HARBINGER’S KEY – FIRST VERSE

HARBINGER’S KEY

The Wolf Winds howl on the March to the East
The Blood runs red at the Gathering Feast
The Young Men sing of the Slavering Beast
And the Old Men moan, “Where is our Peace?”

The Monstrous Scale as empty as Death
Measures the Nothing hung over the West
That labors like Murder to steal every Breath
From everything Living, the cursed and the Blessed

High in the Mountains, deep in the Sea
Something is stirring, Horrors set Free
To Harass and to Harrow as if by Decree
The Marrow in Man Bones, Harbinger’s Key

Hid in the Old Dark biding his Time
Lurks the Great Creature stuck in his Limes
His hatred his Quickstone to hasten his Climb
The Day soon approaches, Ruin his Rhyme

But deeper than Old Darks, great in his Weight
Diseased of his own rot, an Absolute Fate
Hatred is small match for his Poisoned Date
Swollen and bloated he waits at the Gates

The Dawns will all soon fall away without Light
The Strong will all tremble even the Night
For Old Dark and Unknown will rise in their Might
To obscure the Pale Earth from even God’s sight

Men think they know Evil but Evil is Young
Of Far Older Powers still songs can be Sung
For These are Approaching, Chieftains Among
The Slayers of Futures that Silence All Tongues…

____________________________________________________

An unfinished poem I began for Halloween. It will go into one of my books of poetry.

THE GHOSTLAND – TUESDAY’S TALE

THE GHOSTLAND

“Within us all there is a Ghostland, but sometimes when we wander in the dark, we become the ghosts of a far stranger land.”

(Opening line of The Ghostland) *

Tonight I was walking Sam in the woods near sundown. I let him go ahead of me because I knew about a quarter mile ahead was the fenceline. When I caught back up to him it looked just like he was standing on the other side of a large steel gate and for a moment I thought, “Now how could he have passed through that gate and fence, and how will I retrieve him if he did (since the neighbors keep it chained and locked)? But as I got closer I realized it was just a trick of the light given his color as he stood against the fence-gate near sundown.

Then on the way back I thought to myself, “suppose Sam really had passed right through that gate, how would I have gotten him back and what would that mean?” And that gave me a superb idea for a short story. Which I originally thought about calling Ghost Dog.

Then as I walked on I began to see in my head I saw all of these scenes of places I’ve Vadded over the years. Especially deserted and spooky places I’ve hit at night or while working some case. Except these places and the things in them weren’t as they really are, and some were certainly weird enough just on their own, they were all changed in my imagination. Strange, surreal, and unreal places in which things like a dog walking through a steel gate was, if not normal, at least something that could happen. I kept seeing a Ghostland. And since the story kept expanding in my mind I renamed it Ghostland.

And then I started seeing weird and bizarre events in this Ghostland too. So I came home and sketched it out.

And yeah, I’ve been relistening to the Fourth Tower of Inverness lately too (it’s that time of year after all) but what I saw in my head wasn’t just weird, like the Fourth Tower, it was spooky and bizarre. I think it will make a perfect Halloween story.

• The photograph is not mine but by Charlie Humpal. He’s awfully good: http://charliehumpalphotography.com

THE DESCENT OF ARACHNIA

This is a photograph I took and then modified to submit to a photography contest one Halloween. I think I won third place for the pic. However I never actually received my prize. Which was supposed to come by mail but never arrived.

It is of one of the first Black and Yellow Argiope (A. Aurantia) to appear near my house, years before I began cultivating and keeping them. I call the photograph, The Descent of Arachnia. After the myth. Below the pic is the poem I wrote to accompany the photograph.

THE DESCENT OF ARACHNIA

On common web that most uncommon beast
Does descend upon every unwatched fate
And threads which measure out the feast
Of living span do tremble, spin, and quake –
When hearts catch at approaching omen’s crawl,

Every man knows well though spoken not
How deep within his untangling looms,
A tremor from the center of the clot
Which darkens blood and shadows doom
When creeping eyes do find him slumber’s thrall,

Legs, long of aspect, slow, and lithe
Run out patiently with dread approach,
For nothing stems that fang which glides
Like icy limb upon the frigid throat
To close up tight in horrid awe,

She comes like shadow in the colored dark
To pluck the living fibers from men’s veins,
Descended from some ancient Wyrd embarked
Which entwines our bodies round in vain –
For no man e’er escapes that creeping maw;
When Arachnia stoops to make her final claim.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYBODY

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Aside from the writing I’ve already done today I’m taking the rest of the day and evening off and reading. Yesterday at the library I got the Castle of Otranto, Vathek, and the Vampyre.

I know I’m not going to finish writing either The Vengeance of Tôl Karuţha, or Scarecrow before the end of today. So I’m not going to worry the issue. Both have simply become far too involved compared to my initial concepts and plots. But I have made good progress on both.

After I read this afternoon my oldest daughter and I will spend the rest of the evening and night watching horror films together. (My wife and youngest daughter are horror-wimps.) Halloween being one of my three favorite holidays.

So Happy Halloween Everyone.

And everybody – man, woman, and child – stay safe out there.

SHORE OF THE SEASON

To relax tonight, and to listen to some Halloween music (this time of year I like to listen to darker, more moody, spookier music), I’ve been listening to the soundtrack of Howard Shore’s soundtrack for The Hobbit.

To be honest, although a few tracks are weak, overall it’s nearly as good as Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack for the Man of Steel. I don’t think Shore is yet as good a composer as Zimmer, but in his own way he’s quite fine.

And some of this music is very atmospheric indeed and perfect for Halloween and this season of the year.

SCARECROW

Had a great idea for a short story the other night while walking Sam under a shrouded and obscured moon.

It will involve a Scarecrow who suddenly becomes conscious of himself three nights before Halloween. He is unsure of who or what he is, he knows only that his name is Teleman (the “distant man” or “man from a distance”). On the first night he is “pinned to his post” and can only observe what happens around him.

At nightfall of the second night he is able to “come off his post,” and wander around where he eventually encounters a beggared demon looking for someone to inhabit, a bull so fierce that it will allow no approach, a ghost whose voice and appearance hypnotize and terrorize, a man-eating bear, a monster made of shifting plagues, a pack of hungry and relentless wolves, witches bent on producing a “changeling”, an occultic warlock who plots to become a king, and three evil men (murderers working as a team). But these things are not necessarily encountered in that order.

Sometimes an encounter leads to Teleman’s near destruction, sometimes to his “hammering, burning, and folding,” and sometimes to his strengthening. Each encounter changes Teleman and eventually transforms him into something else.

Eventually, on midnight of Halloween he “returns to his post” a totally transformed thing.

So ultimately Teleman becomes both entirely different from a scarecrow and something to be entirely feared in his own right.

The story will be a metaphor of two separate but related things: the pathetic cowardice of modern man and how he can be transformed into something courageous and something once again to be feared, and the smithing and transformation and constant reworking of base raw materials into a useful weapon, a sword.

This will be my Halloween short story for this year. I will begin writing it next week and hopefully it will be be completed just before Halloween. I will write it as I’m finishing up The Vengeance of Tôl Karuţha.

I already have the first line the story. It will be either, “I awoke at my post, but knew nothing of my Nature.” Or, “I awoke who I am, yet knew nothing of my Nature.”

Actually that was the line that initially inspired the entire story and plot as Sam and I walked in the woods at midnight.

I am thinking I will include some verse in the body of the short story.