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FPGE16 – Fishing by John Donahue

Welcome to Flash Pulp Guestisode sixteen.

Flash PulpTonight we present Fishing by John Donahue, Part 1 of 1
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This week’s episodes are brought to you by The Mob

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight we present an excellent bit of guestery by John Donahue – a tale of unlikely encounters and the aquatic arcane. Many thanks, sir.

Fishing by John Donahue

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

Skinner Co.

* * *

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

True Crime Tuesday: Better Left Alone Edition

Call it Marriage by Gail Jordan
Today’s True Crime Tuesday offers up a triple helping of mislaid criminal intentions.

For example: Have you ever found yourself in the uncomfortable situation of discovering that a ring you’ve been wearing for some time simply won’t come off? What solution did you undertake? Water? Maybe a bit of butter?

Alfredo Malespini III was in just that predicament – as a federal prison guard, however, he took his efforts to escape both the ring, and the marital bond associated with it, very seriously:

From KGW.com

A criminal complaint said Bradford police were called just before 9 p.m. March 2 and were met by Alfredo Malespini III, 31, who told officers he was “trying to get rid of his wedding ring” and decided to “shoot it off.” The Bradford Era first reported the shooting on Friday.

Ouch – a rough solution, indeed, but can you guess what’s rougher still?

The gunshot badly mangled Malespini’s finger, but didn’t remove the ring[.]

The Finger Man by Raymond Chandler

Perhaps the unidentified skater in our next case, found at sfgate.com, was simply attempting to help Malespini?

The 42-year-old man, whose name has not been released, was first spotted skating toward the chainsaw section of the Lowe’s on the 400 block of Bayshore Boulevard around 2:30 p.m. Friday, said police spokeswoman Officer Ellina Teper.

“He selected a chainsaw and tried to skate out the front entrance,” Teper said. “A store clerk stopped him and asked if he had a receipt for the saw.”

Laugh if you want, a chainsaw wielding rollerblader seems like a great zombie deterrent. The thief in question must have thought so as well, as he wasn’t willing to give up so easily as simply “needing a receipt.”

He said he had a receipt outside and put the chainsaw down, but instead of skating outside he turned around and glided back toward the chainsaw section, Teper said.

He grabbed another one and, this time, tried to skate out through the store’s garden center, Teper said. A security guard stopped him and held him until police arrived. He was booked on suspicion of burglary and was found to have several outstanding traffic violation warrants.

I suppose, at least, that the traffic violations may explain the footwear – it’s tougher, however, to justify the actions reported by nwfdailynews.com:

The story begins when a man and woman were evicted from their apartment on James Lee Boulevard and temporarily moved in with another woman, according to an arrest report. On Jan. 24 the couple argued with the woman and moved out, taking most of their belongings with them. They left behind two mounted deer heads the woman was storing in her motor home.

Heads that, as we shall see, they clearly held dear.

The next day the female member of the couple returned and demanded access to her deer heads. The woman refused. Later that afternoon, the man received a text message from the woman saying he could come and get their deer heads, which were outside the woman’s apartment. When the man arrived the deer heads were nowhere in sight.

Confession: I may have selected this article entirely for the phrase “access to her deer heads.”

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bwq8w5Flb-c”]

On Jan. 27 police talked to the woman, who said the couple owed her money so she took the deer heads. She said she arranged with a neighbor to return the deer heads when the couple arrived with her money.

The neighbor, however, said he didn’t want to get involved and left the deer heads outside. He said he saw the woman talking to an unknown male, and later saw them leave with the deer heads.

The woman was charged with petit[sic?] theft and will appear in court March 26.

The lesson? Always pay ahead.

Whitetail Nation by Pete Bodo

FP316 – Under Wraps: a Collective Detective Chronicle, Part 1 of 1

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and sixteen.

Flash PulpTonight we present Under Wraps: a Collective Detective Chronicle, Part 1 of 1
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp316.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

 

This week’s episodes are brought to you by Jonja.net

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight, a member of our band of online detectives finishes his search through the databases made available by leaked Bush-era Internet wiretapping, and arrives at some unpleasant, and homicidal, conclusions.

Under Wraps: a Collective Detective Chronicle

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

Skinner Co.4:33 AM

Private Chat Opened.

RottenDane> Hey?

4:36 AM

RottenDane> You up?

4:38AM

RottenDane> I’m going to call if you don’t answer in 5 minutes.

4:40AM

Harrisment > You said five minutes, but that was two, at most.

RottenDane> You were sleeping anyway, what does it matter to you?

Harrisment > It would have been another three minutes of unconsciousness. That might have been enough to save your life if this isn’t incredibly important.

RottenDane> Oh, it is.

RottenDane> I’ve cracked one!

Harrisment> Great. Make an omelet and call me back in the morning.

RottenDane> Ha. Ha.

Harrisment> Fine, but tell me quickly, I can still hear my pillow calling my name.

RottenDane> A week ago I was flipping through the cold case file, pulling up randoms, and I found a stub someone had started for a missing person. It looked like they’d tracked down his iPod traffic from his home network, but hadn’t poked too deeply from there. Hell, some of the info that WAS logged, I would later find out, was actually wrong. Very amateur stuff.

Harrisment> Well, you DO know amateur stuff.

Rotten Dane> It wasn’t much to go on, so I took a step back and tried to fill out a wider picture. Digging through the parents’ Facebook stuff made it pretty clear that the Dad was deeply religious and the Mom was a hypochondriac. The sort of folks with plastic on the couch, I imagine. I doubt James Robert Russell, the kid, was even picking his own clothes – at least, if the newspaper photos were any indication.

Harrisment> How old are we talking here?

RottenDane> Fourteen. Old enough to want to rebel, but not old enough to do it properly.

Harrisment> OK. Why was he so popular as to be in the local paper after he went missing?

RottenDane> Well, Mom and Pop Russell were pillars of the community – well funded pillars. They sold Hondas at a string of five conveniently located dealerships just off I-95. I dunno, maybe they were so religious and paranoid because they were in the business of screwing people. Everything I’ve read from Dad’s emails indicates that his son wasn’t allowed to go to dances, movie theaters, or malls. Mr. R also managed to disable most of the useful parts of his son’s iPod – or the bits that would have allowed him some outside communication, anyway.

RottenDane> He was worried Satan might friend junior on Facebook, I guess.

RottenDane> Baby Russell’s social interactions were generally limited to classroom hours and his Uncle Dwayne’s Sunday dinner visits.

Harrisment> Is this going to turn out to be a homicidal parental? Or is it a suicide? Weird things grow when people are left that much in the dark.

RottenDane> You’re closer than you think, but, no. They may have been stiff, but it was obvious in their interviews that both parents loved James Robert deeply until they died in a Civic that they probably sold themselves. Header with a sleepy transport driver.

RottenDane> They did always refer to him as James Robert though.

Harrisment> Huh.

RottenDane> Now, that’s not to say that JR was without his rebellious side. He smoked – well, at lunch and break – and he snuck a game through his Dad’s filter: A shooter called Fox Blisters. He played it online with his best friend, Zachary, also known as ZachAttack92.

RottenDane> The smoking part came up because of the theory that James Robert had been kidnapped outside the school – lit cigarettes weren’t permitted on the property and it was one of the few times he was regularly alone.

RottenDane> The ransom demands arrived soon after JR’s disappearance. There were three in total, sent to different dealerships each time. The first demanded a million dollars, the second was a warning that the drop location would be forwarded in twenty-four hours, and the last was basically just where to do so. I have PDF copies of the scans, all from the Russells’ private inboxes.

RottenDane> The letters didn’t give any clues though, as far as I can tell, and papers report that the money was left on the bench as instructed, but nobody came to get it.

RottenDane> This all happened over a week or so. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to anyone, JR’s abductor hadn’t been terribly thorough in searching him, and the kid was furiously sending messages from his iPod. The problem, of course, was that he only had the single stupid game that could connect to anything.

RottenDane> The notes he sent are sad. It starts off as mostly asking for help. He describes the place he’s in – there’s no light except the the screen’s, but he could tell he was in a little cement-block room with a heavy iron door. There was no inside knob.

RottenDane> As time went on, he had a few interactions with his jailer. Once a day the psycho would stomp down the flight of stairs beyond the exit with a huge bowl of instant Quaker oatmeal. He always wore a grinning white and red clown mask, but never talked.

Harrisment> Why didn’t ZachAttack see the messages?

RottenDane> Fox Blisters was a crappy game? Bad luck? They hadn’t played a turn in weeks, and, by the looks of the traffic, Zach dropped his iThing not long after the disappearance and his parents wouldn’t or couldn’t replace it.

Harrisment> Wait, you said “Pod” and not “Phone”, right? How did it make it onto the net?

RottenDane> That’s it – James Robert knew exactly who his captor was. I think the ransom fell apart when he finally just said the guy’s name outright, once his device’s battery died. See, JR wasn’t the alone in being raised sheltered – that is to say, the elder Russell brothers also had an incredibly strict upbringing.

RottenDane> James Robert Senior used it to launch into business and the local community, but Uncle Dwayne used it to lock his nephew in a basement for ransom money, and to send deeply intimate, but entirely unsolicited, emails to female members of online forums. It was in one of those confessionals that I learned how they were brought up – a lot of belt use for punishments, I guess, which morphed at some point into Dwayne’s obsession with leather and paddles and strapping ladies to painful things.

RottenDane> His credit card bills ran high with porn and kinky tools I doubt he’s ever had a chance to use on anyone. At least, not willingly.

RottenDane> JR knew that the silent clown was his uncle – he’d been to his house before, if not in the basement of horrors, and he already had the passkey to Dwayne’s wifi in his settings.

Harrisment> Jesus.

RottenDane> Yeah, but, listen: The stub – I think it was Dwayne. I think he was trying to figure out if it was possible to follow the breadcrumbs back to him. He must have spent a lot of hours over the years wondering about the secrets in that iPod.

4:59AM

RottenDane> So, uh, what do you think? Did I get it all? Any holes in my logic?

5:01AM

RottenDane> Hello?

5:02AM

Harrisment> I’m on the phone. Maybe grab a snack, I’ll be a bit.

Harrisment> If we’re gonna lose sleep over this, so is management.

Harrisment> Hell, if we’re quick enough about it, maybe so will Dwayne.

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FC83 – Booze Yacht

FC83 - Booze Yacht
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashCast083.mp3](Download/iTunes/RSS)

Hello, and welcome to FlashCast 83.

Prepare yourself for: Meth syrup, undercover lovers, psycho television, loving robots, folk tales, and Blackhall.

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Huge thanks to:

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[youtube_sc url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX_120DMFDQ]
[youtube_sc url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uRu_PHdDLM]

* * *

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Backroom Plots:

  • The Long Haul: a Blackhall Chronicle (Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)
  • Mulligan Smith and The Peacock

    • * * *

    Also, many thanks, as always, Retro Jim, of RelicRadio.com for hosting FlashPulp.com and the wiki!

    * * *

    If you have comments, questions or suggestions, you can find us at https://flashpulp.com, or email us text/mp3s to comments@flashpulp.com.

    FlashCast is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

    True Crime Tuesday: Sir Mix-a-Lot Edition

    Triple-X Western
    Today’s True Crime Tuesday is all about how far people will go for love, be it by putting more junk in their trunk, or by putting THEIR junk in an equine trunk.

    First up is the unfortunate tale of brony Andrew Mendoza, as conveyed by The Huffington Post. (These are screenshots of the police report PDF available on the HuffPo.)

    I know I usually walk you through this sort of thing, but this is a journey you must make on your own – and, besides, I’m busy arming myself against the inevitable horseman uprising.

    The sad horse tale of Andrew Mendoza

    Rodeo Romances, December 1948

    Mr. Ed, however, isn’t the only one with “saddle sores” – as Miami New Times reports:

    A Pahokee man known alternately as Calvin Butler or Tameika Butler has been charged with injecting silicon into his patients’ butts in a West Palm Beach motel and closing the wounds with Krazy Glue.

    Butler victimized several would-be patients at the motel, sheriffs say. And he went so far to protect himself as stalking one man to the hospital, barging into his room in a wig and a fur coat, and screaming, “You need to remember who the #**$ is in charge!”

    I wonder if Mendoza used the same line?

    One victim, a woman with a young child, went to the motel four times between September and October last year, the Palm Beach Post reports, paying $200 a pop for silicon injections.

    When she developed “painful nodules” over the injections, Butler told her to take “warm baths” and massage the spots. She eventually ended up with swollen lymph nodes, a chronic cough and several hospital stays.

    Just how badly was Butler conducting the procedure? I don’t doubt the symptoms, but I do wonder how butt injections lead to a chronic cough.

    Another man ended up at the Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center in December, where deputies found him with open sores on his ass where the injections were made.

    The man, who later had to have parts of his butt surgically removed, says Butler charged him only $100 because he was a friend but told him he charged “strippers” $400 each. Furious that he’d gone to the hospital, Butler ended up berating him in his room, the sheriffs say.

    Remember: Real friends don’t let friends get rented-room surgical procedures – it’s simply too much of a pain in the ass.

    Hotel Nurse by Ruth Dorset

    FP315 – Mulligan Smith and The Peacock, Part 1 of 1

    Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and fifteen.

    Flash PulpTonight we present Mulligan Smith and The Peacock, Part 1 of 1
    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp315.mp3]Download MP3
    (RSS / iTunes)

     

    This week’s episodes are brought to you by Jonja.net

    Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

    Tonight, Mulligan Smith, private investigator, finds himself chasing a cheating husband while listening to a tale of betrayal amongst thieves.

    Mulligan Smith and The Peacock

    Written by J.R.D. Skinner
    Art and Narration by Opopanax
    and Audio produced by Jessica May

    It was the third, and final, day of the Fisher stakeout, and Mulligan had nothing.

    Emil Fisher, his current assignment, was likely sweaty and grunting within the fifteen-story-high condo building, Soho Lofts, but Smith was stuck, in his baby blue Tercel, on the street below.

    Mulligan SmithA zoom-lensed Nikon sat on his lap, and, beside him, Walmart Mike was doing his best to provide encouragement.

    The sharp-jawed old store greeter was saying, “everyone falls off the horse, you just gotta get back up, dust yourself off, then break that horse’s fuckin’ knees for being such a goddamn smartass.

    “I mean, metaphorically.”

    Smith could only nod. Bad luck had hounded him at every turn and he knew his sad-eyed client, Corine – a part-time florist and full-time mother of three – couldn’t afford an extension.

    The first day’s fees were blown, after an hour’s drive, when a FedEx truck had cut him off and the cheating husband’s red Miata was able to zip away. He’d decided to switch to poking at the paper trail, but the hours spent staring at receipts had yielded few answers.

    The second day’s effort, a week later, had begun more smoothly. Smith had easily trailed the fiery vehicle through lazy Thursday afternoon traffic, but, when the Miata pulled into Soho Lofts’ underground parking he’d had little option but to wait and hope Emil came out of the building with his sweetheart on hand. He did not – what interested the letch was within, not without.

    The third day the red light indicating a full lot had Mulligan thinking he might’ve caught a break, at least until Fisher exited his vehicle while wearing a pristine Tampa Bay Lightning jersey. Smith had spent the previous night cross-referencing the building’s tenant list – which he’d found by simply using his phone to take photos of the lobby buzzer-system’s listings – and an inventory of Emil’s email contacts that had been provided by Corine. Smith knew that he was parked in full view of Mallory Banks’ fourteenth-floor balcony, but he also knew that a level up, on the opposite side of the highrise, lived Burt Glass, a member of Emil’s fantasy hockey league, and, at least by the tone of his emails, an ass-kissing subordinate to Fisher. The PI had no doubt that Glass would provide an alibi if touched for one, or that Emil would bury Corine in a divorce without the truth on the table.

    Mulligan had come to hate the Miata, thinking of it’s bright colouring and convertible roof as a poke in the eye after his string of defeats.

    Finally, he turned to Mike and said, “I don’t know what pisses me off more – that this amateur is accidentally outwitting me, or that he might’ve burned me without my knowing and now he’s just rubbing my face in it.”

    He was annoyed enough to consider working an extra day, pro bono.

    The ex-con shrugged. “I knew a guy once, Two-Years Tim, who always thought he was one step ahead.

    “Tim needled me for months – well, not only me, all the guys hanging out in the east-end dives. I couldn’t pull a sucker to a pool table without Two-Years stepping in and convincing them to haul their money over to a game of dice instead. One time I almost had Dil Pike’s Cadillac in the kitty – I’d managed to hook him for a couple hundred, nothing much but Dil was a man of pride and I’d teased the righteous anger out of him. All he had to wager was two hundred and the keys, but Tim sidles up and offers to eat the debt if Dil is willing to race the Caddy against him for slips.

    “Now, Dil hated Tim as much as anyone else, and the thought of taking the green monster that Two-Years was driving must have been mighty tempting. I made my Franklins but no one covered the drinks I’d been feeding my mark.

    “It wasn’t much of a silver lining when he wrecked the Caddy twenty feet off the starting line.

    “Anyhow, one day me and Butterfingers, another fella I was acquainted with, got word that a certain gin joint’s owner always carried the weekend earnings from his backroom safe to the bank first thing Monday morning. This wasn’t the sort of place I hung around, mind you, it was a three story meat market full of college kids and high school dropouts. You couldn’t walk by on a Saturday without losing ten percent of your hearing, and it was likely you’d have some overachiever puke a bit of his trust fund on to your shoes as well.

    “We knocked together a plan – nothing complicated, simply threaten the guy, handcuff him to a set of stair railings he’d be passing on his way, then run like hell around the corner and to a waiting car.

    “Things started smoothly. It was a quiet part of town on a Monday, and I wouldn’t’ve been surprised to learn that the only other folks awake were the unlucky manager and the bankers waiting for him. We pulled into the alley we’d scoped beforehand, and there’s a god damn olive Ford Falcon sitting there, big as life. I knew the car.

    “Well, it turned out, after a brief but loud conversation, that my companion had been drinking with Two-Years the night previous, and good ol’ Fingers somehow managed to tell Tim the whole thing.

    “He was doing it exactly as we planned, just ten minutes earlier – he was already down the street, strong-arming our guy. Two-Years thought he knew everything; had his windows down and the Stones coming out of the stereo while he was away, like he was running into a store to buy a pack of smokes and would be right back.

    “What an asshole.

    “We sat there and watched him stroll up, a bag full of cash in his hand. No one was excited to start chucking bullets and visiting hospitals, though, so he gave us a wave and a smile, then got into the Falcon’s driver seat.

    “Didn’t care if he pissed us off I guess, because the score would’ve been solid enough to spend a month cooling in Florida.

    “I swear, he revved the engine and peeled away with a honk.

    “He didn’t notice that I’d dropped my stolen shooter onto the white leather bench in the back. To be fair, though, on the highway south of town, the cops DID notice that I’d made off with his license plates.

    “What I’m saying is, you gotta face these problems directly. I never had trouble with Two-Years after that.”

    Smith looked at the block numbers on the Tercel’s clock. He looked at the building. He looked at the Miata.

    Retrieving the ice scraper he’d forgotten in the back seat the previous spring, he got out of the car.

    With the Nikon still in his left hand, Mulligan swung the extendable metal bar hard with his right. A webbed fan spread across Fisher’s rear window, and the glass collapsed under the insult.

    The vehicle’s anti-theft alarm began to bleat its dismay.

    Many lights came on within Soho Lofts, but it was only on the fourteenth floor that anyone moved to do stop the clatter.

    Emil stepped onto the fern filled space with a laughing-faced brunette beside him, and the Nikon clattered to life, capturing Fisher fumbling for the keyfob in his pocket. Smith wondered briefly if the man might have had better luck in his search if he’d actually been wearing the pants, then he rejoined Mike in the Tercel.

    The old man had started in on another story before they’d even pulled away from the curb.

    Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

    Freesound.org credits:

    Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

    – and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

    FP314 – The Long Haul: a Blackhall Chronicle, Part 3 of 3

    Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and fourteen.

    Flash PulpTonight we present The Long Haul: a Blackhall Chronicle, Part 3 of 3
    (Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)
    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp314.mp3]Download MP3
    (RSS / iTunes)

     

    This week’s episodes are brought to you by Glow-in-the-Dark Radio

     

    Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

    Tonight, Thomas Blackhall, master frontiersman and student of the occult, confronts another ending in his journey.

     

    The Long Haul: a Blackhall Chronicle, Part 3 of 3

    Written by J.R.D. Skinner
    Art and Narration by Opopanax
    and Audio produced by Jessica May

     

    Blackhall did not recall his first two attempts at waking.

    The world gathered some substance in the third, however, even if it was of a spidery sort and prone to throwing snow flakes into his eyes.

    He was surprised to find he was already speaking.

    “…while I was wandering the Austrian mountains,” he mumbled to completion.

    From somewhere beyond the shards that slid across the night sky, James Bell said, “fully understandable, given the circumstances. How could you have known?”

    Thomas did not know.

    As such, he asked, “apologies, what was I saying?”

    It was Clara who replied. “You were telling us of the disappearance of Mairi.”

    Blackhall tried hard to lift his arms, suddenly convinced that if he did not manage the task he and his companions would tumble to the earth below.

    Despite his lack of success, his ears picked up the familiar drumbeat and he relaxed.

    “Yes – yes,” he said. “When word of my missing wife reached me, I relented my arcane studies and made immediately for home. It was an anxious trip, and I’m certain the horses that carried me were little impressed with my passage – though they were likely thoroughly grateful to see me aboard a ship and away from their backs.

    “Hmm – have I explained the circumstances of the discovery?”

    Thomas Blackhall, Master Frontiersman and Student of the Occult“No, sir,” replied James. Thomas noted concern in his voice, and spared a thought in hope that the man was not too cold in his journey.

    Surely they would encounter civilization soon?

    Attempting to soothe his passenger, Blackhall continued, “of course not, of course not, for in those first moments none understood the depth of what had happened.

    “When Jessamine Cooper’s grave was opened, the eyes of accusation turned towards her husband, Leander. The people of the community would trust him to sharpen their blades and mend their barrel hoops, but not with a debt over ten pence. The man had a knack for converting his family funds into wine, and Jessamine’s death was almost seen as a release for the poor woman.

    “She was buried with the single item of worth she’d been able to retain, and her children – grown, broad shouldered, and with no more faith in their father than a stranger might have had – stood vigil at her burial to ensure the engraved silver cross about her neck was laid into the ground with her.

    “You can understand the confusion then, when, some eight months later, the relic was found amongst the churchyard hedges.

    “An abrupt exhumation took place, with Leander on hand and flanked by the local sheriff, but the results simply deepened the trouble.

    “Not only was Jessamine’s jewelry disturbed, her grave was empty.

    “Concerns regarding theft turned to fear of a more sinister perversion. Rumours flew that the estranged husband had wandered off with his wife’s corpse, but those close enough to see the man’s reaction had little doubt that he was just as surprised as the rest gathered around the gulf.

    “That’s when my former playmate, Dewhurst, set fly his missive. He knew of my interest in the occult, and assumed it might be an instance in which my assistance was required.

    “He could not have understood how pressing the summons truly was.”

    Thomas’ sigh brought in what he hoped was a whiff of smoke. Perhaps it was an end to his journey? Somehow the ache in his arms had transferred to his ribs and skull, yet he pressed on.

    “I was months late to discovering the whole yard opened by the townsfolk, and not a grave still full. They hadn’t bothered to fill the open pits that marked the missing dead. Not a corpse with meat on it was left to lie.

    “I knew all too well the reason.

    “Her name was lost well before we walked the earth; her years have been extended by artifice. I encountered her by accident, earlier in the year, having come to test a ritual I would later find was useless. We were in the cemetery of a hamlet, a town only notable for a spate of cholera deaths that had laid low a sizable portion of its population.

    “It was raining. I’d chosen the storm to cloak my rite, assuming that my business would not be welcome if discovered, but, when I arrived, it seemed as if the place were alive with manic gardeners. They paid me no mind as I passed between them, and, though covered in mud from their planted knees to their blank-eyed faces, the crowd of mayhaps five hundred moved in near silence and with careful precision. It was while watching this process that I realized most were in a state of decay, and some were moving despite missing limbs and maggot-ridden wounds.

    “They used just bare hands and their lack of pain for their tools, but with that many labourers what matter was it? They extracted the sod carefully, digging below the wormy dirt with wriggling fingers, then shifting the grass in wide patches. Once the soil beneath was exposed, however, their restraint was lost. With flailing arms they attacked the muck, pulling away great heaps in an effort to release their fellow corpses.

    “Stumbling into the hag was an accident – striking her, doubly so. I had expected another slack jaw as I approached her back, but, when she turned about, not a foot from myself, and opened her mouth to release the beginning of an incantation better forgotten, I reacted – er – with force.

    “Panicked, I ran.

    “I had not considered the ramifications of the incident until my summons and return.

    “Maybe it was simple pride that propelled her – I have no doubt, though, that most who’d encountered her in the past had moved to swell her ranks, so perhaps it was a desire to maintain the secrecy of her march.

    “How she transported her legion across the channel I can not say, but I knew what I would find upon returning to my father’s estate – for it is there that the Blackhalls have long buried their dead. The hag would not be content to rob the local boneyard and miss her prize: My wife.

    “I did the work myself, every stroke seeming to pound as does the drum. Would it have been worse to find Mairi still there, with rot having set in to those so fine features?

    “Each shovel-full carried tears with it to the surface, and the further my boots sank beneath the turf the surer I became.

    “The coffin remained, its lid shattered, but within there was naught but loose dirt.

    “My Mairi had not waited – could not wait – for my return, so now I follow.”

    It was only then, with his tale told, that he realized the drumming he was hearing was in fact the passage of horses, and the creak of the Green Ship really that of a sleigh.

    Clara seemed to read the surprise on his face. She said, “it was a fierce job, hauling you through the woods as you babbled, but your navigation had held true, and we were lucky to come across a lumberman along the route you’d traced. He claims we’re not far, and that there’s a doctor in camp who will either fix you or give you whiskey enough to ignore the pain.”

    She leaned close before continuing.

    “We collected your drum and travel goods – they act as your pillow. I have but an inkling of what makes your baggage so heavy, but I do not wish to know more than that.”

    Scooting back, she placed her hand over James’, and the travellers fell to silence.

    Despite the physician’s prognosis of a six week recovery, Blackhall returned to his chase in one.

    (Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

     

    Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

    Freesound.org credits:

  • NATIVE DRUM LOOP B 16BARS 100BPM.wav by sandyrb
  • SRS_Foley_Horse_Galloping.wav by StephenSaldanha
  • 03383 shovel ground dig.WAV by fkurz

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