Tag Archives: weird

Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Lost Ways

I lost my way. Everywhere I looked was both strange and familiar. The grass and the hills and the glistening slivers of water in the lowlands and the small clusters of trees huddled around them and the buckbrush and the sage and the wolf willow and overhead the aching blue of the sky and far in the distance the point where the sky and land merged. All places I might have passed by before, but lacking any landmarks I could orient myself toward. But that’s being lost isn’t it. Adrift. Nothing to hold onto. 

I’d run out of roads some time ago. Fences too. I came across the occasional cow path, though there were no cattle here, so I could not be sure which creatures had carved those trails. No one lived in these parts and it was hard to believe anyone had ever passed through, as I was now, let alone settled down to make a home. Somehow atop each rise I expected the horizon to shift and reveal a distant farmhouse surrounded by fields or the gleam of a highway or a cluster of houses nestled against the rail line. I knew those things were there somewhere beyond those empty plains, but ahead of me there was always more of this. I began to wonder if I had imagined the rest. 

This was something I had sought out in truth, looking for the spaces beyond the edge of habitation where civilization ran out. The Quarter was famous for it, though it made no sense to me. To look at a map was to see it bordered on all sides. The inhabitants warned me. Those were just lines on a map, but maps could not be trusted here. The Quarter was much larger than it appeared, larger by far than the dominions that surrounded it. You could get lost in them, easily, and never find a way out. 

There were ways in and ways out and those had to be carefully followed. These had been mapped, if that is what it could be called, and the locals followed those trails without fail. To leave them was to risk being lost as I now was. Utterly and completely.  

But I refused to believe them. The Quarter must end. The land must run into others. To the west there would be foothills and mountains beyond the plains, to the north the Battle River and forests. South and east were more plains, but of a different sort. Flatter, the land richer, the crops more bountiful. I was certain that if I marched off in any direction I would eventually find myself in those places. How could I not? The logic of the rest of the world had to hold here. 

Now I know the truth. The land just goes on. It does not become something else. If you told me it was larger than the world itself I would believe you. It may be so. It is a nether realm, the bounds of which I will never escape. I tell myself I can go no further, that I must turn back and hope that I can find my way out. But something else beckons me forward. How far, how deep, how vast. 

Miscellanea

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Dreaming State

It was a time of nightmares. Minds gripped by the most fevered horrors. Invasion and blood, the unclean and shadowed threats lurking behind every smiling face. No safe harbours to be found.  Neighbours debasing themselves, selling their souls to the highest bidder and willing to defile all that was sacred and true. All that remained was the cruellest of jokes. Foulness triumphant. 

They were consumed by it, unable to look away. Not wanting to. It was important to bear witness, no matter how sickening. How could this be happening? How could they allow it to? Something had to be done. Truth and honour restored. Stability. 

But there was no solid ground to return to. Only these teeming wretched seas, a storm forever on the horizon. They looked and looked, filled with rage and sorrow. How could this be so unending? How could it not? How far they had fallen. So far and falling still. 

The whispers were the worst. Insistent and insidious. Those stern-faced and noble looking ones who declaimed that things were not as they seemed. Truth still held. There was a core foundation, all that had come before, that had been built upon, layer by layer, century upon century. It was there and if only they could stand upon it they would see.  

How could they not see that the edifice was already gone, that the only thing now was to rebuild? But first it all had to be washed away. There was no other choice. Horror must be matched with horror, suffering with anguish, violence with vengeance. Eyes for eyes, hands for hands, blood for blood. The van, the masked face, the shackles and chains and the unblinking eye.  

Do not look away. Do not look away. Keep looking. See what is coming. See what will be done to finally end this. The future is blood and death, kill or be killed, and doing what needs doing no matter the cost. The coming storm. Were they lost within it or riding its encroaching wave? 

Outside, the rain falling in a steady, gentle patter. The earth green and vibrant. A new day and a new season. These are dark times, troubled times, times of fear and blood. Turn away and hold fast. We must do what is necessary.  

The screams are the worst. Whose are they? 

Miscellanea

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Songs of Creation

The night is cold and dark, everything still and silent. Clouds of your breath hang in the air. Above the stars in their multitudes glimmer, reaching across the infinite emptiness. You call up into the darkness, a cry filled with hope and rage and longing. Only echoes of it return in the vast wintery stillness.   

The new moon in the sky, warm against the cold and the darkness. A song of what is to be. A promise of times to come.  

Great beasts slumber in dark places, hidden away, waiting for their time to return. To walk the land as the cold leeches away and with it the snow. Streams are born that for a brief time will flow finding their way through a place born again. Verdant green and waters with an emerald sheen. The smell of so much life fills your nostrils. 

The sands in the glass trickle down, a steady current. Inexorable, marking every second of every hour, until the last grain spills down and settles and the whole of everything is still. Mountains and valleys, cliffs and crevasses are formed, shaped by movements of air and water. Born and reborn by steady accretion and accumulation. A craggy countenance becoming smooth.  

Becoming new again. Until nothing of what was remains. 

Miscellanea

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Your Dreams

You awaken from a dream-filled sleep, disturbed by all you have seen, blinking against the darkness that fails to resolve. The only sound a distant, beating heart. You aren’t sure it’s yours.  

Your house has many rooms and corridors. You go through door after door, but there always another awaiting you. You end up in the basement, but it is a cellar with a dirt floor and a low ceiling whose beams area layered with cobwebs. A salamander darts away into the shadows toward a tiny door. For a rat, but there are no rats here. You crawl through, dirt and cobwebs collecting on your back. A warren of tunnels opens up before you and you choose one. Something is gnawing at your ankle. 

You return home after many years, but everything has changed. The house that you grew up in is derelict, the roof falling in. Your mother is within doing the dishes, the plates and cups all blackened by fire. He’s out back, your mother says without looking at you. A man rides around on the lawn mower. He doesn’t acknowledge you. That’s your new father, your mother says, as the smoke rises from the grass. 

A tree grew from your loins, its roots spreading across the land, its boughs shading every hill and dale. The soil became untillable and people abandoned their villages, wailing about the lost sun. You held it all in your hand for the briefest moment, but then like water it all dribbled away. 

The sun has turned to ice, glittering in the darkness like a distant star. Fog blankets everything. Things move within it, just beyond your vision, as you hurry on your way. You meet on an empty street amidst the rubble of the last wars. We must rebuild, you say. Why, you say, with a shake of your head. It’s better this way. 

In A Flash: Joe’s Shoe Repair

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There was a place on 14th called Joe’s Shoe Repair. It had a small storefront, with a two storey ranch style house erupting out behind it, as if a tumor had metastasized in the shop’s rear wall, resulting in the development of some entirely new construction. Or perhaps it was the other way around, perhaps the home’s front porch had metamorphosed into a square, simple store. Either way, it was an oddity on a stretch of road dotted with strips malls, fast food joints and flat-roofed, anonymous buildings inhabited by lawyers and plastic surgeons and convenience stores.

Frank had noticed its incongruity driving by a few times before, but it was only when he moved into the neighborhood and began making regular trips to a nearby convenience store, for smokes and lotto tickets, that its angularity struck him as truly peculiar. Stranger still was the fact that the store was never open. There were a number of shoes and boots set out against window, displaying Joe’s handiwork no doubt, and he could clearly see a counter with a ancient-looking till and various tools of the trade set out on it.

None of their positions ever seemed to change—something Frank made a point of looking for after the first few times he went by. The lights were always off in the store, with an ever present closed sign hanging on the door. He never saw lights in the house behind either, though the shutters were always closed, so it was difficult to say for sure.

“That’s a front if I’ve ever seen one,” Frank would say to all his friends, though what it might be fronting he could not say. It just didn’t seem possible that the owner could let a piece of real estate like that sit idle and useless. There had to be a reason. “Joe ain’t fixing no damn shoes, let me tell you.”

His friends would nod and shrug at these pronouncements. What did it matter what went on in the place, odd as it was? But Frank could not let it go. The constantly closed store, the shuttered windows, the absence of any human activity on a busy stretch of a humming city, all worked at his mind until his fascination was absolute. He found reasons to pass down the street, would take walks by it even in the bitter depths of winter, just to see if there was any change. For over a year, there was none.

That all changed one long summer evening, the sun still setting after ten, and the air languorous. Frank walked by on his way to get a pack of cigarettes and saw the door to the house, off to the side of the storefront, standing open. He stopped to stare at it, almost unable to believe what he was seeing. Before he had a chance to think any further, he walked past the store, up the steps of the narrow porch, and into the house.

Read the rest at Circumambient Scenery.

In A Flash: read a new story every Thursday…

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