Gothic writers have used forgotten locations for hundreds of years. Castle of Otranto uses a cathedral that sank into the ground as a sanctuary for the peasant hero and the princess he rescues. To this day, these dilapidated buildings can be seen as a sort of sanctuary. 

In my horror story, I used the abandoned church to represent a communal fear that spreads over night. It's all pretend. 

Real world violence is an awful thing that is

 often hidden but in this case, was exposed. 

 People are already struggling. They have second and third jobs, some still can't afford food- mass violence won't help those struggling in this economy.  It only creates trauma and strife. It reopens wounds that were healing. It's like finding a mutilated animal carcass in a park.

 It's eerie when fiction resembles reality. For a moment it can feel as though the writer knew something hidden from everyone else. More often, the writer is simply paying attention to the same fears, symbols, and tensions that exist beneath the surface of everyday life. The abandoned church in "Burning Churches" was never inspired by the UFC White House plot. Yet both drew upon the same powerful image: a forgotten sacred place standing as a reminder of memory, loss, and the uncertainty of what comes next

https://castleswanson.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-burning.html?m=1

https://southeast.newschannelnebraska.com/story/306404644/village-of-western-nebraska-plays-central-role-in-federal-criminal-investigation?fbclid=IwY2xjawSgt3ZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA80MDk5NjI2MjMwODU2MDkAAR4QuqmPjio-KTI4Hq5irXf6Jbr0NwU7R7c4Q6s_8rpUjoWqAW9wcjpGuCK0hA_aem_IhLogWfDUacsJ2KjbsosFg