LOST QUARTER BOOKS

In A Flash: Two Skulls

Posted on June 9, 2016 by Clint

The bones had been bleached dry by the sun and now were a gleaming white amidst a sea of green grass that stretched on for miles in any direction. The sun glimmered off the bones, drawing the two riders to it. They came across the rest of the body on their way to the skull—a femur here, a rib there—the body having been torn apart by whatever carrion hunters inhabited these parts. When they reached it, one of the riders dismounted, picking it up gingerly to study it, while the other kept her eyes upon the horizon in all directions.

“Be quick,” the woman, whose name was Harni the Cleaved. “There is someone approaching.”

“You know this cannot be rushed,” Mejk the Unharnessed said, not taking his eyes from the skull.

“It may have to be,” Harni said.

Hearing the urgency in her voice, Mejk looked up from the skull and cast his eyes along the horizon. “Who is it?”

“Who else,” was her whispered reply.

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In A Flash: Lost Coordinates

Posted on June 2, 2016 by Clint

The first call came that afternoon as Mary finally settled down to get some work done on her computer.

“Give me my fucking phone back cunt,” the voice on other end of the call said. The man was more than angry, he sounded unhinged.

Mary was left disturbed and, after taking a moment to gather herself, she called the police. The officer listened sympathetically and took down a report, promising to follow up that week.

Not more than an hour later there was a knock at the door. When Mary got up from her computer she saw two police officers standing outside. That was quick, she thought, assuming they were following up on her earlier call.

“Ma’am, may we come in,” the first officer, an unsmiling woman said. “We have a report that there is stolen property located here and we’d like to look around.”

Mary blinked, a tiny ping of doubt echoing through her thoughts. “That’s crazy. Do you have warrant?”

“We were hoping you would cooperate with us,” the second officer said, offering a placating smile.

“I will. When you have a warrant. I can assure you, I haven’t stolen anything. You’re the second ones to accuse me of that today. The other one I had to report to the police.”

Both officers frowned and glanced at each other. “When did this happen?” the woman said.

“About an hour ago,” Mary said, and explained the phone call.

Neither officer had anything to say to her story. They thanked her for her time and retreated to their squad car, parked in front of the house. There they spent some time on the radio and their computers as Mary watched, glancing from time to time at the house. After half an hour they left and Mary finally allowed herself to relax, though she was still left unsettled. What was going on?

Read the rest at Circumambient Scenery.

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In A Flash: Men of Twilight

Posted on May 19, 2016 by Clint

His first mistake had been coming to this anonymous warehouse on the outskirts of the city alone and at night, without telling anyone where he was going or what he was doing. Novo was simply too caught up in the investigation. His need for justice and order, to right what he saw as wrong, had always been his greatest strength and his fatal flaw. It had led him to reveal things that those in power might wish stayed hidden. But it blinded him to many inconvenient practicalities as well. Such as, how he was going to get out of this mess of his own creation.

That was the matter at hand now, and it left him cursing his own shortsightedness. If he had texted Mary Sue before donning his full length leather jacket and heading out for the night. Or after. Or really, at any point along the continuum of events that had led him to here.

But Mary Sue, being a practical sort, would have phoned the police, who would have arrived here before he had a chance to confront this master of villainy and reveal his true plans. And that would have denied Novo his moment of triumph. A triumph that now tasted like bitter chalk at the back of his throat.

For the warehouse, empty but for the odd pieces of equipment at one end, and the flagrantly dangerous vat of acid at the center of the room, was a distraction. It was a feint by a criminal mastermind, to hide his true intentions. That was why Novo had come. He needed to know the truth. He was going to do battle with the darkness.

Read the rest at Circumambient Scenery.

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In A Flash: Crazy Eddie

Posted on May 12, 2016 by Clint

Crazy Eddie, the neighborhood kids called him, though no one knew his name. He moved into the Caldwell’s house that summer, after it had sat empty over the winter, following their move to Arizona. No one knew anything about him, though some said he was a family relation of Melissa Caldwell’s. He did not appear to have a job, at least not one that required him to leave the house, which he did rarely.

When he did, it was to drive up and down the streets of the neighborhood in his dull and rusted Dodge Dart. The engine rumbled oddly and the exhaust it spewed was dark and heavy. There seemed no purpose to these ventures, except to stare at passersby as they stared at him. He did not stop anywhere. No one could recall him ever going into a store, not even to buy food, though surely he must have. He became an object of fascination as a result, children telling each other more and more outlandish stories of his provenance and the unspeakable things he did in the Caldwell’s place.

As the months went by and summer turned to autumn, even the parents living on the same street began to suspect that something was amiss with Crazy Eddie. All but those suspicious of any newcomer had just assumed he was a harmless oddity. An eccentric, not worthy of much notice. But his strangeness began to seem sinister, for reasons no one could quite put into words.

Read the rest at Circumambient Scenery.

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In A Flash: The Woman Who Didn’t Speak

Posted on May 5, 2016 by Clint

The sky was grey with cloud that promised rain. Marjiana eyed it with distrust as she set off down the road. She had learned to prepare for the worst. The universe was rarely kind and beneficent and one had to fight for the scraps of happiness that could be found, lest someone else steal them away.

Her side ached as she walked. It was a dull pain, one that she had grown used to over the last weeks since her injury. There was nothing else to do but become accustomed to it, for there was nothing to be done about it. The community doctor had succumbed to the rhesus virus two seasons ago. Now they made do with what little those who were left knew.

The hetman had promised a new doctor would arrive with the next ship, but everyone knew it was just something he felt he had to say. Of all of them he had to remain optimistic. Why else was he the hetman, if not for that? To lead was to believe. The rest of them, including Marjiana, focused on surviving. They knew that there was little likelihood of another ship arriving anytime soon—the greater probability by far was that none would arrive in what remained of their lifetimes—let alone one carrying a doctor.

Marjiana walked past the other five homesteads nearest her own home, each of them on its own carefully delineated half acre of terraformed land. Danjesh saw her from the field where he was busy at work and stood to give her a quick wave, before returning to the painstaking work of drawing sustenance from the poor soil. No one else was about in the fields and the surrounding houses were dark and filled with shadows. Two of them were uninhabited, the families there having passed from the rhesus fever along with the doctor. The remaining two were not empty, but might as well have been, for their inhabitants had fallen into despair and now spent their days indoors awaiting their end. The hetman came once a week, trying to stir them from their melancholy, to no effect.

Marjiana had no time for melancholy, even if her spirit had tended that way. She had mouths to feed—six ,in fact, if one counted her husband Kjessel, which she supposed she had to. Presumably he could fend for himself, but Marjiana had her doubts, based on their first five years here following the terraforming. He was an engineer and used to problems having solutions, an inner logic, and there had been little of that here so far. There had been little of anything beyond mistakes and their ill consequences, which they all had lived with as best they could. Some better than others.

Read the rest at Circumambient Scenery.

In A Flash: read a new story every Thursday…

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In A Flash: The Dominion of the Orb

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Clint

The screams on the battlefield had quietened, though the odd moan still pierced through the fog that continued to gather as day became night. A few battle orcs wandered the killing fields, finishing off those who remained alive, while the rest began the march on in pursuit of the fleeing horde. There would be no rest that night, not while a man still breathed air. They would see them all put to the sword. Remorseless, pitiless, these were the ideals they embraced, matched only by their insatiable lust for blood.

Of the orcs who lingered on the killing fields, only one was not engaged in annihilation. His sword was sheathed and he knelt beside man after man, digging through their purses and other belongings. There was little of worth—a few coins and rings that might have value—but the orc had no interest in them. He was not possessed of a lust for shiny baubles as his human cousins were. These things were of no consequence for someone who had put his faith in the gods to carry him to the greater beyond on the wings of savagery.

His name was Bijshk, Second Born of Buuwl the Fourth Sectatrian, Killer of Men, Ravisher of Women, Singer of Lamentations. He fervently believed in the new age the gods had promised. That they were harbingers of doom for all those—men and elves—who had cast their less favored cousins from the warmer and sweeter domains of the earth. Leaving them only hollowed out mountains, frigid and unwelcoming, or deserts where nothing could grow and no water could be found.

The privations his kind had suffered had made them unbreakable and unforgiving. They would see themselves triumphant, standing upon the bones of those they had vanquished. They would wipe the world clean and make it anew in the image of the gods. Those who had summoned them forth from the hidden darker places where they had waited until their time was upon them.

It was now. Bijshk exulted in the triumph of all his brothers.

Read the rest at Circumambient Scenery.

In A Flash: read a new story every Thursday…

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In A Flash: A Light

Posted on April 21, 2016 by Clint

It began sometime after Beata put on her coat—the long winter one that came down to her thighs and clung to her form in a way she liked—and left her office. She had just left the building and was on her way, walking with purpose, her boot heels clicking in that pleasant rhythm she enjoyed. The day was cool but pleasant, with no breeze bringing an extra chill. A skiff of snow had fallen during the night and the way it caught the light made the day seem vibrant and alive.

Beata adjusted her purse on her shoulder and halted mid-stride. She nearly fell over so abrupt was her stop. Someone brushed by her, muttering and shooting her a quick glare. Her hands were tingling as though she had absorbed some electricity. Even her hair felt as though it were rising off her head from a static charge. She reached out to touch her curls, but everything felt in place.

When she was certain that everything was in its right place and the effects of the charge—or whatever it had been—had passed, Beata started forward again. Only to stop a moment later. She could no longer recall what she had been doing, or where she had been going. That she had left the office to go somewhere was clear. A glance at her watch showed that it was two in the afternoon, too early for her to be leaving work. So it was an errand.

She looked around and saw that she was heading down the street away from where she normally parked her car and assumed that she was on her way to the nearby strip mall. What she had to do there she still didn’t know, but she started forward anyway, certain that it would come to her eventually. Instead, as she came to the end of the block, she saw her car parked across the street. She stopped again and stared at it, utterly mystified.

Read the rest at Circumambient Scenery.

In A Flash: read a new story every Thursday…

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In A Flash: Things That You Dream

Posted on April 7, 2016 by Clint

There are lights. Flashing upward through the darkness, arcing toward some unknown destination. You reach out for them instinctively, though you know they are far from you and from an age long ago lost to memory. No records survive, only tales, most of which you know are half truths and utter lies, told to placate you or to make the teller seem a warlock or adjutant. No one you know can claim such a storied lineage. Those who can left long before, abandoning you to this place.

You imagine what the lights are, fevered dreams, all yearning. They are immortality. That much you know, though you cannot put it into words just how that might be. They are a world gone, a world of forever. The warlocks riding their dragons through nights without end, weaving their spells. Those places died long ago and the roads to reach them have been destroyed.

Read the rest at Circumambient Scenery.

In A Flash: read a new story every Thursday…

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In A Flash: The Invader

Posted on March 31, 2016 by Clint

There were no objects distant and unrecognizable on the horizon, no people who spoke, in voices tinged with madness, of having been kidnapped by unseen creatures, no armada of stars filling the night skies above. One day they were not there and the next they were, with no sign of how they had done so. There was no panic, no riots in the streets, or calls to arms, for it was obvious to all there would be no point to it. They were among them, walking the streets and going about their business as if they had always been there.

No one even thought it particularly strange, though on some distant level, deep within their consciousness, they knew it was. They were aliens and they had seized the planet without so much as a word of defiance. How had it happened? Something must have occurred. Something terrible and awful, to make them surrender so completely. But no one seemed to know. This was the way it had always been, they said, even as they knew it was not so.

It was difficult to describe the invaders. They were not human and they were…something. Words failed them, as did their memories. The shape and substance of the aliens seemed to dissipate as soon as their minds tried to focus on them. It was as though they were figments of dreams, and yet there could be no doubt they were there. Their presence was palpable everywhere one went. It left them with nothing to fight, nothing to even focus their anxiety on.

Strangest of all was how little things changed. The invaders were among them, shadowing their thoughts, filling their every step with doubt, and yet they did little concrete. Businesses still opened and closed, people went to work and ran their errands, and returned home to their families. But all the while the aliens were there, not observing, not disrupting, simply there, as if they had always been and always would be.

Read the rest at Circumambient Scenery.

In A Flash: read a new story every Thursday…

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In A Flash: The Adventures of Holly and Morris

Posted on March 24, 2016 by Clint

They hit the payroll, catching them in a crossfire as they came into Horseshoe Canyon on their way to pay the miners at the Atlas Coal Mine in Wayne. There were only two guns protecting it and Morris and Holly picked one off each from their perches across the canyon. The two men leading the packhorses tried to flee, but they shot the horses out from under them and then had to scramble to their own mounts to catch up with the fleeing payroll. That they did, intercepting the stampeding horses before they could scamper up the narrow and winding trail that led from the canyon to the plains above.

When they had calmed the panicked animals they left the canyon behind, heading up into the hills to the north where they had a camp set up. There they watered the horses and set them loose to eat and counted their day’s earnings. They were giddy as they went through the coins and the well-creased bills, over two hundred fifty dollars worth. They could sell the two pack horses too and probably get close to three hundred when it was all said and done. Holly whooped and danced, kissing Morris and pulling at his beard.

He laughed in joy at her delight. “No more worries for awhile, Holly dear.”

“No more worries, Morris honey,” she said and pulled him to his feet to join in her dance.

Read the rest at Circumambient Scenery.

In A Flash: read a new story every Thursday…

If you like this story, or any of my others, please consider supporting me on Patreon

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