Lineage

III.

From the Music Manuscript Archive of Gordon Prim:


Sonata No. 2, Ubiquitous Nocturne, in C Sharp


All to the soothing, sonomic elegance and beauty of keyed staccato scales, uninterrupted evermore, the seriousness of harpsichord's curse rondo midnight of endless darkness ever fearful, the feast continued onward.

Ubiquitous Nocturne of searing, piercing, malevolent violin resonated decisively opening skyward portals of bone-confetti from the unspeakable, nameless chaos of the Dark Age.

Facing the music of the finale, the escapist nostalgia of physchic platitudes and verisimilitudes of hopeless sorrow transmogrified, unmolded nor from resins of plastics, into limbs hinged and bolted and bodies uniform in size, homogeneous in visage, impervious, earless waxy entities.

The impatient frenzy of modernity now educated in the way of stillness into Mannequin.

Resuscitative rain had yet to cleanse the exquisite offal from malodorous city sidewalks; the expiditous torso propelled itself thusly with ease on scabrous psalms of soiled hands.





©2019 by L.P. Van Ness

[genre: weird fiction]

Intricate

"I find myself satisfied by being content with my extension through efficiency; therefore any disruption merely by design to sabotage my potential for commerce through intricacy is neither forgotten or forgiven."

"You are such an austere and serious gentleman. Are you not impressed with all the goods from graves I have gathered together here?" She wondered.

"As I have explained, I delegate the exchange of such unfortunates to my more nefarious associates."

"I take delight in many things, especially the senses and my sensuality." She had not yet partaken of the elixir of immortality.

Studying the cartouche on the chalice, he gave a furtive smile. "A part of the first matter of this is the very same matter of all things," he continued.

"I do not understand your meaning?" The sudden shift of dominance began to trouble her.

"Inevitability, things come and go and places change, the legacies of entire towns and regions who deal in blackmail through rumors of untested truths about those of us near or far must answer to reciprocity eaten or worn away by termites of time without further value to the generations of roaches inhabiting therein through the black magic of an etherial plague with the lasting power of those of ancient times."

She reached her hand forward to partake of the magic of the ceremonial hour. "The words of poets in which the essence of the speaker is priceless and eternal, either for their wisdom or beauty, are immortal and untouchable by crude minds."

"Though that is true, on this particular night of all nights, I do not deal in words."







©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.


[genre: horror fiction]

The Mystery of the Backward Riding Cyclist: A New Underwood and Prim Adventure

After reading Underwood's notebook entry, Prim held the image in his mind's eye retaining each important detail with his legendary photographic memory.

"It has been several days since your expected visit with a potential new client. During that time, not only have you been industrious, I have managed to sell the reasonably priced Atlantic Souvenir from 1835 that I procured at the literary festival for a profitable sum to a distant buyer which needed that particular issue to help complete their collection of Hawthorne magazine publications. You now have your phantom, I the wisdom of a fellow reasoner from the Renaissance of our American Literature."

"Our rendezvous for the appointment had been canceled with the substitution of a letter delivered by hand by a rather unusual person whose features were quite startlingly waxen yet whose demeanor and appearance so common as to allow an easy disappearance back into the sidewalk crowd," Mason continued to explain. "The communication contained but that solitary address. I remained cautious as you have often instructed, taking time to learn as much from surrounding location from individuals who often approached me and quickly dissapeared during my observation in the same stealthy manor as the original messenger."

"Her influence is over you now, not only through hypnotism but tough aquaintences, though she has no existence but in your recollections of those momentarily minutes of that afternoon. Now, not only is your mind haunted, as are many these days, but we have the mystery of this imposing structure. In this often shadowy world, I have witnessed many strange sights, yet without wonder or dismay, for the process of ratiocination of the intellect refined by focusing on the eerie allow me to usually resolve them, demystifying the herd, or easily allow them to disappear completely from my attention and consciousness with contemplation of every new baffling challenge."









©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.

[genre: eerie fiction]

Epicure of Pale Starlight

Mortal, primitive minds once gazed at the starlight and marveled at their alien beauty and vast numbers finding a kind of eternal solace. Awakened now to the timepiece terms of the finate scale of an instance of cosmic infinity in which an hour ago our sun did not exist; in another hour, perhaps, everything shall have ceased to be.

A cool, comfortable time of the calendar, the subtle vanguard of leaves slowly cascaded to the ground in sundry, invisible breaths of wind. Darting dragonflies merely drifted and glided. Thick swarms of mosquitos diminished in ever-widening circles in the dying sunlight. Unlike their soothing, rhythmic song of August, the crickets chirped at a frantic pace in anticipation of an early frost forecast through innate knowledge of their impending fatality.

Apart from the feral avarice of grotesque generations of strange, encompassing city people, eldritch rural houses must often dream; the secret to the heredity of their survival, along with the witchery of blood curses, is often that which subsists there unknown within. Although the sweet redolence of evening dew may pleasure and enchant the senses, the nearby fields and creeks have inspired a similar dread leaving them beyond reproach.

At dusk, the daylight shadows between trunks and boughs of trees were slowly absorbed into the absolute darkness of a cloudy night. Entering into the cooling first level of the majestic structure, the seeker ascended the narrow corridor of a stairway which still retained the heat of the day. Drawn to violet rays of light beneath the northern doorway of an upper room, and having discovered there a lumniferous, anthropomorphic anthesis, he entered into a ceremony of initiation into the lineages of the Elder gods.

A manly reasoner had become immortal witness, an epicure of pale starlight, having become one with their arcane lexicon and knowledge that they have ruled the earth in darkness since the beginning of history and should the signs of calamity be seen, while those around them perish, will know exactly where to survive.





©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.


[genre: satanic fiction]

Lineage

II.

From the Music Manuscript Archive of Gordon Prim:


Sonata No. 1, Somnombuli Nocturne, in C Sharp


The disingenuous happenstance of lights on inside window eyes skipped a sequence of intricacy, so this curse every rondo midnight of endless darkness ever fearful.

Another Somnombuli Nocturne had arrived with their usual punctuality.

Tarantula carpets encasing arms, legs and torso shorn close to prickles sent frissions of fear across ivory flesh. Numbing injections strategically applied allowed anticipation and awareness without heaving screams and worrisome wiggle-splats. Slit then sliced flaps of skin flounder-flapped darkly onto the blood-speckled floor. Gelatinous globules of fat scraped and scooped there slicken. Severed and snapped rib windings unwound into sinewy, glistening flex-band ribbons of meticulous muscle. Hammer-hammers chipped and splintered bones to bitter clouds of tomorrow's marrow dust.

Headless fore nether parts hence, derived from selectively meaningless yet saintly malevolent intentions. All to the soothing, sonomic elegance and beauty of keyed staccato scales, uninterrupted evermore, the seriousness of harpsichord.





©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.


[genre: weird fiction]

The Mystery of the Backward Riding Cyclist: A New Underwood and Prim Adventure

ll.

From the Notebook of Mason Underwood:


For those who have not had the intense pleasure of experiencing the North side of Chicago, one would likely marvel at mile after mile of tall, wooden doorways with shiny, brass doorknobs and ornate, iron knockers, exquisitely detailed sculptures aside and enigmatic carvings along ledges of frosted windows of leaden stained-glass, wide stairways leading upwards into deep porches with massive urns, the entirety of the structures not merely façades but castle-like and constructed entirely of stone. One could only wonder at a time in our history at the wealth that allowed for the unique and personalized accomplishment of each original owner and architects dream. Touring past them with collar of coat upturned against gusts of wind with gently falling snow swirling around the gaslights often leaves the impression of having traveled back in time.

Among these strong, impenetrable and secretive fortresses of stone are also the dwellings of Nightmares. The city is too busy a place for most to take much notice as the denizens hurry daily from destination to destination with clockwork precision. No one ever seemed to come and go from that location during regular business hours, and certainly never in the daylight. There were no landline phones or cable television wires or any other intrusions into privacy. Candles in the highest windows of the upper rooms, which appeared well after midnight, lit the statuary of a balcony which danced in the wavering flames and cast living shadows over the sidewalk that were quite unsettling for those who dared venture near at night.

Messengers came and went there with letters secured by wax seals, procured items disguised in packages and bags of provisions. Once entering through the tall, wooden doors none were allowed past the peculiar vestibule whose walls were lined with red glass through which a soft, dim diffusion of light gave the impression of perpetual dusk. An intercom would sound with the scratch of a needle and then the static of an unrecognizable or perhaps unheard recording of a twenties Jazz song. After leaving their delivery on one of the shelves or modules of the inner wall, an electronically generated voice would prompt them to seek out and stand on a chess move on the floor of square black and white tiles and wait for the ending of the music before being allowed to leave. Performed correctly, they would be called on again but required to dress in accordance with their employer's instructions. The terms of their employment were usually brief, and those whose business had ended with their employer for some reason either relocated to another city or had completely disappeared.

Whom or what was behind the inner doors of the mysterious parlor remained a mystery.





©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.


[genre: eerie fiction]

Ophois

"There is no end in nature, but every end is a begining; that there is always another dawn risen mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens."

Circles (1841) by Ralph Waldo Emerson


I.

There is a patch of ground in the open desert not far from the Valley of Kings known only to those who have been banished there, never to return, where shadow is seen when all the sands around are illuminated in a blue sea of moonlight.

Medu Neter was a tomb worker on the wide channel risers filled with water from the Nile which floated the huge blocks of stone on vessels crafted precisely to each dimension, level by level, until they were firmly set in place by thick ropes of interwoven twine, cranes and levers.

More philosophical than most men of this time, two strange overseers had questioned his allegiance to the Pharaoh and his Queen, something overheard perhaps in a rare moment of exhaustion and idleness and uttered in desperation after hours of agonizing labor. He was abruptly cast out of the city to wander alone far into to the desert, for regions outside heavenly centers of civilization in the linear ancient Egyptian world were considered the land of the dead for the those that were merely common. An old camel near the end of its usefulness, wounded and nearly lame, was provided to him, and he headed westward as instructed toward the unknown meridian.

He was determined to survive; it was the only rationalization that allowed him to travel quite a distance well beyond the torch lit city. Though the sharp grains of sands shifted beneath his blistered and bloodied feet, the restless wind had fortunately been still and the desert without suffocating storms of dust.

Apart from the beast of burden whose hooves he often admired along the ordeal, his immediate thoughts and advanced reasoning were his only companions. Had he not been an obedient member of the kingdom that had functioned well during entirety of his lifetime? Was this decision by mere overseers brought to him on scrolls not unjust?

This was the time of scribes. Words spoken through the Pharaoh and his Queen given to them by gods and goddesses, recorded through symbolic hieroglyphs and brought forward to their people by their messengers were not only those of law but magic.

Should not ideas and the power of speech through the written word belong the everyone?

This was also the time before the invention of widely distributed lexicons of freedom.

The full moon reached apex. While the rest of the desert remained fully illuminated by moonlight, the outcast arrived at the crescent-shaped boundary of a vast circular shadow. In the darkness below that enmanated from above, many heaped into windswept piles, slivered bones burnished gray by the sand, others scattered near the edges where fallen from recent dehydration and hunger in tatters of flesh, he beheld an Underworld portal into which the forgotten and forlorn were drawn.

Ophois then sent forth a tempting invitation by placing the vision of an oasis within the early philosopher's sight.

Though he was physically exhausted, his wits remained keen. Medu Neter, now both silent and still, did not cross over or enter therein.








©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.


[genre: satanic fiction]

Lineage

"Of furniture there was only one narrow iron bedstead, a dingy washstand, a small table, a large bookcase, an iron music rack, and three old fashioned chairs."

The Music of Erich Zann (1921) by H.P. Lovecraft


I.

Mason Underwood sought out Gordon Prim, Chicagoland's elucidator of the eerie, rightful un-weaver of mysterious and baffling knots, for he was troubled by a singular reoccurrence apart from the collective consciousness of the herd that was worthy of the attention of father Poe, American master of horror.

Prim sat in the balcony where like-minded elites had gathered for a transcendent moment, a space and time of healing stillness and meditative exuberance, a majestic and mystical gathering together into a singular consciousness that re-energized them to carry onward along their various and diverse paths of temporal existence.

The doors closed softly and the lights dimmed leaving the renowned orchestra in a warm, golden glow of light. He gently closed his eyes envisioning the blackness of space alive with the motion of planets and their encompassing satellites to the Allegro tempo of Mars, The Bringer of War. Nearing its resolution, he recollected that from a horse driven carriage on Michigan Avenue he had earlier observed through hurrying sidewalk crowds that Mason was seated in a window booth at the nearby Artist's Café.

Venus, The Bringer of Peace, Adagio-Andante-Amimato, lead the thirty- second opus to a satisfying conclusion before a brief pandemonium: weird notes, horrific harmonies and searing strains. Prim's eyes immediately sprang open. The house lighting returned almost simultaneously and cast the forever still and silent audience in an indescribable otherworldly hue. Instruments continued playing independently of the glassy-eyed musicians as the nubile and petite enchantress danced in circles across the stage in her finest Goth attire.

Why was the Music Hall full of ghosts? The elucidator of the eerie recognized the Grimm, goat-bearded resonating piece at once, something from an old vaudevillian black and white negro minstrel show about the time of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.'

The Harlequin played an ebony violin whose frantic yet precise bowing exhuded a symphonic sound not possible by one player but for supernal intensity and the strength of pallid, vampy fingers. Though it was well after Samhain, Fantastique was evidently on one of her soon to be infamous escapades adding a genuinely horrific tang to the faux misery index of the newspapers.

"Jealous ears! Leave me alone!" she shouted, her face aglow in alien beauty. "Anyone who apes these words gets an ethereal echogram."

Due to his acquired metaphysical endurance, Prim remained the sole survivor of the evening. He stood and applauded. "Are you expecting someone to have left?"







Note: American horror writer Edgar Allan Poe was also the inventor of the detective fiction genre.




©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.



[genre: weird fiction]

Intricate

There have been many peddlers of oddities. Traversers of vast, ever expanding distances and masters all of spectacle on a grand scale lead wherever by whatever god or goddess they served throughout the manifest destiny of the continuum of history. Their solitary entrepreneurial descendants are just as indifferent to where or to whom they privately exhibit their wares.

The most educated and elusive tempter to the finest connoisseurs of horror is legendary for having never been born into this earthly dimension or destined to die. Is he an angel, demon or the devil?

The penthouse apartment was furnished with the most expensive of cherry wood and oak antiques from Colonial America. The exotically odiferous carpet was woven from tarantula hair. There were many modern shelves of ornate glass and tubular steel displaying rarities from all over the known world. Macabre artwork, writhing with morbid expressiveness, gave a delightfully torturous and maddening ambience to every space of the dark walls. No enemy could admire them.

"I have been called into your presence. Your desire is to see something neither of lost antiquity, fine porcelain or valuable metal. Every animate or inanimate object that has passed through timeless hands has been cursed and sent out into the world by, shall we say, dark disciples, to wrongful locals of the ignorant and the crude with the most horrific of results for those whose avarice demands ownership."

"You talk is strange. Might I inquire of your credentials at this most sacrosanct," she laughed, "hour of night?"

He handed her a business card with raised calligraphy which read, 'intricate.'

"You are now my purveyor, and I am invisible, for the eyes of all those who have gazed on me swim in this sanguine sarcophagus of blood."

A flash of lightning illuminated a pyramid.

"You may have guessed at the secret of my longevity," She poured out a thick, aromatic wine from a vessel into into a silver chalice adorned with hieroglyphics.






©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.


[genre: horror fiction]

The Mystery of the Backward Riding Cyclist: A New Underwood and Prim Adventure

Adam set his master's writing notebook open to the next available page and placed his quill near the ink well for the approaching interview with his prospective client.

While Prim found each newly introduced device of modernity useful at times, he did not develop a reliance on them for there could come a time when they all would be useless, leaving behind an unobservant, dependent herd easily controlled by the singular dictates and machinations of their leader.

The clairvoyant gypsy witch was quiet now as was her way, for she only spoke in a accordance to the oracle of Romany.

"I am not interested with Romanian," Gordon gave a knowing smile having caught Cassandra in a lie of translation from the spirit world, "or French stories of werewolves." He turned toward his bookshelves of hand written maps many drawn from memory and others meticulously set down from the priceless originals, for he was a well-studied adept of cartography of ley lines and nodes. "I bade both of you safe and prosperous passage until the setting of the sun, for you shall always be wanderers and wily beggars by the destiny of your profession. Neither of you are to approach or speak with members of the Chicago thrall without my advance instruction. I am neither superstitious nor lead into dangers by the promise of dreams or vexing nightmares; however I have had a rather troubling reoccurrence of wakeful precognition regarding de la Sang, king of the Ghouls."

Prim's gypsy servants departed through the hanging arabesque rug and ascended the narrow stairway together to the nondescript doorway which opened again, unattended, on to their daily existences along the sidewalks of Belmont Avenue.

He poured the remainder of the heartsease tea into the cup procured from long ago. The assigned hour of his meeting with Mason and a potential new client was nearing, so Prim carefully began to memorize a map of a nearby temporal-distant node.

The familiar perfume and unseen stealthy footsteps padded across the oriental rug and his senses became heightened and intellect enlightened by wild beats of Jazz. The state of mind was mystically unique derived neither of chants or doctrines of posers. The remainder of the day passed in what seemed like an instant in time.

Energized by his meditative trance, he realized the busy din of the surrounding streets had grown silent with the arrival of the dusk. The cup of heartsease tea had grown cold, and the appointed time for Underwood and the potential new client had come and gone without their arrival. Having learned this wise understanding over years of experience, he did not question the rightness or wrongness of the dark mysticism that had rearranged the day's events.

Business hours having ended, the shop keeper of the Mad Habadasher secured the doorway. The new Chicago thrall sought out their evening safe haven at the Gargoyle and Gin as they entered the portal along the ley, one by one. Inside, vampyre royalty and all their court danced magically and performed bloody, vaudevillian skits on stage, while the Goths danced not with one another but together as one.






©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.



[genre: eerie fiction]

A Skeleton's Handshake

In the interim, The Hanging Tree enjoyed a brief season of success as The Voodoo. Notably, for the peculiarity of a whisky glass that could never be removed from the far end of the bar. Then again, the north was known for dubious advertising chicanery to swing a buck.

Tonite, there was a huge crowd gathered there, generated by some new interest about a legend. The usual congregation played the pool table made from human bones and stretched out skin. And on this particular rainy evening, a traveling salesman from the south made his way into what he thought was a northern oasis.

Sam,  a blameless, debtless, childless widower who had also made his way up north, sat down on the bar stool next to the prosperous personage and placed a cloth sack on the bar with a thud. Sensitive to the sounds, it wiggled and rustled against the coarse grains in the enveloping darkness. "Wanna trade?" he offered. "I don't care what you're sellin'." A living shrunken head, charred by hellfire, rolled from the small sack across the bar top its long hair full of skulls winding around its wrinkled visage.

The salesman reached into his portmanteau and gently placed a shiny, black oblong box with a raised slot near the feet nearby. "Go on, somebody put in a two pence."

"I wish there was more whiskey moving my way along this bar." Cigarette-burn rested the coin in the narrow opening.

"Not the most observant bunch." The bartender nervously scrubbed away at the cloudy insides of a beer mug, over and over, with a white and red checkered rag from a dress like she was polishing fine silver, nervously eyeing the legendary, empty whisky glass at the other end of the bar from afar and muttering, "a nightmare within a dream, a nightmare within a dream, I tell you."

Hinged in the middle from the inside, the top flap of the oblong box began to slowly rise without any sound from working gears.

"I've seen one of them novelties before." the bartender said. "Too bad it wasn't full of useful coinage."

"Not like this kinda one, I'll see your Tennessee whiskey and raise you fields of Texan tobacco." Although well known for standing his ground, Sam wisely wrapped up the necromancer's shrunken head, dismounted backwards from the bar stool, tipped his cowboy hat and bolted for the door. As soon as it slammed, all energy of warmth dissipated from the room, and the insistent rain in which he had arrived began to turn to snow.

The top hinged lid continued to slowly rise without making a sound.

Cigarette-burn looked back and forth between the two pence piece and the peddler of oddities and wondered if she'd ever get her money back.

The bartender kept trying to wipe the beer mug clean while expecting a little, green, phosphorescent hand or some kind of crazy, god-like bronze fist to emerge and snatch up the coin.

The top half of the oblong box had now flipped completely skyward.

A naked, drunken Indian, another of the regulars, becoming suddenly thirsty and curious as well, stumbled up to the bar for a refill with his pool cue in hand and draped his arm on the shoulder of cigarette-burn.

"Nothing's happening?" Cigarette-burn complained. "It must be broke." She reached out to take back her two pence.

"Don't do that, unwise, unwise!" the southern traveler shouted.

Though young from a distance with an emaciated figure, the bar whore's fishy, shriveled fingers deftly snatched away the two pence from the raised slot of the oblong box. Instead of a small, mechanical hand reaching out to intercept hers, she received a skeleton's handshake.

A hammer sounded. Slats of wood were arranged and nails driven hard and deep by the incorporeal hands of an invisible demoness as upright coffins were crafted along the walls of the bar.

Thick, visceral mounds oozed from the opening of the oblong box and flowed like bumpy, brown lava across the bar top. The overwhelming putrid odor of decadence and decay stirred, staggered and stained with an indelible stench all those inbred, isolated northern peninsula dupes that had gathered together for a celebration of something beyond their snail-like comprehension. As the plague of pox expanded and dripped down on to the chessboard floorboards, the patrons were cemented firmly into place, and as the muck rose higher and higher they all descended into the nether realm of the beyond.

Though their ghosts had gone, the structure remained and the legend of the empty whiskey glass that could not be removed from the end of the bar continued with the addition of the shade of an enchantress whose disbelief in demons had fixed her there for all eternity, slowly aging in place while the snow outside rose higher and higher until all her earthly beauty and ambition had vanished.







©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.

[genre: satanic fiction]

The Mystery of the Backward Riding Cyclist: A New Underwood and Prim Adventure

Now fully attired by his man servant, the elucidator of the eerie did not stir nor speak again until he finished his heartsease tea.

Adam continued with his daily chores taking Danse Macabre, second in legend only to the sword of Arthur given to him by the Lady of the Lake, from its resting place high on the wall atop a stack of bookshelves.

Cassandra, the seer, had been meditating over runes and rose petals on a cloth of doves and hearts lace when she began to speak, "If a werewolf is slain as a wolf, it is slain. If a werewolf is slain as a human, the half-wolf essence shall haunt the slayer forever."

"Other than ghosts of late,  I am exclusively a vampyre slayer. I have found that due to their often superior physical condition and ability to accelerate to such a rate that they seem to disappear and reappear, moving through time unharmed, that a wooden stake is often slow and ineffective. It is almost impossible to approach their coffins when asleep, and I do not recommend it, for they are often guarded by their mortal servants. It is better to dispatch them when they are alone in unfamiliar territory when stalking out their prey."

"After dancing, a werewolf was slain once with its own sword in the forest of Villefere," Cassandra advised again aloud.

"Danse Macabre is most effective in battle against all ghouls and vampyres, save one, which I shall never slay, and its origin and how it came into my possession shall remain forever a mystery."

Returning to his window to the world, he examined the street below. Shadows ambled back and forth behind the opaque, smoke-filled window of the Hookah Lounge and the wise un-intelligentsia stepped in and out of the Coffee House clutching their cups and scholarly satchels. Something out of time and out of place had again caught Prim's keen eye. "How extraordinary even for a local such as this!"





©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.


Note: Danse Macabre appeared in Underwood and Prim Adventures by L.P. Van Ness published in 'zines in the mid to late nineties.


[genre: eerie fiction]

There's a Triumphant Power in the Heavens

The rain had been insistent. Not the brightest of men, he figured that there must have been some kind of war going on in the heavens? Bartender waiting by the front door telling everyone, "I'm here all by myself," was nothin' else but some ol' corporate whore with a cigarette burn in the side of her face. Seemed contrived from the get go, but he made his way inside, saddled up on a bar stool and took a look around anyway.

A wiry, inbred Yankee-hillbilly with a thin mustache was playing with a naked rebel-Indian, who was missing one of his balls, on some kind of Nazi pool table made out of human bones and a tan, felt top of stretched-out skin. Then this big, dopey, fat guy in fresh off the road makes a bee-line for the ladies room. Bartender says, "Looks like he needs a sink bath."

As the night wore on, cigarette-burn's b-cup ballooned up to a double-d. Either somethin' was strange about the booze, or there were two of them switchin' off from behind the bar? The quiet Texan all in black put two pence in the jukebox and selects "Now I don't Want to Fall in Love." I agreed with him completely.

Cigarette-burn sat like a statue and kept leerin' down from the end of the bar at everyone with creepy, narrowed eyes, so nobody was buyin' drinks. Sink-bath sits down next to her and says, "Anything you need, brother, all you gotta do is ask?"

Me and the Texan that likes jukebox music hadn't said nothing' to no one all night, and I wasn't about to start now. He was the only other guy in there with any sense just minding his own business, drinking soda and water and stepping outside once in awhile for a cigarette. Soon as the raven left for good, all kinds of hell broke loose.

It was a quarter to three at the Hanging Tree saloon, future site of a campground Laundromat and salon. The salt and pepper set looked kind of suspicious. Now one of them is missing too.

She had been good, silent company, still all night as well, until she said three, little words that weren't, 'I love you.'

"I don't believe in a demoness," I wrangled up the courage to finally speak.

Unfurling black, feathered wings with talons, "Nor do I," she replied triumphantly. She shook him up slip-slidin' around in the ice of her glass and drank all the whisky down.




©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.



[genre: weird fiction]

The Tones of Shadows Are Not of Any One Being

It was dark and still out on the open prairie. The kind of new moon that makes the starlight seem distant and useless. You can't see farther than toe of your boot, and lighting up a cigarette is the only way to shake the jitters that you're not so all alone. There's been men who've walked right into one of them walls of absolute darkness never to return.

Three ranch hands sat around a campfire after a hard day of honest, manly work. Miles away from the main house, they were playing cards for stakes, drinking and singing and raising all kinds of racket but most of all they were laughing until one of them said something really stupid.

A sudden wind gust completely extinguished their campfire. It felt like a wave had swept in on them, and they were all underwater.

"I can't breathe!" Bill complained.

A luminescent shape drifted toward them.

"Who's interrupting? You some kind of angel or something?" Sam challenged.

Growing nearer, they could all discern the shape of a man with hair long as his shoulders and knotted with skulls. With exception to rags, his body was also covered from head to toe in thick, coarse hair.

"What are you supposed to be? Some kind of mountaineer wild man?" Them was Jake's last words. He was snatched up, turned inside out, and his innards were carved out with a switch and put on like a shiny, red coat.

Sam looked over at Bill who was a tall, strong man known to rodeo ride and watched him go from wan to plain livid. It was as if, in an instant, all his life's blood had been sucked clear out of his body. He tumbled to his side in a lifeless heap.

"I've been through hell and back. I ain't afraid of no nine foot high warlock. I ain't no bible thumper neither. For generations my kin have known how to make it rain when it's needed and who and what to call on when they've been vexed by stupidity or been downright double-crossed." He added some spit to the necromancer's blood-splattered feet. "Where I was raised, the kin I've known are twenty feet tall!" Sam bellowed or was it the sudden sound of thunder.

The warlock lurched to make his kill.

"I don't know if you've noticed yet." Lightning flashed in the demon's eyes. "I'm telling you that I'm not only the best ranch hand around but the master's best card player, and like I warned you . . . I'll see your hellfire and raise you rain!"

For those who watch at the portals of hell, it is wise to turn away from those who have passed through its gates, walked there, and returned to tell the tale, for they have earned powers and permissions that grant them eternal respect and all earthly compensation.




©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.



[genre: horror fiction]

The Mystery of the Backward Riding Cyclist: A New Underwood and Prim Adventure

They ascended the narrow stairway side by side and passed through the hanging arabesque patterned rug and entered into the luxurious room lit only by a window to the world whose walls were lined with bookshelves and hand written journals where Prim waited patiently cross-legged on the settee reading the newspaper. "There is nothing irregular to report. I have recently observed an orderly and well-kept city."

Adam gathered together Gordon's singularly black wardrobe.

Prim gave a furtive smile. "Other than, perhaps, the usual shenanigans."

Cassandra began to boil water for heartsease tea.

"I have had an excellent weekend setting down the details of our recent adventures together regarding the haunted song and mystery of the second scrawl," the elucidator of the eerie continued. "I am expecting Mason to arrive shortly with a new client, a young, independent woman of extraordinary talent and potential for literary success who he encountered by happenstance at the recent Printers Row Lit Fest. It seems that she is troubled by a reoccurrence of remarkable singularity. Although they were unaware of my presence there in disguise, not only did I procure a magnificent find of The Atlantic Souvenir from 1835, I also discovered a node along a ley line through whose portal I enjoyed an invigorating sojourn along the Chicago River. As you know, I am not a collector of rarities or seeker of opulent possessions. I merely hunt them in order to sustain my existence during feral periods between my spectacularly successful cases due to the jealous natures of my competitors, save for one. The haunted mind is a delicate thing, so I must ask you both to leave as soon as they arrive, for this potential client does not believe in either magic or the eerie; therefore, I must win over her confidence in my abilities in my usual manner of rational discourse though I already foresee a quite macabre resolution."



©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.



[genre: eerie fiction]

The Mystery of the Backward Riding Cyclist: A New Underwood and Prim Adventure

I.

In the early afternoon, the wind howled up and down Belmont carrying little bits of paper, empty coffee cups and something quite strange along the avenue . . . a backward riding cyclist. Otherwise, everything proceeded along as usual. The Red Line El roared along on the nearby tracks of Chicago's darkest artery with timely precision. The fortune teller kept vigil on the corner kindly inquiring readings much to the delight of the obliging straights. Cannonball messengers bolted by on skates with pink helmets and colorful wristbands. Book lovers and antiquarians stood along the sidewalk and joyfully discussed and marveled over the rarity of their latest acquisitions. Bohemians with swag-bags of abundance scurried in and out of shops as they sought out vintage clothing to set themselves apart from the herd. The Goths and real vampyres would never ever appear until the sun had set, however the tall, muscular man servant in the red vest and white cotton pants and the slim, lean Gypsy witch shawled from head to toe now paused at the entrance between the Mad Haberdasher and Gargoyle and Gin. Neither knobbed nor handled, the narrow, nondescript door opened inward unattended.







©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.


Note: Mason Underwood, Adam and Cassandra appeared along with Gordon Prim in Outer Darkness, which sold on the 'zine racks at Stars the Destination book store on Belmont Avenue in Chicago, IL.


[genre: eerie fiction]

Wind

There is not a [word] for warmth in the bitter and biting subzero currents reddening lips and chafing skin to leather. The harsh intensity of sunlight and rapid motion across the uniformity of reflective dazzles of snow narrow the eyes. From dawn to dusk, the apocalyptic wind races to out run the arc of sun seeking toward shorelines of ice and questing beyond for the infinite line of the horizon where the water meets the sky.










©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.

[genre: cosmic fiction]

Icicles

Sunlit spheres of melting icicles image snowscapes of dark green pines and skeletal trees and seemingly cheerful, temperate blue skies; each miniature, pristine orb an immeasurable passage of time reigning over calendar days and the circumnavigation of precise second, minute and hourly hands.

The nightfall shroud of motley, mottled clouds reclaims the darkness with a frisson of subzero air until the ice moon in the microcosmic diamond reflectivity of snow mirrors macrocosmic starlight and the circles transmogrify, sharpening into the memory-ghost rest of vampiric fangs.








©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.

[genre:cosmic fiction]

Snowscape

In the dawn aftermath of the winter storm, tributaries of light pierced through the gray shroud of clouds and the stoic vigil of skeletal boughs and dark green pines of the encompassing boreal trees illuminating sharp, transparent tips and reflective outer edges of icicles, neither thawing nor expanding, suspended for a time in a portent of starlight. A stasis of anything animate or living, the only sound is the ghostly, static rush of restless, invisible wind.

Having transcended those buried deep beneath snowy mounds of the empty labyrinth, beneath an icy, pale blue sky, over the hard and frozen white windswept prairie there tumbled and rattled a singular and startling, dry and delicate, withered autumn leaf.









©2019 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.

[genre: cosmic fiction]