DUEL OF SHADOWS

EGYPT

{Courtesy Tim Bradstreet}

   Before there was Man, the Black Land existed.

      And the Black of that Land was not soil ...

          It was the ABSENCE of Light, of Mercy, of Life itself.

Call it Anti-Life for want of a better term that your primitive minds might understand.

I call myself ...  DayStar,

that last burning ingot in the dying night that rails at the coming of the Light.

Do you dimly sense the vast epoch lurking behind the East of the early ages?

Do your souls shiver at the murmur of that once lurking Night behind the dawn of Egypt and Babylon?

And when you dream fitfully on nights of new moons, do you glimpse flashes of gigantic black cities from whose ruins the first Babylon rose,

a last mirrored remnant of an age lost in the deep gulf of prehistory's endless night?

Now
it is the year 1895 in Egypt.

The nations play at what they pathetically call the
Great Game,
vying to see who will dominate the world.

But Others in the Shadows, born of my Darkness place a pawn here, sacrifice a knight there.

Though but hundreds of years old, they have grown smug in their supposed power.

Not knowing that they, themselves, are being played.

The Seed I sowed 3000 years ago has just been harvested.

Man is about to taste her bitter fruit.

The board is set.  My pieces are in place.

Now, after so long, my Adversary moves his knight:

{Courtesy Tim Bradstreet}

Samuel McCord --

 

One Lone Knight Against the Shadows in 

THE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT

{Coming Soon}

 

Its Prelude:

DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE

http://www.amazon.com/DEATH-HOUSE-LIFE-Roland-Yeomans-ebook/dp/B00HIU5O38/

Sean McLachlan's short story The Scavenger will be free August 14-18.
Give him a neat birthday present and download it, will you?

 

DAYSTAR HERE_Why Do You Keep On?

DayStar here.

Oh, yes, I am only a character in that deluded fool's novels.

Please, keep on thinking that.

It makes things so much easier for me when you do not believe in me.

What was that mongrel saying last century?

Oh, yes: "The devil made me do it."

As if!

Do you truly believe I have nothing better to do than to meddle in your dreary, boring lives?

All I have to do is turn out the lights in a city as with Katrina ...

and you fall all over yourselves devolving before my very eyes. What a delightful sight.

Shooting at the very helicopters bringing you foods and medicines.

Doubt me?

Look at this heart-warming book trailer from my latest unsuspecting disciple:


Let them both die I say. Save your power. Beautiful women are drawn to it like flies to a corpse.

Locke sells millions.

The deluded fool has sold four books this month. Delicious.

I come to him in the night and murmur,

"Give the talking monkeys what they obviously want. What has writing of the delusions called love and friendship gotten you?"

He maddeningly gives me that sad smile of his.

"Dreams, like honor, cannot be taken from you. You have to throw them away yourself."

He smiles wider. "Don't wait to catch. My bad shoulder and all."

L is for LUCIFER_Call me DayStar

http://www.amazon.com/FRENCH-QUARTER-NOCTURNE-ebook/dp/B004YTMNRG

First appearance of DayStar in FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE:

I called out, "DayStar, don't you have more important people to be toying with than small potatoes like me?"

A chuckle like brittle bones breaking came from out of the darkness in front of me, "Should auld acquaintance be forgot, Samuel?"

"Some should."

Out of the blackness a voice, like the tolling of bronze bells far off in the distance, spoke cold, "You have interfered one time too many."

"That's been said before."

"Not by me."

The half-moon peeked out from behind a cloud and for a flicker of an instant I caught two gray eyes studying me. Deep, gray eyes that seemed to look inward as well as outward. Eyes that appeared to burn with cold fires.

Then all was darkness again. "I know you must have wondered how you’ve survived against me all these years."

"It had crossed my mind once or twice."

"At times there was a hedge from my enemy around you."

I pulled up straighter. Damn, it had flat never occurred to me that his madness had kept him from killing me. Madness you ask. Yeah, DayStar was as nutty as a can of Planters. The strongest paranormal I had ever met, mind you, but insane as you could get. Maybe the two went together in some way.

And what was his delusion? The name he chose to go by gave it away. "DayStar" was the English translation of the Latin name found in the Vulgate version of the book of Isaiah. Lucifer.

It was insane I know. But then, so was he. But he was also so powerful my mouth got dry just thinking about some of the nightmares he had wrought without strain.

I was facing a lunatic paranormal that thought he was Lucifer. But unlike all those nuts you saw who thought they were Napoleon, the delusional facing me had the sheer intellect and power to make more than a few people actually buy into his psychosis.

Including my best friend, Renfield.

But I was hardly going to call DayStar on his madness right now. Jung had warned me long ago that you didn't get anywhere you wanted to go by confronting a delusional head-on concerning the absurdity of his claims.

And when said delusional had the sheer paranormal power DayStar did that went double. It flat didn't matter when a man dropped an A-Bomb on you if he thought he was a kumquat or if he was stone-cold sane, you were still just as vaporized.

DayStar spoke again. "Tonight that hedge is gone."

The darkness actually seemed to grow denser around me. "I went to some effort to bring Katrina to New Orleans only to veer away, building up hopes of escape, then have my carefully constructed levees collapse in the fashion I wished. Such despair and death. It was delightful."

He was crazier than I thought. He actually thought he had brought Katrina to New Orleans. But then, I had been in the limo when Elvis made it stop so he could demonstrate to me and his bodyguards how he could make a cloud move. Since Elvis had just fired Red and Sonny West, his two childhood friends, none of the remaining guards said a word. Me, being me, I had told him to just listen to himself. I told him I had good doctors that would wean him off the drugs that were ruining his life.

He had left me on that country road. Being alone, I had enjoyed the company – if not the walk.

DayStar took two steps towards me. "But then, you had to interfere."

Thinking back to Elvis, I said low, "I do that sometimes."

"No longer. That meddler Nagin was supposed to be already dead with the Russian Mob firmly entrenched here. And Theodora was already to have a beachhead established in New Orleans by this time. I need this revenant war as a distraction. And I will have it!"

"A distraction from what?"

He ignored me. I didn't mind. I got the same kind of treatment from his supposed enemy, the Great Mystery.

I sensed more than saw him approach my table, the sound of his steps steady, firm and unrelenting. Heard the chair opposite me being pulled out. Felt as well as heard him sit down in the plush leather chair and neatly arrange his clothes.

"Armani if you are wondering, talking monkey."

"Only the very best for the very worst."

He laughed as if I mattered. I smiled back as if I gave a damn. We both weren't fooled.

DayStar’s words were little more than whispers,

"Once the world lived by night. The dark drew people together. Under its cover, they could feel the need for each other. But I gave the night to the predators, kept for myself the day so that the living could look into eyes filled with fear and hatred.”

I fought the urge to challenge his delusion. I reminded myself of Jung's warning that challenging the delusion of a madman only made matters worse. And when said madman had the power to wither a man with just a whisper, making things worse seemed like a poor game plan.

I shrugged. "You see what you look for. I take it that the company I was expecting isn't coming?"

"Alas, no. I informed them that I had other plans for you."

"They take it well?"

"What do you think?"

"Any of them still in one piece?"

"Samuel, you know me better than to think I let anyone rest in peace."

I sighed. "Any of them still among the living?"

"Of course. They all are."

His laughter was a thing of nightmares. "They just aren't enjoying it."

His voice became even more hollow. "Man. Bah. Even when I show him the truth of life, he wastes his potential, what pathetic little of it exists."

He chuckled, "Some are born to sweet delight. Some are born to endless night."

A coldness seemingly born of that endless night radiated from DayStar. "Man. Disgusting talking monkeys, nothing more. An endangered species from the very beginning. Not particularly fleet of foot, unless chasing after another man's wife. No large teeth. No claws except for his tongue. A wonder you have made it this long."

It hit me then. All this time I had thought he was a human. The next step up in evolution maybe, but still a human being. Damn, but what if he were something else. An alien. A member of the Sidhe I had never heard of before. A wanderer who'd slipped into our dimension from another. Or an invader from Elu’s mirror world.

I shoved those questions on the back burner. I could mull them over later. If there was a later. Now, to try to banter my way out of death. A part of me asked why I bothered. I had no answer to that. Reflex I guess. Or maybe quitting just seemed lazy somehow.

"Don't you have a government to topple, a politician to corrupt?"

"All in good time, Samuel. All in good time."

He laughed, "In fact, I am having a marvelous time right now with the opportunities still afforded me by Kristina. Whispers to bruised egos to insure one agency will ignore another. Stroking of inflamed pride to keep insufficient mouths from asking for help until it is too late. Suggesting of shallow men for pivotal positions. All so simple. All so enjoyable. All so effective. Government agencies are so much fun to play like puppets. And the nature of human nature makes it so easy."

His voice lowered until I had to strain to hear it. "And the helpless die."
***

FIRST CAMPAIGNER CHALLENGE_THE DEVIL YOU SAY

Here is my entry for the first campaigner challenge from Rach Writes,

we had to write a piece of flash fiction no more than 200 words starting with "the door swung open"

and for a bit more of a challenge ending with "the door swung shut,"

plus being 200 words exactly:

Samuel McCord came to my rescue in this bit of flash fiction --


The door swung open.

It does that a lot at Meilori’s, my haunted jazz club. Usually Lucifer doesn’t walk in. Like now.

At least, he believed he was Lucifer. He called himself DayStar. Sadly, he had the sheer power and intellect to convince a lot of people he was who he said he was . I wasn’t one of them.

He was simply deluded. I smiled bitterly. There was a lot of that going around.

Dressed in an Armani suit, DayStar walked to my table and sat down.

The lights around my table went dark. All I could make out were his deep gray eyes.

"Hypocrite, I lie to others while you lie to yourself. What is the difference between you and me?"

I got my voice to work. "That question keeps me up nights."

"Excellent," laughed DayStar. “Have you ever thought how good it feels to kill people with that right hand of yours?”

“Each life is unique. Ending those lives should never feel good.”

“Really? It must feel good to God. He does it all the time.”

Laughing like the breaking of brittle bones, he got up and disappeared. I looked to the front.

The door swung shut.

***

WHY FRIENDSHIP? {a return visit}

Friendship.

My most popular post, visited many times each day is this one.

So I thought I would bring it to the attention of my new friends, adding some new items to make it interesting to those who read my earlier post :

Anais Nin, the enigmatic French author famous for her journals spanning 60 fascinating years, wrote :

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world dawns."

It would be hard to say whether King Solomon was made more alone by his many wives or by the prison of his throne.

Nonetheless, King Solomon wrote : "Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."

Friendship.

It is what is so very lacking in today's cyber-society where everyone is twittering, but no one is listening. Or giving a damn. They are hunched over their blackberries, waiting impatiently for the message to end so they can jump in with, what is essentially, a "Listen to me!"

Because so few of us have it, friendship and its portrayal are what will bring us back to a novel over and over again. I know that it is the case for me. And for the friends I talk to.

Frodo and Sam. Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Spencer and Hawk (from the always entertaining Robert B. Parker series.) Elvis Cole and Joe Pike (from the Robert Crais fascinating detective series.) Bill and Ted. Calvin and Hobbes.

Family is a crap shoot. Love cools. But friendship endures.

Friendship is one of the cornerstones of my surreal Noir, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE. Two friends :

Samuel McCord, agnostic undead Texas Ranger. Renfield, haunted revenant priest.

They have known one another since Istanbul was Constantinople and honor still had meaning.

Both love mysterious, beautiful, deadly women. McCord would say all beautiful women are both mysterious and deadly. His love is Meilori, a being from another plane of existence. "Born of stardust and the sea" as she once told him.

And Father Renfield loves Sister Magda, the nun who serves with him in his church. Yet the friendship of the two undead men is a kind of love in itself like David's and Jonathan's :

{At this point in the novel, Renfield, the vampire priest, and his best friend, Sam McCord, are stepping out from behind MEILORI'S, looking at the flooded street before them.} :


Renfield bent down and picked up a floating child’s doll, its false hair soaked and hanging. Its glassy eyes eerily reminded me of too many human corpses I had seen floating down this same street.

Renfield stroked the plastic cheek softly as if it had been the flesh of the girl who had lost her doll. Closing his eyes, he dropped the doll with a splash that sounded much too loud.

That splash said it all. Renfield looked my way with eyes that clawed at me.

“I could take the Blitz. It came from Man. This .... This is from God.”

I just looked at him. From God? I bit back the words that first came to my lips.

It was plain he was hurting inside. And I put up with such talk from Renfield. He was my friend. And he was a priest.

Priests were supposed to see life through the filter of faith. Still, I had lost faith in the unseen long ago. It had slowly faded like mist on a summer sea.

But there is a toll to such a thing. I looked around about us, trying to see it through my friend’s eyes of faith. I failed. Not a first for me.

Renfield’s head was down, though his eyes followed the floating body of the plastic doll as the currents pulled it under the black waters.

“Do you think He finally has had enough of us, Sam? Enough of our cruelty, our madness?”

I rubbed gloved fingers across my face. Like I said, I was at a loss at whether the Great Mystery even existed or not, much less be able to give a true answer to that question.

But Renfield had his own doubts about God. He was my friend, and I wouldn't push him over that dark edge.

“Hell, Padre, I don’t know. Could be.”

I smiled bitter. “You know the Lakota Sioux call God The Great Mystery.”

“You call Him that, too, as I recall.”

“Yeah, ‘cause what He’s up to most of the times is surely a great mystery to me.”

He studied me. “You’re not ---”

He waved a hand around us. “ --- mad at Him for all of this?”

Mad at someone who might only exist in empty prayers to equally empty darkness? I saw the anguish in my friend’s eyes. I chose my words carefully.

“Hell, Padre, we all chose to live in a city seven feet below sea level right by the coast, protected by levees built and maintained by a corrupt government. What did we think would happen?”

Renfield shook his head. “We all denied. It’s what humans do.”

His lips twisted. “Even those of us whose humanity is only a memory.”

I clamped a hand on his left shoulder. “You’re human where it counts.”

His face twitched as if his tongue tasted bad. “And where’s that?”

“Your soul, Renfield, your soul.”

“I lost that a long time ago, Sam.”

I might be at a loss about God, mind you. But I was sure about the soul, for I had seen its lack often enough in too many eyes. Just like I saw its solid presence within Renfield's.

“No, you didn’t. Like mine, your soul is a cocklebur. You can’t shake it no matter what you do.”

He smiled wearily. “I must have missed that verse in the Bible.”

“Gotta read the small print, Padre.”
*****************************************************
I'll let Mark Twain have the last word on friendship : "Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
****************************

HEART STOPPER

Love.

What is its color? How much space does it take up in our heart?

Doesn't your heart feel near to bursting when you first spot the one you love?

And when it dies, the Grand Canyon seems small compared to the hollowness in that same heart.

Francine and Denise have given us the prompt, HEART-STOPPER, to use this Friday :

http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/

My entry is from ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM.

Many have emailed me asking what could possibly destroy such a one as Samuel McCord as Maija threatened last week.

Before she fell in love with Samuel, Meilori had made a pretense of assisting DayStar for her own purposes. But she learns even the pretense carries a steep price.

DayStar has taken possession of her body after the BALL OF DEATH & MADNESS, and he sends her against her beloved.

Samuel is seemingly without a single weapon. We join the festivities at that point :

DayStar studied me like a steak he was about to eat.

“You are weaponless.”

I pulled King Solomon’s knife from its neck sheath. “Not completely.”

He smiled. “Ah, so you want the dying to be up-close and personal, do you?”

His eyes grew dreamy. “Let us slow the pace to this last dance, shall we?”

Meilori spoke low. “You must kill me, beloved, for if you should die by my hand, I would kill myself anyway.”

I locked my eyes on hers.

“This is not going to work out like he plans --- beloved.”

DayStar murmured, “You simply have no idea.”

“Keep telling you. I usually don’t.”

He smiled, and Meilori spun elegantly, holding her bone sword up high with both hands.

And it began.

Eyes.

I felt them on me.

Meilori’s : weeping with an aching love, a hollowing sadness, and utter terror.

Fallen’s : bruised, fearful, yet whispering an unreasoning hope.

Renfield’s : dark, filled with remorse and regret.

Maija’s : blue pools of icy regard in whose depths swam uncertainty and longing.

Meilori wheeled gracefully around me as if to some melody of death only she could hear. Me?

It seemed as if I could hear the trumpets of a bull fight as it reached its bloody climax. I was under no illusions who was the bull in this fight.

I was bone weary, moving with all the skill and stealth of a wounded moose. Meilori was as the wind given life, light, ethereal, and full of death.

And DayStar could move her with even more speed than I could muster.

My gloved hand clutched Solomon’s blade tighter, my fingers feeling numb and sweaty.

Meilori danced about me, meeting my each body shift easily, gracefully.

Her jade eyes seemed to swallow me. Her voice was a wet husk.

“I love you, my Samuel.”

“And I you.”

Fallen whimpered as the tears bled from her hollow eyes. Renfield turned his eyes away.

Maija looked first at me, then at her sister, her blue eyes slowly turning to DayStar with hate. DayStar began to smile wider.

The trumpets only I could hear started to crescendo. The dance was nearly done.

Meilori’s lips worked wordlessly as she fought the possession of her body. Black tears seeped from the corners of her eyes.

“We will meet again where the shadows never fall.”

DayStar laughed. Meilori's jaw firmed. My right hand suddenly became stone.

With uncomprehending eyes, I saw Solomon’s blade in it fly impossibly fast straight into Meilori’s heart. DayStar cursed.

Fallen sucked in a breath. Meilori fell into my arms that were once again mine.

No!

She had taken control of my body as DayStar had taken control of hers. No! This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. No!

She lay limp in my arms. Her eyes rolling up, she tried to speak but couldn’t.

Only a wet gurgle came out. But still I heard her voice murmur within my mind. One word.

One last word.

‘Beloved.’

I heard an animal wail. Wail as if its guts had been scooped out. Then it came to me. No animal was wailing in pain.

It was me.

Me.

And DayStar laughed.
***
Not part of my entry, but this poem by Stephen Crane begins the next chapter. I add it for Andy and my other friends who enjoy poetry.

“Places among the stars,

Soft gardens near the sun,

Shed no beams upon my weak heart,

Since she is here

In a place of blackness,

Not your golden days

Nor your silver nights

Can call me to you.

Since she is here

In a place of blackness,

Here I stay and wait.”

***

WHY FRIENDSHIP?

Friendship.

Anais Nin, the enigmatic French author famous for her journals spanning 60 fascinating years, wrote :

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world dawns."

It would be hard to say whether King Solomon was made more alone by his many wives or by the prison of his throne.

Nonetheless, King Solomon wrote : "Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."

Friendship.

It is what is so very lacking in today's cyber-society where everyone is twittering, but no one is listening. Or giving a damn. They are hunched over their blackberries, waiting impatiently for the message to end so they can jump in with, what is essentially, a "Listen to me!"

Because so few of us have it, friendship and its portrayal are what will bring us back to a novel over and over again. I know that it is the case for me. And for the friends I talk to.

Frodo and Sam. Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Spencer and Hawk (from the always entertaining Robert B. Parker series.) Elvis Cole and Joe Pike (from the Robert Crais fascinating detective series.) Bill and Ted. Calvin and Hobbes.

Family is a crap shoot. Love cools. But friendship endures.

Friendship is one of the cornerstones of my surreal Noir, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE. Two friends :

Samuel McCord, agnostic undead Texas Ranger. Renfield, haunted revenant priest.

They have known one another since Istanbul was Constantinople and honor still had meaning.

Both love mysterious, beautiful, deadly women. McCord would say all beautiful women are both mysterious and deadly. His love is Meilori, a being from another plane of existence. "Born of stardust and the sea" as she once told him.

And Father Renfield loves Sister Magda, the nun who serves with him in his church. Of course, there is a unique back story there. But I'll let Sam tell it :

{At this point in the novel, Sam is helping Renfield clean up his church after Katrina, musing on his past relations with the Vatican} :


I'd had a pretty good relationship with the last Pope. I'd fought Nazi's with him back when he was studying in that underground seminary in Poland. I smiled thinking of how he posed as a priest while only a seminarian. And how he gave false baptismal records to fleeing Jews in the underground. He called it his elective course in the humanities. I sighed as my chest grew heavy. He was gone. Another friend was gone. It seemed just when I started liking somebody, they left me.

A shout of dismay brought me out of my musings. One of the statues in the main sanctuary was toppling over. And a nun was directly underneath it. Cursing under my breath despite the surroundings, I raced as fast as my bad right knee would let me. But I made it in time. Barely.

I grunted as I caught the marble statue of Jesus struggling under the cross with a bit of a struggle myself. But I managed. Being careful not to crack it, I shoved it back into its ornate niche. Now, I was kind of unsure if he was who he said he was.

And on top of that, it was only a representation of him, mind you. Still I knew my strange luck. If I handled the statue carelessly, it would turn out he was the real deal. And I was kind of uncertain how He would feel about some of the trails I had blundered down in my life. Best to err on the side of respectful caution. I looked down at the nun.

"Magda, you've got to be more careful."

Sister Romani looked up at me with deep eyes of summer seas from out of the kind of face that had men embezzeling from orphanages and starting wars. Her thick, silky black hair cascaded through the modern habit that had been brushed back on her head by my shoving her out of harm's way. There was a single one inch wide streak of moon-silver along the right side close by her temple -- a gift of sorts from Estanatlehi, whom the ancient Greeks had named Gaia and whom I now called 'Mother.'

Magda tapped the worn leather pouch of nails hanging from her rope belt. "He would never have harm coming to me from His statue."

I arched an eyebrow. "You stole those nails from that centurion over two thousand years ago. You think He has that long a memory?"

"Of course."

"That's what I was afraid of," I muttered.

I studied her intently. She'd been there. I felt a weight ease off my chest. I could ask her.

"Magda, did you see --"

Her face grew sad. "Him emerge from the tomb? No, Samuel, I was on the run from the Romans at the time and for some time afterwards. I just take it that He truly did rise since I am still alive some two thousands years later."

I bit back the words from my tongue and kept from telling her that her still living came from Estanatlehi. In love with language as much as she was, she had been fascinated with the parables of Jesus. And she took Magda's theft kindly and had rewarded her. I sighed. Still no answers. It was getting to be a frustrating tradition with me.

"Magda!," panted Renfield as he rushed up to her, out of breath more from fear than running, especially since he didn't breathe anymore.

He took both of her hands in his. "You must be more careful."

"You men, oh, foo on the two of you," she laughed, squeezing his hands lightly and not letting go.

"'Fu' is Mandarin for 'Good Luck' you know," I smiled at the two of them.

She made a face at me. "And you with that musty Jesuit education of yours."

"Well, they weren't exactly Jesuits."

She snorted, "Nor would I guess that you were exactly the best of students either."

"Reckon you got me there."

But she wasn't looking at me anymore. She and Renfield only had eyes for one another. Their fingers were still entwined as were their hearts. Long before they had become priest and nun, they had been man and wife. Each had entered the Vatican's service in response to my worst enemy's first demand to end their son's misery and curse. His second demand was for Renfield to assume that curse -- to become the vampire he still was.

DayStar, my worst enemy, being what he was, had still found a way to take their son from them anyway. But both Magda and Renfield were as good as their word. They remained true to both of their vows that they had taken -- though it took some doing to reconcile the two into a working system. But the pair had found a way, filled with hunger and hope, mind you. But isn't that much like life for the rest of us? The street people in the church were still and silent. They knew the story. And me? I felt hot tears blur my vision. I had failed my best friend.

I should have been smarter, should have figured out some way to defeat DayStar, found some method to save my friend's son, and to end the curse which tormented him hourly. He deserved a better friend than me. And me? I didn't deserve for him to call me 'friend.' I deserved to be called the monster I was. And you know what they did to monsters.



*****************************************************

I'll let Mark Twain have the last word on friendship : "Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
****************************

At the moment, I am listening to "Into the Dark" by Jesse Cook. He is a Toronto-based Nuevo Flamenco guitarist, born in Paris to Canadian parents. It spins the mind. He was raised in the region in southern France known as the Camargue, growing up with the sounds and influences of Gypsy music {probably why my cat loves his music.} Check out his site on myspace : www.myspace.com/jessecook. I especially like the second youtube video on Jesse's page. Hey, c'mon, check it out. You don't want a gypsy curse, do you?

V is for VOYAGE as in ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM

{ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM is now available to buy!}

{The cover for ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM, part II of RITES OF PASSAGE,

is courtesy of the creative genius of the British award-winning artist, Andrew Simmons.}

Can you remember how you felt when you ended FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING?

I wanted to give those of you who finished RITES OF PASSAGE quick access to Book II. It should be out this Thursday.

Book II of RITES OF PASSAGE {ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM} :

Like a ghost through a wall, Captain Samuel McCord, Texas Ranger,

has slipped from one year to the next, leaving a bit of himself with each hunt until he feels as hollow as his childhood's illusions.

It is the year 1853,

and he has tracked the only lead in a gruesome murder to the transatlantic steamer, DEMETER.

A young girl he raised from a baby has been murdered on the docks of Galveston, her face removed.

She was last seen in the company of someone only known as the Gray Man.

Now, McCord is on the hunt for this mysterious man aboard the steamer.

But hunter becomes hunted. McCord discovers that fully a fourth of the steamer's passengers are supernatural predators :

revenants ( the truth behind the myth of vampires),

Kali's nymphs (flesh-eating insects),

Kali herself,

the Amal (living shadows who drain men of their life force),

Coyote (Native American trickster and chaos bringer),

the Gahe (soul-drinking demons of Apache myth).

As the DEMETER enters the Bermuda Triangle,

each person and entity McCords meets assures him that discovering the identity of the young girl's true murderer will destroy him.

ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM is an epic historical fantasy, whose major players are --

Captain Samuel McCord :
His are haunted and haunting eyes.

He has seen too much and understood more than he wanted of it.

He appears in his late forties though his hair, turned moon-white by the trauma of seeing his parents and sister murdered,

makes him appear older to those who only glance at him. He is lean like the hunting wolf he is ...

hunting for the peace and love that always seems to elude him.

Lady Meilori Shinseen :

Born of stardust and the sea,
the alien from another dimension has lived longer than most nations.

She is on this voyage to end that long life, having lost all hope of love and peace ...

until she meets the haunted Texas Ranger that reminds her of the noble samurai she lost tragically centuries before.

There are disturbing depths of sad wisdom in her slanted jade eyes.

Depths in whose darkness swim the monsters which drive us or haunt us or both. They both call and warn at the same time.

Elu :

The Apache shaman who has been mentor and brother to McCord.

His mother is the dreaded Turquoise Woman, living projection of Earth's consciousness.

Becoming blood brothers to McCord cursed him to an existence in the Mirror World, a parallel dimension to ours.

The blood mingling also cursed McCord into becoming a drainer of the life force of others ...

if he touches them with the bare palm of his right hand. Hence, McCord always wears gloves.

The phrase "taking my gloves off" is only heard once by the outlaws who force McCord into saying them.

The Gray Man :

Many have been his names.
So many he has forgotten most of them. Dragon. Abbadon. DayStar. He goes now by Lord Hassatan.

Tall, eternally young, endlessly evil and cruel, possessed of a vast, complex intellect that makes the term "genius" pale by comparison.

A Hannibal Lector of supernatural beings.

He claims to be older than even the earth,

being the Darkness which existed when all was Void ...

until the arrival of Light and the Creation of all that is.

He wants his home back.

This voyage of the DEMETER is his way of either ending his tormented life or bringing an end to all life.

Only McCord, one lone cursed mortal, stands in his way of both goals.

The last voyage of the DEMETER is not a pleasure cruise.

It is not even the stocked pond that the undead aboard believe it to be.

It is the beginning of "The End of All Things."

Unless one cursed Texican can fight and win his own personal Alamo --

even though winning it will cost him all he holds dear.

Come aboard the doomed DEMETER

and sail with her into the depths of madness in ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM.

{Of course, a review of this fantasy of mine will also garner you 5 entries in my Autographed Book Contest. So if you review all 3 books of mine, you will receive 15 entries in my contest. How cool is that?}
***

M is for MAYHEM, VOODOO STYLE for Wendy T. Ryan's Blogarversary!

Join the fun :

http://waitingforpublication.blogspot.com/p/blogaversary-blogfest-sign-up.html

{Excerpt from the third volume in the Saga of Victor Standish, SOMETIMES THERE'S NO VICTOR} [496 words]

(Victor and Alice have been flicked back to the year 1826 by the eerie supernatural entity, DayStar, like you or I would brush away knats) :

The blood moon leered down on Alice and me through thick, silent mists snaking above us. The mists were the only things silent across the grassy courtyard.

Drums beat wild rhythms as rocking black men chanted, their wide eyes glazed over. In the shadows of the huge bonfire, black dancers wheeled about, long machetes flashing in their fists.

I was so scared it felt like my skin was about to leap off me and do the Mambo with my skeleton. I knew where we were from pictures in that book on voodoo in early New Orleans :

Congo Square, across Rampart Street from the French Quarter. But a very primitive French Quarter.

I reached out and took Alice’s ice-cold right hand. My heart calmed. With her at my side, I could take on monsters.

With the musk of sweat, alcohol, and hate heavy in the humid night air, Alice whispered in that odd British accent of hers, “Victor, we are in serious jeopardy here.”

Now, when a flesh-eating ghoul says she’s afraid, even a mongrel like me knows that life has just hit a new high in low-down.

The drums suddenly stopped. And every wild eye turned to us.

I winked at her. “You think?”

A tall woman, her black face glowing with deadly grace, spoke soft, yet it carried out across the dancers and slithering snakes on the grass.

But none of them equaled the boa across her shoulders.

“You two do not belong here.”

Alice murmured, “Look at Marie Laveau, Victor. She is such a striking woman.”

I grinned crooked, “Even without the snake.”

A small, crooked old man limped to us. “She be right.”

He turned to Alice, his voice gaining an edge. “’Specially you, nzumbe.”

I stiffened. “That’s Myth Nzumbe to you, Fright Face.”

Alice lips got tight. “Is everything a jest to you, Victor?”

I gave her icy hand a squeeze.

“Never you, Alice. But you can’t let monsters see you sweat.”

Alice rose a prim and proper eyebrow. “I never sweat.”

The old man limped closer. “You be half-dead, now, Miss Nzumbe. Soon you be all dead.”

I shook my head. “Don’t count on it, Legba.”

He stepped back an inch. “You know me?”

“I know of you.”

“Then, you knows how powerful I be. I be the origin of life!”

I snorted. “Get real. That would be Elohim. And I’m pretty sure you’re not Him.”

Legba husked, “So sure are you?”

I nodded to the squirming reptiles on the grass.

“Pretty sure. He’s not real fond of snakes.”

He cackled, “But Erzulie is, and she be right behind you, boy. Erzulie, loa of Love and Death.”

I turned to face the tall black woman with scars on her face and smiled,

“That’s a new look for you, Mother.”

“No, child. ‘Dis face be veeery old. And you be in bad trouble.”

I winked at her and copied her accent, “Dat be an veery old story, Mother.”

***

GHOST OF A CHANCE_CHAPTER 42_I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH

I have a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

-Alan Seeger.

{I am Death. Cringe from me all you will, still will you and I hold hands ...

one day.

DreamSinger's skein of days is all but unraveled. DayStar has plunged him into the fires that are his home. All seems lost.}



I fell into the waiting flames. Behind me I heard Marlene's voice strangely garbled, "Now, Twain. Now!"

I heard the rustle of mighty wings. Then, talons tore into each shoulder. The red hawk had my left shoulder. The giant white owl had the right.

The hawk cawed in Twain's voice. "Damn, the boy must eat rocks."

Marlene's voice came from the owl. "You drop Roland, and I will pluck you bald!"

DayStar laughed above us, "Go where you will. He still dies!"

Twain-hawk grumbled, "I'd pay cash money to see him get his."

Marlene cried, "Hush! To my saber. I do not know long it will keep the portal to Meilori's open."

We flew through boiling clouds of hot smoke for long moments. A glare of bright light stabbed at me from ahead. There. I saw Marlene's sword. It seemed wedged in a tear in reality. I had written on it with Epona's blood : "This sword heals."

As I watched, the blood words slowly evaporated away. But the hawk and the owl flew with me into the opening just as it collapsed, taking the healing sword with it back into Hell.

"No!," cried Marlene as she tumbled onto the carpet, shimmering into her beautiful self, seemingly poured into her white Prussian calvary uniform.

"Yes!," cackled a withered voice from beyond my head as I lay sprawled on Meilori's carpeted floor.

Twain muttered, "Woman, you've killed us."

Marlene whispered, "He was not here when we left."

Twain kneeled by my side, tears streaming from his now human eyes. "Roland's poor face. No. No! Just like my brother Henry. I - I can't take it again."

But still he held my hand like he had held the hand of his fatally burned brother. It had almost shattered his mind. I could see it happening again in his eyes.

No. I might die, but still I would save my friend. "G-Gypsy. Find her. T-Take care of her."

He wanted to leave and didn't at the same time. Marlene nodded agreement. "Go, Clemens. I will stay ... u-until the end."

"Yes," croaked the voice past my head. "Go, buffoon. I have the one I want."

Twain left, giving a look at Croaking Voice as if hate was too small a word for what he felt.

A figure appeared suddenly to my right and flowed closer to me. Death. Her cowl hiding her face.

Marlene sobbed and stroked my throbbing face. "I have loved many times, Liebling. And yet never. Not until you. Until you."

I could have swam for hours in the blue mountain lakes of her eyes, but my ebbing strength said I only had heartbeats. A tear from those eyes splashed on my face.

"Always, Liebchen, it was about me. Until you. I look at you, and you glow with such a light that my heart swells so I think it will burst. Then, you turn and wink, and I think I do not mind if it bursts if only you smile at me one more time."

She broke into sobs. "One ... more ... time."

Croaking Voice laughed, and Death flowed right up to me. Her right hand slowly became a skeleton's. It didn't take my dimming vision to tell me who she was coming for.

Death bent over me, and Marlene hugged me to her breasts as if to stop Death with her own body. "Nein. Nein!"

She looked desperately all around as if for some way to save me. The laughter behind me got louder. Marlene drew a dagger from her boot top. The laughter stopped.

"Drop it!," croaked the voice.

Instead Marlene rubbed a section of her sooty white Prussian calvary tunic clean. She slashed open her palm, then dropped the dagger. The laughter came again.

Marlene laid me down and pressed my right forefinger into her bloody palm. "Liebchen, so many words you have written. I - I ask you to write but three more."

Her eyes were open wounds. "Just three small words. Not so many for such a one as you, no?"

I nodded, no breath left me. She breathed, "First word : Marlene's."

My forefinger trembled like a palsy victim's, and she husked, "I cannot help, Liebling. Your hand alone has the magic."

Mentally I heard Twain grumble, "Why not just ask the boy to write 'Mississippi?'"

I managed it as Death slowly bent closer. Marlene whispered, "Second word : Kiss."

I would have raised an eyebrow had I any left. I barely got the word written.

Marlene darted a fearful glance past me to Croaking Voice and husked, "Heals."

The laughter only got louder. I tried. Marlene's fingers coiled and uncoiled as if burning to help me. Damn it. I tried. But I only managed the L when my hand fell towards the floor.

"Nein!"

Death caught my wrist. Marlene sobbed openly. I looked within Death's cowl. Only one wet, silver eye could I see.

Death tightened her grasp, pulled my wrist up, and suddenly twirled my hand with a flourish, adding "S" to the third word on Marlene's tunic.

The silver eye winked, and her icy voice whispered, "Catch you next time."

Marlene squealed like a little girl on Christmas morning. As Death flowed back a foot, Marlene bent and kissed me with such passion I would have lost my breath if any had still remained to me.

She sobbed, then her trembling lips parted. Her lids went heavy. And she kissed me, fierce, hungry, wild, just like she was deep inside her spirit. She crushed me to her. Her tongue touched mine.

I - I was nearly dead. I didn’t know if I had it in me to do this right. I touched back as hard as I could. I must have done not a half bad job because she ran her tongue along mine again.

She leaned her whole body into me, her lips crushing mine. I squeezed back. In my arms she felt so soft, yet hard at the same time. Her lips were soft, even as they pressed hard against mine.

And for one small magic moment, we were one. Not in body, but in the heart, the spirit, the very soul. We were one. And she was mine. Mine. Marlene was mine. Our first kiss was all I had hoped it would be.

And like a camera coming into focus, I was whole again.

"Good, traitor," croaked the voice behind me. "Good! You get to see him die twice."

Marlene's eyes became slits as she spoke one name as if it were a curse, explaining everything.

"Hitler!"
***

GHOST OF A CHANCE CHAPTER 41_I PROMISED YOU FLAMES

{I am the Turquoise Woman. My ways are not bound by the same chains as are yours.

To learn to swim, one must leap into the depths of the ocean, not slap at its surface from the shore.

DreamSinger was fighting echoes, when he should have been contending with the source. So I sent him to DayStar.

Now, the last Lakota will sink or swim as befits a warrior, battling his foe face to face.}



The flames were leaping up from all around me. The First Church of DayStar wasn't winning any hospitality awards. And I sure as Hell (pun intended) wasn't waiting around for them to pass the collection plate.

Turquoise Woman wanted me to go one on one with DayStar. But my arms were too short to box with someone who could wither with a glance. I was so out of here.

I headed to the steaming bronze door. Its bolt melted into place. Not that way. The stained glass window. Better cut up than burned up.

Suddenly, I heard Marlene from somewhere up on the second floor. “Liebling! Help me. Oh, God, he’s going to kill me! Please help me!”

What was she doing here? I shook my head. Like in World War II, she had come where she had felt she was needed. She had come to help me.

This was why the Turquoise Woman had sent me obviously.

I looked desperately around the blazing lobby, the shadows of the fire casting weird shadows on all the carvings. I jumped what felt a foot straight up as the stained glass window blew out in an explosion of glass.

The stupid bookworm in me looked down to the floor to see if the science textbooks had been right. They said that when glass was broken, thirty percent of the glass weirdly splashed back away from the impact. I smiled bitter. Bits of glass sparkled at me from the smoldering floor. Hurray for science.

“Help me, Liebchen. Oh, God, help me!”

The staircase was one mass of flames. I ground my teeth in helpless frustration. My face went tight. I sucked in a long, hot breath.

Helpless? I let out that breath slow. No. I was never helpless. I had a mind. I would find a way. The glimmer of the glass caught my eye. Away from the impact, away from the fire. That was it.

I turned around. There, facing the open hallway and railing to the second floor, was the ceiling-to-floor carving of Wotan hanging from the Tree of Life, his face looking much too much like DayStar’s.

I ran to the carving. It was beginning to buckle and warp away from the wall because of the terrible heat. Sucking in a superheated lungful of air, I started climbing up the carving.



The sweat on my hands and the clumsiness of my feet made it hard going, but I managed to slowly struggle up the thing. A screeching and cawing from the broken window made me look there. Watching me from the window ledge were a red hawk and a white owl, the flames reflecting odd in their glowing eyes.

Something in the back of my mind whispered that both birds were meat eaters. Maybe they liked their food cooked over a live flame. ‘Take a number,’ I thought to myself and kept on climbing.

It got tougher the further up I went. I slipped over and over again, hanging on sometimes with only two fingers. But I kept on climbing. Marlene needed me, and I wasn’t going to fail her. I wasn’t.

She hadn't hesitated a moment in going with me to Meilori's, the one place she could be killed. I would be the hero she had always been.

I could hardly breathe. The heat got worse the higher I got. My face felt like it was frying on my skull. I ignored the pain and kept climbing.

Despite the death sentence Hitler had put on her head, Marlene had entertained the troops on the front line, braving torture and death. No matter if it killed me, I would be there for her.

I glanced at the hawk and owl as I climbed. They were watching me, their faces hard as if set in stone, their feathers ruffling from the hot winds of the fire. It was weird. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn that they knew what was I was trying to do.

A falling timber, all ablaze, broke loose from the burning ceiling and slammed into my back. I choked back the cry of pain that struggled to get out of my throat. The force of the blow swung me off the carving.

I desperately clung to the wooden throat of Wotan with three fingers. Somehow I managed to swing myself back onto the thing. I tried to ignore the pain as Marlene had ignored the cold when she had slept on the dirt to rest for the next show for the troops.

Finally, my weight proved too much for the warping sculpture, and it broke free from the wall.

As I had hoped.

It thudded into the bannister and railing of the second floor staircase landing. A splinter from a shattered upright hissed past my left eye. I nearly lost my hold. But I kept on climbing. I looked up, the sweat burning my eyes, along with the smoke. Almost there. Almost th-

The carving broke in two. I pushed out with my trembling legs and jumped. The nail of my right forefinger broke to the quick as I hooked a grip on the bottom of the broken railing.

I hung there, dangling from one hand as the blazing lobby floor below seemed to be waiting to swallow me. I tried pulling myself up to the second floor with one arm. I almost sobbed from the effort. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t.

“Where are you, Liebling? Oh, God, DayStar is right here.”

I ground my teeth until my jaws ached.

“Roland! I thought you loved me.”

That did it. I had to get to her. I just had to. I reached deep within myself and found the strength to heave my body up enough to grab the bottom of the railing with my other hand. I bit the inside of my cheek and strained with everything I had.

For a moment, I just hung there quivering with useless effort. But then slowly, so slowly, I started to lift myself inch by agonizing inch. Two inches, then four more.

A whole foot.

My arms were quivering like the legs of a newborn colt trying to stand. Yet, I kept on pulling until my arms felt like they would tear out of their sockets. My eyes raised up to the edge of the landing.

With a final heave of screaming muscles, I pulled myself up and over onto the burning floor. Damn, but it was worse up here. I crawled a few more inches, getting my whole body onto the floor. I staggered to my feet.

The right. Marlene’s cry had come from my right. I reeled and slammed into the wall, the paper curling up from the heat and flames. I pushed off from the wall and walked as best as I could manage towards where I had last heard her.

Bits of the ceiling were falling down all around me. I threw up my arms to shield my head. I had never been pretty. And the way my face burned, I knew I would be a freak from now on. If I lived. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was Marlene. She was all that mattered to me.

If I could save her, then any price would be all right with me.

I walked through boiling, choking clouds of smoke. The smell of it was overpowering, as if I had been dropped into a giant barbeque pit. Or Hell.

I blinked my eyes, straining to clear them so as to spot some sign of DayStar or Marlene.

I prayed it would be Marlene.

She had the prettiest hair, the color of a winter dawn. Even in the hell that was all around me, I had to be able to spot it. I just had to.

But I didn't. All I saw was a laughing DayStar standing in front of me.

Marlene was nowhere in sight.

He smiled like a wolf and cried out. But instead of his golden voice, he cried out in Marlene’s velvet one,

“Help me, Liebling. Where are you? I need you! Oh, God, he’s going to kill me. Help me! I thought you loved me.”

The shadows swallowed all but his gray eyes. "When last we met, I promised you flames."

He gestured, and the floor opened up beneath my feet, dropping me into the searing fires below.
***
I wrote the climb up the burning sculpture to this tune. Read the passage to the music :

{Thanks to Maddelirium for the picture }

DOES DEATH WEEP AT CHRISTMAS?

Here is my entry for Ellie's CHRISTMAS TALE BLOGFEST :
http://elliegarratt.blogspot.com/2010/11/christmas-tales-blogfest.html

{This is my spectral Christmas tale,

spotlighting Samuel McCord, the man with the blood of Death in his veins.

DayStar, his Moriarity if you would,

is the being from outside Time itself who has the peculiar delusion that he is Lucifer.

Samuel is the narrator.}
It was Christmas Eve. A lonely church bell was tolling midnight in the silvery distance. Meilori's was dark.

I had sent everyone away. No one but me to die when my Christmas guest arrived.

DayStar has announced his coming earlier that evening :

A dead baby in a manger with the word "Midnight" written in blood on its tiny forehead.

The ceiling speakers murmured the recording of Meilori playing the "Moonlight Sonata." She had left me with only haunting memories and this one lone recording the night she walked out of my life.

The lights died. The music stopped. I straightened in my chair. My last showdown. It came to every Ranger. Time to face it with courage.

"Hello, DayStar," I smiled.

A tarnished gold voice sneered in the darkness, "Hello, Samuel. Ready to die?"

"I died seven years ago."

"Ah, yes, when your beloved Meilori stormed out of your life. Wasn't she the one who professed, though she were dead, still she would be at your side at the end?"

I watched him shrouded in shadows, just barely making him out. He looked this way and that.

"The end has come and look : no Meilori."

"You're wrong."

I tapped my chest and head. "She's right here and here."

I sensed more than saw him approach my table, the sound of his steps steady, firm and unrelenting.

Heard the chair opposite me being pulled out. Felt as well as heard him sit down in the plush leather chair and neatly arrange his clothes.

"Armani if you are wondering, talking monkey."

"Only the very best for the very worst."

He laughed as if I mattered. I smiled back as if I gave a damn. We both weren't fooled.

DayStar’s words were little more than whispers,

"Once the world lived by night.

The dark drew people together. Under its cover, they could feel the need for each other.

But I gave the night to the predators, kept for myself the day so that the living could look into eyes filled with fear and hatred.”

I fought the urge to challenge his delusion. I reminded myself of Jung's warning that challenging the delusion of a madman only made matters worse.

And when said madman had the power to wither a man with just a whisper, making things worse seemed like a poor game plan.

I shrugged. "You see what you look for.

His smile flashed like a knife from out of the shadows. "You still die alone."

A boy's happy laugh sounded from just outside Meilori's.

Strolling easy through the saloon doors like the wild gypsy he was, Victor Standish laughed as if at the funniest joke in the world. "Wrong! Boy, would you be lousy on JEOPARDY."

"Victor," I snapped. "You promised you'd leave."

He flashed me that scamp's smile of his. "And I left. I never said anything about not coming back."

Alice Wentworth solidified beside him, and he stiffened, "You promised to let me come alone."

Her neon-blue eyes sparkled with the burning love that only the young can have.

"And so I let you come alone. But there is nowhere you will go, Victor, that I will not follow. Not even to meet the devil himself."

DayStar laughed as if all his dreams had come true. "Oh, Samuel, you get to see the young lovers die first."

Victor shook his head, picking up the now living, giggling baby from the manger.

"Sorry to disappoint you, your Hind-Ass. But Mother promised me she'd pass over this place tonight."

His face went as hard as his past life. "You know like she did way back when in Ancient Egypt."

His gypsy's face lit with a grin.

"When your Mother is the Angel of Death, well, let's just say her Christmas presents can literally take your breath away ... or not."

Alice hugged him. I wanted to. Instead I just winked in approval.

And that is how DayStar had his second-worst Christmas Eve.
***

AUTUMN HAUNTINGS

The mottled blaze of strangled life lends magic and beauty to Autumn.

Autumn is my favorite time of year, and I paid homage to it in my historical fantasy, RITES OF PASSAGE.

It is the story of the cursed voyage of the transatlantic steamer, Demeter, in 1853.

A journey where my hero of FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE first met the one great love of his life,

the mysterious Meilori Shinseen, born of stardust and the sea.

A passage where McCord fights his first duel with the enemy who is destined to become his life-long foe, DayStar ...

a being claiming to come from a realm beyond the boundaries of Time itself.

My homage to Autumn is the passage where a wounded McCord walks through a plane of existence not of this world to discover the identity of a murderer

that both friend and foe warn will destroy him. But not to do so would destroy the love of his life.

And that means there is no question that he will walk this strange realm until he finds the truth that will save Meilori and destroy him. 'Fair Trade,' he thinks :


I expected to see a good many unpleasant sights when I walked into the darkness that lay beyond The Door of Nasah. After all, I had a Jesuit education of sorts, courtesy of the Soyoko from so many years ago.

So I knew that nasah was ancient Hebrew for testing.

It had been used to describe those poor wandering Israelites bickering and stewing their way across the desert to the Promised Land. And you know how well that went for them.

But since this is me we’re talking about. I didn’t get a single one of the things I expected. Story of my life. And undeath.

I was walking in a place forgotten by feet. Or so it felt to me. The darkness slowly bled to a lighter hue of gloom.

I paused, brooding in this twilight world, not knowing where to place my steps. I strained my eyes. I could almost make out the smudged silver of a far horizon.

What had I said to myself earlier? That I figured the folks who entered this realm made their own walls. Maybe that was what I was doing now.

Was I walking through the burned-out ends of the smoky days of my past?

A dark forest of memories was lanced through, not with sunlight filtered through thick branches, but with images of pain and struggle. My pain. My struggle. I almost felt the crunch beneath my feet of the withered leaves of others’s masquerades.

I did seem to feel, like the lash of snapping branches against my cheek, the tiny thousand misunderstandings of my best efforts and the clumsy gropings of my heart to the life-hardened hearts of others.

I knew then that I was indeed walking through the Autumn world of my past, rising above the dark horizon of my regrets. The yellowed leaves of recollection curled up around me as I walked slowly forward : Sonora, England, France, China, Australia, New Zealand, and even India.

The light of love slipped through the black shutters of my guilt and loneliness. It was warm and emerald. The light I saw in the eyes of Meilori. My torch that I would carry in this darkness.

I kept walking. Images swirled around me. Revolving doors, showing the faces of an ever-growing army of enemies. Refracting light of clues, guesses, fears of the truth I finally realized I did not want to know.

Meilori’s eyes seemed to waver.

I remembered her anger, her warnings, her despair. I clung to our bond, our love bruised but enduring, curling about my spirit like perfumed smoke rising from the embers of our hearts. I would endure. I had to endure. For her. For us.

Laughter. Cold. Brittle. Knife sharp.

DayStar's.

It swirled all about me. And as fast as fingers become a fist, a chill blackness swallowed me. I slowed but kept moving ahead. I shivered. Not from the cold, but from a growing warmth within me.

I slowed even more. Meilori. Her velvet words spoke within my mind.

‘Beloved, wherever you are know this -- you are a great man.’

I started to protest but her soft words stopped me.

‘Hush, I do not have long before he senses I am talking to you. You are Samuel Durand McCord, beloved, and you are a great man.’

I could have sworn I felt the lingering caress of tender fingers on my cheek.

‘You turned your back on war to save a small boy. You fought cruel laws, usually to no avail. You have written no symphony but that of your deeds. You have written no poems outside words of comfort to those in pain.’

This time I did feel her lips on mine.

‘Yet you are greater than any general, any politician, any composer, or any poet I have ever known. You are great because you are kind when you could have so easily learned to be cruel. You are great because you love when so little has been shown to you. You are great because you are humble when you have the power to be a tyrant.’

I felt my nose tweaked. ‘And finally you are great, not because you never fail but to celebrate life, but because you never quit. Now, do not make me a liar!’

And suddenly the blackness was colder because my sense of her was gone. Snatched away like life by a pistol shot.

DayStar must have sensed her talking to me. She could be in serious trouble. I ground my teeth. I had to get back to her.

But I figured turning back would only lead me to a deeper darkness. If there was one ugly lesson I had learned in all my wanderings and mistakes, it was that with life in general, and with DayStar in particular, there was no going back. None at all.

No, I had to bull this one through to the end. Through to my end if everyone’s warnings were right.

But there was another lesson I had learned. The majority was usually wrong. Usually.

I took a firm step forward, and the ink shroud around me lifted.

I was back in the Autumn world. But it no longer held any restrains of regret for me. How could there be any? Meilori’s love was here with me. And besides I had always liked Autumn despite its warnings of the white death of winter biding its time impatiently.

Autumn’s crisp breath stirred the unseen leaves with whispery lamentations. Their graves provided a crackle and rustle as my feet stepped upon them while I made my way through Autumn’s colors more than landscape.

The very air filled my nose and lungs with the tang and wrinkling of leaf bonfires, of ripened apples making the heavy branches hang their heads as if in mourning for ice storms to come.

My ears prickled as I could have sworn I heard the leathery flutter of pheasant wings, the still happy liquid singing of a meandering stream, and the sad lament of a sparrow facing hunger.

The red and gold of this world murmured to me of happier times as I had tramped lonely hills and haunted forests. And a peace filled me.

The peace which is the reward of completing the long gauntlet of summer. The quiet dark that precedes the winter of the soul which lurks just around the next bend. A time for binding recent wounds and old -- and forgeting them, along with the misfortunes that had brought them.

I took another step. I stopped. Autumn had ended. My winter of the soul lay before me.

I lay before me.

I had gone into the past. Stepped right past the boundaries of time’s firm grasp. The evening of Rachel’s murder was bidding me a dark welcome.

An instinct born of this cruise told me that DayStar had not expected me to make it even this far. I stiffened. Cornered in fungus, his voice mocked me in the confines of my mind.

‘No matter, McCord. Now you end.’

I whispered, “Maybe si. Maybe no.”
***

GHOST OF A CHANCE_CHAPTER 34_TO FALL INTO DARKNESS

{"I could a tale unfold whose lightest

word

Would harrow up thy soul."

-Shakespeare : HAMLET I. v.}



{Ghost of Samuel Clemens : I should have gone with Roland.

I followed. But too late. Too late.

His charred journal tells us Roland saved Epona, the last unicorn,

only to see her race off deeper into Hell.

Are all our strivings merely empty boxing with the wind?

DayStar was mocking Roland when we last left him ....}



Behind me, DayStar chuckled, "All know the way to Hell but none know the way out."

I kept watching Epona until she blinked out of sight over the smoldering horizon, and I kept on watching for a moment more as I called back over my shoulder.

"I'm considering the source of those words."

"As you yourself once told me : the best lie is sandwiched between two truths."

I turned around and smiled sad. "You just challenge me to figure out what's the lie and what's the truth, is that it?"

He studied me like a scientist would a glass slide under a miscroscope. "That would be telling. And the scant amusement you afford me is watching you stumble over the truth right in front of you."

"Well, just so long as I have a purpose in life."

Something disturbing flickered deep within his eyes, then died before I could catch what it was as he murmured, "Oh, yes, primate, you have a purpose."

"Cue the spooky music," I muttered and turned to walk to my left, but his hand settled firm on my shoulder.

"You insist on scattering myths about you."

He glanced to his left. My eyes followed his. I stiffened. Epona. Or really an after-image of her, rearing and pawing at the darkness with her hooves. I shivered at the joy in her eyes.

I shrugged his hand off my shoulder. "I have a friend to get out of Hell."

The shadows masked all but his gray eyes, and even they seemed to be full of darkness. "In the hour you will die."

"Staying alive's not part of the job."

He cocked a brow. "Winning by dying?"

"Been done before."

He smiled like a satisfied wolf. "Your own personal Alamo, is it?"

"There are worse fates."

"You have a most peculiar code."

"Look who's talking."

"I have no code."

"Non servium."

"Oh, that. In that case, welcome to the club."

"Well, considering where I am it would seem to fit."

DayStar's face was suddenly hidden by shadow as if he did not want me to see it. "You have never fit, never conformed. It is why you will soon die."

"Probably so."

"But you will not relent, will not surrender."

"Probably not."

"In that case ...."

His eyes flared with actual flames, as his right hand gestured like a sword, "Go to Hell!"

Blackness swallowed me as I felt myself lifted off my feet and hurled down, down, down. I tumbled head over heels in billowing clouds of darkness and mist.

Faintly from above, I heard DayStar's bitter words, "The true pain, DreamSinger, is not the fall but the surviving it."
***