Eldritch

Otherworldly encounters
Beyond the pale
Ghostly
Eerie
Uncanny
Mysteries of the night and the mind
Slipping between the spaces

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A New Story

In Eldritch

January 29, 2024, in Eldritch

“Under the Ghost Star”

by Erik VanBezooijen

A Vlakk witch’s 13th birthday is always momentous. For on that day, her mentor gifts her a special insignia and frees her to seek her own destiny.

But on Kuma’s 13th birthday, beneath the crossroads, beneath the Fivefold Catacomb, she faced the Death Spirit, who in a voice like grating coal blocks, told her “You shall remain here in the dark earth, be my most ardent worshiper, supplying my sacrifices, and the roots of this place shall feed on your soul and mind, your body and bones forever…”

And Kuma answered the Death Spirit…

Here for the Reading, 2022:

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A New Story

In Eldritch

November 20, 2022, in Eldritch

“Emissary”
by Joshua Grasso

From out of the gray morning mist, a spare, weather-beaten figure moved slowly through the mud-caked, teeming streets to the Spassky Gate.

“I am sent to speak with the great tsar,” he said to the guards. “I have fought these fifteen years against our enemies in grueling campaigns, on the western front, on the eastern steppes, in the southern marshes, in the northern wastes.

And if he will not see me, you must strike me down and scatter my bones to the winds. For I have no home to return to, and will fight no more battles in his name.”

Here for the Reading, 2021:

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New Story

Happy Hallowe’en!

October 28, 2021 in Eldritch

“The Omaha Zephyr”
by Terri Karsten

Bryce was a modern, no-nonsense young man of the 1890’s.

Until he took the Omaha Zephyr.

Here for the Reading, 2019:

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New Story

December 23, 2019, in Eldritch

“A Possession of Magpies”
by E. E. King

Catherine Linton has lived above the cemetery on Drakes Bay Lane for as long as she can remember.

She passes the warming days on the porch, on a rocker as stiff and creaky as her bones, watching the magpies swoop down and gather the souls of the newly dead.

She wonders if a magpie took her betrothed, Tommy, when he died so long ago on a battlefield in France.

Her eyes drift closed and she dreams of him, young and elegant in a black and white tuxedo…

New Story

Happy Hallowe’en!

October 31, 2019, in Eldritch

“Still Life”
by Adam Stemple

Today, I was Rodin’s Thinker. Fist on chin, feet bare. My skin was darkened to bronze.

The shadows stretched all the way across the street. One of them broke away. A long thin silhouette. It took a position behind my right shoulder,

“I have been watching you.”

The voice was old, graveled.

“I offer you stone.

The silence of centuries.

The passage of time as a furrow the wind carves in your cheek,”

For February 18, 2019,
we have in Eldritch “Red Crows”, by Innocent Chizaram Ilo

On cold, starless nights, when the full moon is shaded with red clouds and blue ice crystals, all the crones in Selemku sit around the Great Baobab and weave stories of a time long before women knew smoke, men knew fire, and children knew dust.

It’s on a night like this that Odera scratched her fingers on the door of a cottage in the woods, a baby sleeping softly in the crook of her arm, a bird croaking in the rusty cage clutched in her fist.

Here for the Reading, 2018:

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October 31, 2018, Eldritch, “Estevan of the Children“, by E. E. King

The spirit children, the Angelitos, find their way home following the paths of marigolds, leaving their small footprints in the golden petals.

When they returned to their graves at twilight each Novenber 1st, the paths between the cemetery and the homes of their grieving parents were filled with golden swirls of marigold petals imprinted with each tiny foot.

But Estevan was late returning and lost his way. If he could not return, he would fade to nothing, not even a memory would be left.

Jan 14, 2018: Eldritch , “Ice”, by Diana Silver

Dutch language version translated by Ashley Cowles

It was on the Ice and in the Storm that I crossed paths with Edmund Hawkings.

Had I known how much he’d give up for my sake, I wouldn’t have tried to kill him.

Here for the Reading, 2017:

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October 18, 2017, Eldritch , “Bolaji Has a Heart“, by Osahon Ize-Iyamu

When Bolaji’s husband died, people cast her aside as if she were dead, like she didn’t exist anymore without her man, that dead woman.

But lots were drawn and it was her turn at the night job, and with it, all the things unseen in the dark, the loneliness of the task, the tales of Masquerades and demons, marauders and spearrangs that had a little too much fun spinning up people’s insides. There were people that took their turn and came back different, never came back, died in strange ways.

Who taught them to fear the night? Who taught them this darkness was evil, sinister, a hand trying to bind them? Why did the fear persist? She stood, shoulders high and back tense, eyes alert. And when everyone was shut in for the night, when it was pitch black, she set out.

September 26, 2017, Eldritch, “The Sandwich Shack“, by Patrick Hurley

Most of the Windy City’s secret places are gone now. But every once in a great while at summer twilight, when soft lamps have filled the tree-lined streets with a faint silver glow, you may happen to find Brady’s Sandwich Shack.

Your smartphone will lose its signal. Attempting to document the retro interior on Instagram causes the app to crash. Twitter and Foursquare will be unable to triangulate your location, and reviews on Yelp mysteriously refuse to upload.

Don’t panic. Relax. Enjoy the blues. Savor the smell and order some food. If you’re with someone, enjoy each other’s company…
…you never know who may drop in.

August 28, 2017, Eldritch, “The Glanconer”, by LJ McLeod

It was too wild, all jagged rocks and sun-bleached driftwood. But it suited me, this beach and this night, a night one could believe in monsters….

Just as the last of the sun disappeared I saw him. He emerged from the grey waves dripping wet and perfect. His hair was black as sin and his pale skin shone like the moon. His body was slender and his face all strange angles, but he was heartbreakingly beautiful. My Irish grandma had told me the old stories and I could see the danger — but his fathomless black eyes fastened on me, ensnared me.

May 31, 2017, Eldritch “The Undine & Pain’s Brother“. by Lucia Iglesias

The Undine is a pain-artist In the perpetual dusk that haunts the caverns, she strains the shadows for prey, seeking her next masterpiece.
The stranger who sweeps from the shadows, his smile pale and puckered as a scar, his breath spiced with smoked marrow and charred bones, offers her a spoilt city to paint in pain, on one small condition,

Feb. 25, 2017: Eldritch:”Hollows”, by Emmett Schlenz

He was singing another song to the rusted chain dangling from the ceiling when a black hole opened in his chest. It sucked his heart out from behind his ribcage and he knew with a ghost’s certainty, with the instinctual sympathy between the dead and those close to death, that his brother was dying. He had not seen Michael, hadn’t been able to see another human being, since the day he died bloody in the street, listening to the screeching of wheels on concrete.