"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
Managed to keep up the daily progress on a couple of the mysteries and have written about six pages on the one. Also wrote several pages on another story (not a mystery) and should have it finished this weekend.
Finished one of the Friday Flash Fiction stories and wrote the one for next week.
Also wrote and finished the flash story for the monthly Furious Fiction contest and just zapped it off after very carefully proofreading the story.
Writing every evening (or early morning!) does the trick. I may have two full-length stories finished in a few weeks.
It was late Spring when Delmar and I walked into the Billiards Room at the club, talking softly about some big land deal he had just made. Doubtless so he could stare at the property and think how rich he was. As we passed Old Man Plunkett, he perked up and asked rather loudly “What’s that about a land deal?”
I looked around. It was too late to shush him or even try.
“A land deal?” came the voice from the chair in the corner. “I once had the Granddaddy of all land deals. I once had the opportunity to buy one of the biggest cathedrals in the city of London.”
McGuffin. I sighed and waved for another drink.
It was just after the War (McGuffin said.) I was footloose and fancy free and I was looking for a place to live having mustered out of the service. I heard about a place which was going for a song. I showed up at the address and couldn’t believe it; the address was Saint Ambroise’s Cathedral. I was not a religious man by any means, but I would happily have rented a room in the cathedral. They told me that the Cathedral had been closed during the War and they were looking for someone to stay there and keep the place safe from intruders and there would be some “light housekeeping.” I entered the Cathedral, which was not nearly so big as St. Paul’s or St. Clemmons’ but was large, well-lighted and secure. My room was upstairs toward the back just behind the huge dome. I spent the morning moving my scant possessions into my room and doing my few housekeeping duties, namely dusting the pews and sweeping the floor (none of which had been done regularly since the doors were padlocked around 1940. When I was finished it was early evening, so realizing that I would not have to clean six years of grime again, I celebrated with a tin of meat and music on the radio and after checking the parameter and making certain that the doors were locked I retired to bed.
I was awakened a few hours by a strange thumping and fluttering. I grabbed my torch and my service revolver and headed into the main cathedral where I heard the sound. There was a dark cloud of some sort swirling around the room. At first I thought there was smoke filling the room or just maybe bats, then I shone the light beam and revealed to my astonishment thousands of moths! Of every size and description. And they saw me too! They began to dive for my torch’s beam, like a dark column of shadow. I waved at them, thought about firing my gun, then I thought the better of it and simply ran! But not fast enough: the moths surrounded me and suddenly I found myself lifted into the air! Before I could do anything, they rose through an open skylight taking me with them! I saw the lights of the city and realized I had no way of fighting them, unless…I suddenly realized what they were after; I tossed the torch to the ground and the moths darted after the light source, leaving me to fall from the height of the cathedral to the ground.
“My Lord!” Delmar said. “How ever did you survive?”
“By using my wits,” McGuffin said. “Getting dropped was my main objective so I made sure I was over the park across the street when I threw the torch. I dropped several feet into one of the largest trees from which I climbed down and went back to the cathedral to pick up my belongings. The next day I told the owners that I was not an exterminator which was what they needed. They said they had tried but the building was engulfed with moths.”
McGuffin paused.
“They then offered to sell me the cathedral, doubtless to get it off their hands.”
“My word, McGuffin!” I said. “What did you do?”
“I simply handed them a bill for my moth-eaten clothing and set out to find a paper with rental listings. And no moths.”
Took a nap and had an oddball dream, straight out of one of E. Nesbit’s kids books. Dreamed I was some kid (14? 13?) who was explaining to his Mom & Dad how the dog’s teeth marks got on the portable radio. (It was about 1972 or so!) I was trying to hide some thingie that was sometimes a facemask and sometimes some very old Medieval thing I couldn’t identify. In the dream I was trying to keep the parents from finding out that I was using the thingie to shuttle back and forth between 1972 and (I think) about 1420 in the court of Henry V of England. Woke up before anything really interesting could happen. There’s a story in this, maybe a very short one!
First off, updating what I posted the other day over the last two days I’ve worked on two mysteries and made a little headway on both! A contrast to the 90s where I would start one story, then start another, then start another while abandoning work on the previous stories. I only started making progress in the 2000s when I told myself I would only start another story when I finished the one I was working on.
And from August 15th, 2021 on, I’ve proofread and finished a poem I wrote an idea for back in 1995 or so (finally came to me!) wrote two Friday Flash stories and worked on a long fantasy story which I may have done by next weekend.
I’ll get to the regular Progress Report in a day or so, but I’m posting this to be public about my new policy. I’ve been lazy about the writing. I have a story I ought to finish for a submissions call (due Halloween) that I’m making no real progress on, maybe because I’m not working on it. I’ve had some good response for some of the mystery/crime stories I’ve written and I need to write more of them. So, I need to crank up my production in the mystery field and at least work on some of it every night, in addition to doing some of the other stuff. I can do it, I know.
Tonight (or rather, early this morning) I wrote a paragraph on one of the Ancient Roman mysteries I had half-synopsized out. Then I started another page and started one of the other Roman mysteries. If I keep at this, get in the groove and work on my mystery that’s due October 31st, I could have that one done by deadline (two months!)
My master Cato’s voice echoed through the empty halls of the old villa we had come across on an overgrown road outside of one of the small towns surrounding Rome. The front entrance had fallen in on itself, so we were exploring from the back rooms onward. It was not quite as big as the villa of Cato’s Grandfather where we had been raised and where I’d been given to him when we were both about seven. Still, if one had to be a slave, there were worse masters than Marcus Plinius Cato, aspiring poet and playwright, especially after he had inherited his grandfather’s estate. That estate was why we were traveling, inspecting a farm Cato owned that he had never seen. Ever curious, Cato decided to explore down one of the roads. Thankfully, we took his chariot. Also, thankfully, we were heading back to Rome in a meandering sort of way.
Cato had found the atrium, the courtyard in the center of the house, big and open with a stone fountain against one wall, a fountain still trickling with water. I sniffed and then cupped my hands and took a drink. “Cool and refreshing,” I said.
“Who do you think lived here, Quintus?” Cato asked, as he cupped his hands into the water. It was early evening and the sky was still blue with dusk and I could see a white half-Moon above us in the courtyard.
“I would have no idea, Master,” I said. The slaves at the farm had not discussed this with me, they looked on me as the privileged personal slave of a wealthy poet. Besides, Cato was the one whose curiosity rampaged like the bull that chased Io.
“The family who run my farm mentioned nothing of this, even when I said we were going to travel back to Rome on this back road,” Cato said.
“And you didn’t ask if there was an inn on the road,” I muttered under my breath.
“Who dares intrude?” The voice was sharp and made us jump. The dark-robed figure who stepped out of a shadowy corner was tall, female and had long dark hair. She reminded me of a Vestal Virgin I’d once heard described.
“Good woman,” Cato said. “I am Cato, the poet. We meant no harm, my slave and I were traveling through and we…”
“I know who you are,” she said. “I am no mortal woman, I am Neriea, one of the spirits of the sea exiled when Posideon deposed Nereus as Lord of the Oceans. All you have is now mine, or face the wrath of the naiads!”
Cato stood speechless. I found my voice.
“You are no more a naiad than I am,” I said. “I am not as naive as my Master. You can call on no power to stop us or take anything we have.”
The woman stared at us for a moment and then turned and walked back into the shadows.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said. She may have no magic but she may have accomplices.”
We made our way out of the villa with surprising swiftness and were soon back on the road in the chariot.
“Living there without benefit of ownership,” I said, as I guided the chariot down the darkening road, hopefully with an Inn along the way.
“Look, I know you don’t believe in things like gods and naiads but how could you be certain that what we saw wasn’t real?” Cato asked. “I mean, that she wasn’t a spirit or river-goddess of some kind?”
I smiled. “I saw one of the back rooms when we were first in the villa,” I said. “Stores of food. Something that a goddess or spirit wouldn’t need.”
Cato laughed, then grew thoughtful. “How does this sound?” he said. Then began to recite:
“I came across, on a long-neglected road
A villa, its owners vanished and gone
Full now of only darkness and ghosts
A home for wayward gods…”
—end—-
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is the latest of several (usually longer) mysteries about Quintus I’ve written, putting the two twenty-somethings into mystery and adventure in the last decade of the Second Century B.C. (Circa 107 B.C. or thereabouts.)
The Events at the Cathedral of Saint Dion-On-The-Prairie
By Jeff Baker
People traveling down what locals just call The Old Highway, located between Kingman and Millington in Western Kansas, will take note of a structure that is at times mistaken for a grain elevator but upon closer inspection will reveal itself as what is left of a small, but nonetheless magnificent cathedral, built approximately 1899-1911 and done as a smaller version of similar Gothic cathedrals that once dotted the landscapes of France and Germany before the Wars.
Indeed the Gothic pile is a magnificent sight and has featured in more than one travel calendar, usually silhouetted against a setting sun with a car passing by on the highway.
Upon closer inspection, visitors would find the place in remarkably good shape although abandoned. The only damage is to the wooden roof of the low cloister which was torn off by a storm which spared the sturdy stone structure. All the churchly things, relics and even gold and the like had been removed and were in Diocesan hands, but the altar was still there as was the set of sturdy wooden pews and cushioned kneelers. These visitors must be escorted, however, as the structure is sealed off by a row of barbed wire and warning signs that speak of danger and an unsafe building. Doubtless to dissuade the young and impetuous from damaging an architectural relic. But there are other stories.
Now the garrulous in the area, sill believing in wives tales, spread stories of a less-solid nature involving reasons the structure was abandoned. Some say that the “Saint Dion” who was the cathedral’s namesake was not a Saint as the Church knows saints but an entity demanding a different worship and that the building had been closed and cleansed (by Holy Rite) for that reason
The most persistent story was that part of the very floor had been constructed from headstones removed from the old churchyard when the small collection of the slumbering was moved to the site of the new cathedral and new stones were erected. This was a common practice then and as the stones had been replaced, few gave it a second thought.
The one certain story in this cacophony of myth is an account of events written down from the lips of one who saw them. The handwritten manuscript is the account of Father M—, a young and energetic priest who came to St. Dion’s in the years before what the manuscript calls “The Great War.”
Now it so happened that this young priest was well-versed in legend and superstition. He realized that if the cathedral itself was a vessel of superstition instead of the work of Heaven, there would be those who would be reluctant to enter or who would be full of doubt or thoughts of darksome things that should not be contemplated in a holy place. One of the workers responsible for the erection of the cathedral had left before it’s construction had been finished, speaking of “a whispering at dusk.” Upon investigation of the matter, Father M— found a reluctance of the remaining workers to even venture near the building as sunset approached. These were mostly big, strong men, not given to undue fears or fantasies, known to do some carousing in nearby towns after hours. Not the type to run in fear from a creaking in the night. So the young priest made it his crusade to stay in the cathedral and expose what he called “un-churchly nonsense.” He made certain to make it known that he would be staying the night in the cathedral, to alert whatever human agency he believed responsible for the supposed haunting. He set up a small bedroll in one of the rooms down the hall from the sanctuary, the room that might be used as a residence, took a small supply of dried fruit, a favorite book and a flashlight and set out to wait for whatever prankster was playing ghost.
He was convinced that the source of the sounds would be the wind whistling along the prairie, much as the moaning in old Scottish castles was credited to the wind blowing through the passageways. Indeed, his first evening there he heard wind but nothing that could be mistaken for whispering. He wondered if from his location in the structure he might have missed the sounds. So, the next night, he made certain to plant himself in the sanctuary and after a time of prayer set out to walk the length of the room, keeping alert.
He almost missed it. On the third evening, as the sun was setting, he heard a slight, muffled sound, not intelligible but somehow with the feel of a murmur and the clipped pauses which speak of whispered human speech. He began to trace the sounds, walking as softly as he could.
He believed that the source of this trickery would be either a phonograph left in the building and somehow rigged to start playing, or one of the local youths in person seeking to frighten the superstitious. Nonetheless, the young Priest was still cautious as he entered the small room just to the right of the sanctuary. It was there that the whispering was more distinct and he saw shadowy figures, half as tall as he was. From what he could see in the dim light of dusk, the skinny figures (there were about eight of them) were seated on the floor. Before he could call out, there was a reflected glint of the fading light from the high window and he saw that the figures sitting down on the stone floor were not human but skeletal. As one, they turned their sightless eyes to look at him and then began clicking their teeth together making a most disconcerting rattle as they all lay down, or seemed to as they melted into the shadows of the room.
Here, any attempts to discern more of this story have met with failure. Doubtless the young priest made it to the small village and babbled out his story to someone who either wrote it down or later told it to one who wrote it down. But this story should be thought of as a first-or-secondhand account of the events. I am not certain of the fate of the young priest, or even of his identity as this detail was omitted from the story. Doubtless he either did not stay in the area or he was one of those Fathers who grew old in the service of his small community and did not speak of those events again. On fact is certain; shortly afterward barbed wire was strung about the edifice, preventing the curious and unwary from stumbling into it at the fatal hour of dusk.
—end—
Author’s Note: As should be obvious, an homage the great ghost-story writer M. R. James, translated to the Kansas prairie of just over a hundred years ago. There are all sorts of abandoned structures on the plains, many with stories to tell. I have seen some of them, but I have not heard them whisper.—-j.s. baker
Had a nice flurry of activity over the last two and a half weeks, writing-wise. First off, I wrote three of the regular Friday Flash Fiction stories (including one for next Friday) and one extra: The original story I wrote for August 7th was too long and too good so I sent it off to a mystery market, and wrote another short-short for FFF. Just about the same time, I found out about a monthly flash fiction contest out of Australia (that actually pays!!!) working off verbal prompts. I wrote another crime story in a couple of hours and sent it off! The NEXT night, I found another submission call for a story from a word prompt (this one from Shakespeare by way of M. R. James) and couldn’t resist a chance to do a riff on one of my favorite writers. Wrote it in a few hours and sent it off. (It was a matter of editing out some of what I’d written to make it fit the wordcount and that made it really work!) I also sent off a story I wrote last Summer for its intended market which finally opened up. And I worked on a couple of the monthly columns I do and wrote up about two others (I’m on a tear hear!) And, I got something published! Always nice to be able to update the bibliography!
My latest story “Summer Skies” (as by “Mike Mayak”) is in the July/August edition of the zine “Invoking Chaos: Summer Sun” from Puppycat Press. As good a time as any to update my author bibliography!
Bibliography for Jeff Baker
As of August 15, 2021
“Oh Henry”—-The World’s Shortest Stories of Love and Death. (1999)
“Back In Time” (with John R. Bogner) —– The World’s Shortest Stories of Love and Death (1999)
“The Pilfergeist”—-The Open Casket, KMUW Radio, October 31, 2001.
“Night Game”—-Black Petals #55, Spring 2011.
“The Problem of Cell A307”—-Over My Dead Body, (online) June 8, 2011.
“HORSE”—-Over My Dead Body (online) May 2014
“Hit One Out of the Park”—Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #8, 2012.
