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Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode two hundred and eighty-six.

Tonight we present Grip: a Blackhall Tale, Part 2 of 3
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp286.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

This week’s episodes are brought to you by Subversion.

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, master frontiersman and student of the occult, Thomas Blackhall, finds himself witness to a murder, and a mystical metamorphosis.

Grip: a Blackhall Tale, Part 2 of 3

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

Nestled within the rasping branches of a squat blue spruce, Blackhall considered if perhaps holding palaver with the dead sleigh-man might have been a more fruitful course. There had been little time for the decision, as the storm overhead unleashed a thickening volley of wind and snow, and the loss of the tracks marking the five remaining passengers had seemed the greater threat in the moment.

Now, with his vision reduced to the edge of his hat’s brim and the land quickly flooding with ivory, Thomas doubted he would be able to locate the Frenchman’s corpse if he did somehow managed to stumble back to the main trail.

He could only wait out the flurry and hope that continuing generally westward would be enough to determine where the party had been headed. Given the weather, he guessed it could not be far, but, with his confidence in his navigation stymied by the mind-clouding impact of his sudden descent, and without sky or landmarks to guide him, he’d just as likely wander into Peking as locate his stolen goods.

In the meantime he was left to wait; to ruminate on his lost pouch – and his lost wife.

At dusk, as he dozed lightly beneath his layers of wool and lining, the wind dropped to a gentle nudge, and the downfall lessened to a persistent dusting.

Once he’d cracked the powdery shell that had grown around his hasty refuge, Blackhall cursed the dipping sun and pressed hard west before winter’s early dusk could fully rob him of his search.

An hour passed, then two, and yet, despite the night’s arrival, a pregnant moon rose through the spent clouds, offering a small boon to ease Thomas’ chilled frustrations.

It was as he broke from a stand of frozen birch that he spotted the woman.

She had rested an arm on a nearby branch, and her ebon skin stood fully exposed to the harsh cold. If the unlikelihood of the encounter had not set Thomas back, then her stature certainly did, as such a lush physique was a rare sight for the widower.

If she had not collapsed, he reflected afterward, he might have been tempted to briefly linger.

Instead, with a sigh of “damnation,” she toppled forward into the powder.

Blackhall was relieved to find her yet alive as he lay his knee beside her, and he was quick to unfurl a blanket about her nearly-frostbitten form. As he did so, however, he discovered the sear and tear that he’d seen too often in his time fighting the little dictator.

“Is this a musket wound?” he asked.

As she replied the newfound warmth seemed to bring some relief.

“Fear carried me far and fast – in all honesty, I did not even realize I’d been wounded until I’d cleared a deadfall in five leaps. I haven’t held such alacrity since I was a child, but I suppose, as my husband used to say, being shot at is a strangely motivating experience.

”Still, though I look twenty, I remain a ragged fifty. My hip hurt even as I grew sure of my freedom, and my breath seems to slowly escape me.”

With numb fingers he unbuttoned his greatcoat and wrapped its ends about her blanketed shoulders, so that his heat might be added to her own.

It was a poor shelter, he knew, but Blackhall was just as aware that it was not the cold that would end her. There was naught he could do for her wound but provide comfort and conversation in her final moments – though the lung seemed hardly punctured, it only meant it would be a slow, painful, end.

“Though I do not wish to burden you in your current state,” he said, “I must admit, I understand little of what you’re saying.”

“You are the man in the treetop ship, are you not?”

“I am.”

“They were spooked at your passing. With some desperation they waved their pistols, and told us to proceed into the woods.

“Oh, I see your doubt, but I did not look like this then. I looked as myself – white certainly, but also an aging mother with sagging face and body, proudly showing the signs of babies past and a skill in the creation of sweet cakes. Were Horatio alive to see me, he would think his pillow talk fantasies had come true.

“Anyhow, Arseneau declared a stand, saying that they could have our coin and even his sleigh and team – though it likely meant a death by exposure for the lot of us – but he would not be marched into the weald to be executed and forgotten in the shadow of an unnamed hill.

“Without a second concern the elder of the two, he in the well-tailored suit, let fly with his weapon. Before the echo had left our ears, the dandy had moved on to berating his brother – yes, once clearly seen they were unmistakably of the same horrible lineage – for overplaying his hand, for pressing his act as an inebriate to the point of risking their safe operation.”

She pointed as she spoke. “They’re not far off, squatting in a former logging operation. It seemed I was running forever, but surely it could be no more than a mile of this frozen landscape.”

“The pox camp?” asked Blackhall. Her breathing was becoming increasingly ragged, and his impatience for details warred with his sympathy for the dying woman.

Nearly panting, she replied, “though I’ve no doubt it’s what drove the original inhabitants from the place, if there was pox, it is not there now. During Senior’s tirade it became apparent that the younger man has a knack for vomiting on command, and that it’s a talent intended to be used to deter any unexpected visitors who stumble across the grounds.

“We were apparently lucky he did not utilize the trick while enacting his false drunk.”

“Yes,” said Thomas, “but how did you come to your current state?”

“The third. The eldest.

“There are four long houses left standing in which they shelter. Three are left always cold, while the final is where they slumber. In the one in which we were housed – in which I was intended to be housed – they’ve left a dead family of four. The bodies have frozen to the walls, but the brothers insisted loudly that earth is too solid for a burial, and the unused cabin is required in case they should be taken to – visit with us privately.

“They’ve driven iron spikes into the beams beneath the floor of the last shanty, deep teeth of steel, and they’ve affixed thick chains to those anchors. The manacles are so cold my skin stuck to their rim as they applied them.

“The ritual was conducted on each captive in turn, though the configuration of our prone bodies was such that we could not gain clear view of one another – at least, that was my case.

“I had suspected a perverse indignation, but I did not know exactly what to make of the screaming until the needles began to pierce my own skin. The world seemed filled with searing, and I wept at the constant pressure of the pinpricks.

“The work seemed to last forever, but, though I can not say what pattern was created, it was clear from the mix of blood and ink that saturated the floorboards that I was being marked.

“I know not the source of his power any more than I know how you sailed the timber, but, when he completed his design, my body – changed. Took this form.”

“They spoke as I howled. Their greatest reassurance is that they have business associates arriving on the morrow. I have no confirmation, but it’s my guess that their impending company would have shipped me south for sale to a plantation lord, well outside the reach of family and any mind who might believe my tale of unlikely misfortune.”

“So you ran at the earliest opportunity?” asked Thomas. It felt a thick question, but it was all he could think to do against the transformed matron’s fading tone.

“Look beyond the change in my skin. My bosom has never been so supple, my hips never so suggestive. No, it’s not from the horrors they intended tomorrow that I ran – it was those they intended tonight.”

It was the final statement the woman would make, though her moist gasps spun increasingly fragile strands in the chill air until dawn. As light filled the land, so too did the last of it flee from her glazed eyes.

Pushing away the blanket they’d shared, Blackhall stood.

(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 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.

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode two hundred and eighty-five.

Tonight we present Grip: a Blackhall Tale, Part 1 of 3
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp285.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

This week’s episodes are brought to you by Subversion.

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 join master frontiersman and student of the occult, Thomas Blackhall, as he finds himself upon a wild path in the northern woods.

Grip: a Blackhall Tale, Part 1 of 3

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

James Bell had suspected the drunk from the outset – though, in truth, at that moment he suspected everyone but his round-faced wife, Clara. James had spent the majority of his life within the arc of his father’s whiskeyed hands, and evaluating sobriety had become a skill critical to his ability to collect dinner instead of a bruised chin.

Even from his limited vantage point, Bell had discerned that the supposed liquor-monger was putting on his wobble.

The sleigh was a large one, with three rows of seating, but the blankets necessary to fend off the chill of the onrushing air and drifting snow greatly restricted the movements of the passengers. The inability to keep an eye on the rearmost bench, while also staring down the back of the driver, Mr. Arseneau, had left young Bell restless and fidgeting.

It was Clara’s loud disapproval of his nervous habits – nail chewing, lip biting, and general griping – that had drawn the conversation of the third occupant of their bench, a matronly woman who, to the couple’s estimation, seemed all too old to be venturing into the shadows of the northern woods at the onset of winter.

Mistaking the source of James’ agitation, she said, in her sweetest tone, “have no worries, any fellow with that much drink in his belly will likely spend the second half of the journey in unconsciousness.”

“Are you traveling with him?” asked Mrs. Bell.

“No, I go it alone – after many years of having done so, my son and his Rebecca have offered me a bed in which to wait out my old age.” The woman paused to present a toothless grin. “I know how improper my behaviour may appear, but I’ve yet to meet an adventure that I could not conquer.”

“Yes,” replied Clara, as she provided a thin smile of her own, “but it’s the adventure that you don’t that’s always the problem.”

Turning from their conversation, her husband found the spruce and pine marching past on either side of their path provided no better counsel.

Behind them, the drunk loudly spat, then gave the dapper man to his left a piece of advice that would require incredibly intimacy with every member of the royal navy, as well as the moral degradation of his mother. The dandy, wearing a tall beaver hat and a cloak more appropriate to the theater than the wilds, responded with a disapproving harrumph, but nothing more.

The language was enough to irk James into attempting to attract the attention of the reign handler, but Arseneau, alone on the fore-most bench, seemed to note only that which was in front of him. A load of five on the northward trail was a rarity of late, and the ignored man suspected the whip-holder did not wish to ruin the warm glow his coin-filled pocket was providing him.

When the sound of a pistol being cocked reached his ears, however, his head came about sharply.

The dandy had set his knee on his seat, so that he might better survey the forward rows. His well-tailored left glove rest on the sled’s wood frame, while his right made clear his firearm’s intentions were serious. Beside him, the drunk straightened his spine, produced his own weapon, and announced, “This, then, is our collective destination.”

Arseneau drew the horses to a tight halt as the coxcomb muttered, “You’re lucky that we made it this far, given your carrying on.”

It was in the brief silence that followed that they heard the drumming.

“Is – is that a man in a boat?” asked Clara, with her gaze on the treetops.

* * *

The trouble had truly begun that morning, outside the King’s Inn.

Arseneau had been atop his transport, talking of the pox that had struck the French lumber camp at the Blackmouth Rapids, and of how the disease had destroyed his business of ferrying the axemen between their work and the town’s ale kegs. As he spoke, the hired man shuffled luggage and directed the travellers to their seats, and, given his preference to situate the loudmouthed gin-swiller in the rearmost, this meant the wobbling passenger waited longest on the ice covered slats of the public house’s boardwalk.

Blackhall had passed the scene without interest until the drunk had stepped across his path, knocking roughly into his shoulder then rebounding to the ground.

The upturned man’s apology had been so hasty, Thomas hadn’t even broken stride.

It was only once in his rented room, after removing the weight of his pack, and fumbling off his greatcoat with numb fingers, that Thomas had discovered the disappearance of his possessions. The awkward altercation came immediately to mind, but so too did the intervening time.

Blackhall had thought briefly on the loss of his waxed pouch; of the fine rolling papers, Virginian tobacco, and yellowed letter that resided within. He’d thought of the braid that had recently joined the small collection that marked the extent of his worldly comfort – the braid he’d clipped from his dead wife’s locks a month previous – then, reaching for his satchel of arcane implements, he’d made for the door.

* * *

Learning the group’s destination was as easy as handing two shillings to the innkeeper who’d arranged his guest’s conveyance, but overtaking them was another matter. The path through the forest was close, and fear that he’d lose the thread had forced Blackhall to pilot his occult ship with care – if such a concept were possible when riding the crests and dips of a wildwood come alive to bare him across it’s back.

Still, some four hours into the journey, with aching shoulders and frosted brow, Thomas had located his objective.

When, not minutes later, those below came to a sudden halt and marked his passage, so too did Blackhall attempt to bring his craft to a stop. He’d had little involvement with The Green Drum since the first occasion on which he’d used it to knit a longship of living branches, and his inexperience, mixed with his haste, brought disaster. At the cessation of his rhythm, the ribbing that held him high, and the reaching timber that moved to carry him, fell away, but his momentum did not. The nearby pine which he’d intended to use as a method of descent rushed past, and he found himself falling through the barren limbs of a broad oak, a hundred meters on.

His landing was not a pleasant one.

Dazed, Thomas took stock of his kit, and, after collecting his Baker rifle from a drift some feet off, he laid a hand on the hilt of his saber, as if it might help steady him, and set himself towards the rough-hewn road.

The air grew thick with clumping snow, and the sky blackened in warning of the blizzard to come.

Stumbling onto the cleared path, Thomas unshouldered his rifle and turned his boots in the direction of the stalled sled.

For some time he was accompanied by only the chill cotton and the chewing of his boots, then a regular thudding came from the blur of white before him, and he stepped under the shelter of a pine bough.

The team of horses he’d been seeking came pounding past as if death followed, and, given the blood flowing from their flanks, Blackhall considered that it might well have been the case.

Another ten minute’s walk proved him right, for there alone in the middle of the path bled the sprawled corpse of Arseneau, the rig’s master.

The driver’s mouth seemed open, as if to collect a descending flake, and his jacket had been seared by gunpowder flame. Seconds later, with a curse that only the dead man heard, Thomas noted a set of soon-to-be-buried footprints leading into the darkening hinterland.

As his hat brim grew heavy with precipitation, and his heart heavier with the thought of the exertions ahead, Blackhall longed for his smoking tools.

(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 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.