Notes from the drawing board
Phew! Back to comics!
John has a tweet coming, our current intermission schedule will be a tweet every wednesday with a corresponding comic. Pretty much how we’ve done the foklore thursday, except we’re gonna be a little more free with our subject matter. Join us!
[updated to fix the spelling of Alderley]
I just wanted to say thanks so much to everyone who has supported PJ and I up until this point and who is continuing to do so.
I know this little intermission period isn’t really what people signed up for and we’re both very, very grateful to everyone who has stuck around.
PJ and I are both incredibly busy right now, both professionally and personally, but *fingers crossed* I’m hoping we can get our second year long weekly comics project (our Season Two) up and running by October 2020.
Maybe we’ll flip over into something different than the short stories in September, just to change things up a bit. I’ll also continue uploading the new (missing) Folklore Thursday essays as we go.
In the meantime, thanks again for sticking with us.
Cheers.
This week I’m working on a 1,500 word story for Skrawl Comix Magazine #1 so I’m cheating (again) and giving supporters an exclusive read of the first 550ish words. Shhh, don’t tell anyone.
—
MISSING – BLACK CAT
The posters were everywhere. On lampposts, in the corner-shop window, even on trees. Billy couldn’t stand to look at them, and here was a brand new one, practically right outside his front door.
The paper tore much more loudly than he’d expected, the poster ripping in half instead of pulling cleanly away from the tree-trunk where it had been stapled. The sound was like an angry hiss and seemed to carry all along the empty street. Billy crumpled the ragged pieces of poster in his fist, then threw it hard. The wind caught the ball before it could land, changing its course. Billy saw the paper snatched up into the air, only to sail back over his head. It smacked into the upstairs window of a house a few doors down from his own. Carla’s house. Two bright green eyes were staring down at Billy from the bedroom. Watching him.
A week earlier, the sun was already setting as Billy made his way home from Jake’s house. The pair had enjoyed a glorious, lazy Saturday together; playing X-Box, sharing a litre of lemonade, and a whole family pack of crisps. Jake lived on an estate built at the top of a hill, and Billy’s house was at the bottom. Pedalling up to Jake’s was an exhausting half-hour, but Billy knew from years of experience that it was worth the effort for the eleven minutes of high-speed freewheeling back down again. He was already halfway home, his coat flying out behind him like a cape as he sped downhill, when Billy saw the cats.
There were six or seven of them on the overgrown strip of land which ran down the middle of the dual carriageway. The cats were lounging round in a rough circle there among the long grass and dandelions. Billy still didn’t know why he did what he did next.
He steered to his right. His bike bumped off the curb, cruised diagonally across two trafficless lanes, then bumped up again. The uncut, damp grass slowed him down a little, so he started pedalling. Hard. Billy sped towards the cats as fast as he could. As he drew near, he thought he recognised some of them from the neighbourhood. One turned to look at him. It was the big, green-eyed tabby which belonged to Carla, the girl who lived three doors down from him. It was at that moment Billy realised he’d made a mistake, but it was already too late.
They scattered as Billy’s bike hurtled towards them. Some ran uphill, some ran down, some ran to his left, but one – a long, lean, pitch-black cat – ran to his right. Straight into the oncoming traffic. A car horn blared. Breaks squealed. There was another sound. One which Billy tried his very best not to remember now.
Billy didn’t stop. He pedalled harder than ever, his heart thumping in his chest. As he rattled downhill towards home, Billy overtook Carla’s green-eyed tabby still bounding along. The cat hissed fiercely as he passed, and for a moment Billy was terrified it would give chase.
The posters had started appearing around the neighbourhood a couple of days later.
MISSING – BLACK CAT
Billy hadn’t called the number written across their bottom. He hadn’t told anyone about what had happened. What he’d done. Only he knew.
Only him, and the cats.
The roots of the Mandragora genus of plants are known as Mandrakes. Once prized as magical ingredients they are hallucinogenic and highly toxic. It was once believed that when uprooted, the Mandrake would scream. Its terrible cry striking dead any who heard it
—-
Legend and superstition surround the mandrake. The root of the mandrake has a peculiar shape, sometimes resembling human legs or arms, or even a complete body. The strange shape of the mandrake’s root contributed to its reputation as a magical, and dangerous, plant.
Many people believed that the mandrake root screamed as it was pulled from the ground. To dig up the mandrake and hear its cries meant certain death, so ancient herbalists instructed people to tie a dog to the mandrake and force the animal to pull it up, thereby killing the dog but saving themselves. [1]
Mandragora is a plant genus belonging to the nightshade family (Solanaceae). There are five distinct species of Mandragora, all of which are also called Mandrakes. Although toxic if incorrectly used, Mandrake root has been used in herbal medicines in Europe and the East, for millennia. Of course, the plants also have a long-standing association with magic and witchcraft. The human-like form the root takes has, as is mentioned above, undoubtedly played a key role in the plants’ sinister reputation.
The following a quotation from Jean-Baptiste Pitois’ The History and Practice of Magic (1870):
Would you like to make a Mandragora, as powerful as the homunculus (little man in a bottle) so praised by Paracelsus? Then find a root of the plant called bryony [note that Bryony or Bryonia is today recognised as a separate, though similar, genus of plant to the Mandrake]. Take it out of the ground on a Monday (the day of the moon), a little time after the vernal equinox. Cut off the ends of the root and bury it at night in some country churchyard in a dead man’s grave. For 30 days, water it with cow’s milk in which three bats have been drowned. When the 31st day arrives, take out the root in the middle of the night and dry it in an oven heated with branches of verbena; then wrap it up in a piece of a dead man’s winding-sheet and carry it with you everywhere. [2]
Mandragora roots are used in traditional medicine for pain relief, and the compounds within the plants do have analgesic effects when given in the correct dosage. The deliriant and hallucinogenic properties of Mandrakes are much more widely know and speculated upon, however.
Mandragora has long been believed to have been a principal ingredient in the ointment or salve which witches were said to use to enable them to fly. The idea of the witch’s physical body lying in a comatose, sleeping, state, while her soul leaves to ride through the skies on a broomstick or beast is (it had been argued) consistent with the state of delirium which can be induced by Mandrake.
REFERENCES
Cheating a little bit this week as I’ve got a lot going on. Apologies.
Instead of a brand new short fiction, I’ve dug out something from 2013 which hopefully you’ll enjoy.
—-
Some people may think it morbid to take pleasure in a visit to a graveyard. I was once however, not only one who enjoyed such visits, but who actively sought them out. As a taphophile the diverse ornamentation of tombs and stones fascinated me and became a hobby of mine. My interest took me all around this island and, eventually to a small ex-mining town in the North.
The pit which had once been the lifeblood of the place had collapsed disastrously some three decades earlier and the community had never recovered. The once-bustling town was now a morass of blind-eyed broken windows and slack-jawed black doorways with only a huddle of the more ancient buildings still occupied.
There was no priest in this place; its church bearing the same aspect of dereliction as so much of the surroundings and my examination of the burial-ground was completed more quickly than anticipated, most of the more ancient monuments having toppled or crumbled from neglect. Even the stark, lone, large slab inscribed with the names of those who had lost their lives in the mining tragedy was, I am ashamed to say, something of a disappointment.
My return journey not being scheduled until the following morning, I found myself faced with an evening spent in the under-occupied pub, or else alone in my dingy room above, and neither scenario appealed. My hobby had furnished me, almost accidentally, with knowledge of the folklore surrounding burial places, and I found it interesting to note that this was the eve of the feast of Saint Mark. I decided it might be amusing to pass my time observing that old custom which Keats so famously wrote upon – namely that if one watched over a graveyard on that night, the spectres of those yet to pass in the coming year would show themselves.
Seated on the mossy church step as midnight approached, the sight of a figure walking among the crumbling monuments brought me sharply to my senses. In the bright, clear moonlight I soon recognised the face of the pub landlord and fear turned to embarrassment. I began to stammer an apology but the publican only shook his head slowly and sorrowfully.
“They are coming”, the words spoken softly yet somehow left ringing in my ears as he trudged back into the shadows.
And come they did.
Customs have their purposes, forgotten to many though they may be, and I am witness to what may happen if such rituals are neglected or ignored. I had seen the next year’s ghost already. The landlord (as you have guessed) passed away peacefully enough within the allotted course and was buried in the old churchyard, but no Saint Marks Eve vigil had been kept in that ruined parish for many years. Those who came shambling after the publican – who should have come long, long before – could not be mistaken for the living; their bodies having been crushed and mangled in that awful cave-in of thirty years previous.
The beach was loud. Not with music blaring from phone speakers, people having picnics, children squealing with laughter, or any of that kind of thing. It wasn’t that sort of beach. Not today. Today the sky was grey, and so was the sea. The waves were loud, and the wind, and the seagulls.
Will staggered along the grey sand, half blown by the wind at his back, half dragged by the dog at the other end of the lead he held in his hand. Bobby was a shaggy, toffee-coloured mongrel, who stood almost as tall as him when she reared up on her back legs to lick his face. Will was under strict instructions from Gran not to let Bobby off her lead or else the dog would be straight into the sea and stinking up their caravan when they got back. Bobby strained, but it was only in eagerness to snuffle at the next pile of whatever had been stranded when the sea last retreated.
A shadow of a great black cloud raced along the beach, turning the grey day instantly to twilight. A sudden furious gust shoved Will to his knees. The waves seemed to roar now, screaming gulls dragged sideways through the air. Sand stung Will’s eyes as the raging wind changed direction. He threw up his arm to cover his face. Bobby’s lead slipped from his hand.
A high whistling tone rang painfully in Will’s ears. The wind was gone. Uncovering his face, he saw Bobby standing still as a statue just ahead of him. Her ears pricked, listening intently. The leads handle was only a few feet away. Will reached for it. The whistling stopped. The lead was dragged from reach as Bobby took off at a gallop. Not towards the sea as Will had feared, but towards the sand-dunes which lay between the beach and the caravan park.
The dunes were hard to climb. There were a few well-trodden sandy paths through their valleys but, if you wanted to get up higher, there were spiky grasses and brambles to contend with, not to mention the gnarled, half-buried fences which were supposed to stop people straying from the path. For every step Will took he seemed to slide backwards half a stride. Eventually, sweat running down his neck, he reached the summit of the highest dune he could manage.
The air felt strange now that the wind was gone. It made Will think of the way things felt and sounded in an empty school hall. He shouted for Bobby, but his voice didn’t seem to carry as far as it should. He called again, and again. There was no sign of the dog, but something else caught his attention. Something which shone ever so brightly in the dull afternoon.
The twisted tree grew deep down in a perfectly circular bowl of sand, surrounded by high dunes. It must have been there for centuries, Will thought. The strange wind which had come and gone so suddenly must have somehow reached this long-sheltered spot because the tree had been wrenched violently to one side. Sand trickled down its newly exposed roots and over the mouth of the hollow which had opened up beneath. Something golden shone within. Treasure.
Without any thought as to how to get back up, Will was about to begin his slide towards the treasure when something made him hesitate. A low, menacing growl. Will turned and Bobby stood behind him, her teeth bared in a snarl which he’d never seen before. The dog wasn’t looking at him though, she was glaring past him at the opposite dune. A second later Bobby’s growl was answered with a sound which Will felt in the pit of his stomach. A low, bass rumble like an approaching underground train.
The thing which made that sound was as black as a shadow. Later, Gran would try to convince him it had been a shadow. A trick of the light, caused by the weird weather. Bobby was a big dog. A shaggy dog. So, naturally, her shadow would look even bigger and shaggier. Yes, even as big as a horse.
Will didn’t tell Gran that the black dog had spoken. Still, he did as it told him. Will never went looking for the tree again, and he never told a soul about the treasure.
In 1990 work on the Limerick to Galway motorway halted. A lone tree stood in its way. The Hawthorne, according to tradition, belonged to the Sidhe (Ireland’s Fairies). Disturbing such sites is forbidden. A curve was added. The road snaking around the Thorn Tree.
—–
“This lore is not dead. People think it’s dead […] and the reason they think it’s dead because it’s not being talked about any more. Why is it not being talked about any more? Because people are ashamed to talk about it. If you talk about the fairies today […] you get nudge nudge, wink wink, ha-ha-ha, but the old people used to call them the fairies. The old people used to call them many sideways names.” [1]
These are the words of Eddie Lenihan “Ireland’s greatest living storyteller”, a folklorist, historian, and expert of traditional Irish fairy lore.
In 1999, Eddie made headlines across the world. The following is an excerpt from an article dated June 15th of that year, which appeared in the New York Times:
LATOON, Ireland — Eddie Lenihan, a smallish man with a dark unkempt beard, a wild head of hair and an intense look in his eyes, pointed to the high white-blossomed hawthorn bush standing alone in a large field in this village in western Ireland and issued, not for the first or last time, a warning to local officials:
“If they bulldoze the bush to make way for a planned highway bypass, the fairies will come. To curse the road and all who use it, to make brakes fail and cars crash, to wreak the kind of mischief fairies are famous for when they are angry, which is often.” [2]
The fairy-thorn (sceach in Gaelic) at Latoon was, according to Eddie, an important marker on an ancient fairy path. Specifically, it was believed to serve as the meeting place for the fairies of Munster whenever they prepared to ride against the fairies of Connacht. Lenihan was informed by a local farmer that he had seen white fairy blood at the spot, proving that the hawthorn was still in use by the fair folk.
Eddie weaponised his storytelling skills as a form of non-violent protest and activism. Repeating the old tales as loudly and widely as he could, he drew the interest of first the national, and then the international press. And it worked. The route of much-delayed motorway, originally was begun in 1990, was ever-so-slightly altered, to skirt around the sacred tree.
In a letter published in the Irish Times shortly after work was completed, Clare county engineer Tom Carey, who oversaw the project, claimed that there was no influence of the fair folk, however. It was simply easier to go around the tree. That had always been the plan, he insisted. Nothing to do with fairies at all. [3] Still, there are those who were, and who remain, rather sceptical of this official back-pedalling. We all know that people are often ashamed to admit that they believe in fairies these days, but that doesn’t mean they don’t fear the consequences of upsetting them.
REFERENCES
Gav Cross. Storyteller, Theatre Maker, and Teacher.
Jen didn’t like the owls. She didn’t like the noise they made. That Jurassic World screech. It was a horrible, greedy sound. A wicked sound.
“Get some exercise“, meant that Jen should go and wear herself out for an hour while mum had one of her Zoom meetings at her kitchen table office. One hour was ten laps around the block. Fifteen if she really went for it. Cycling around the block had been boring from the start, but after three months it had become really boring.
After a while, Jen realised it didn’t really matter where she went, so long as she was back in sixty minutes. She set herself a challenge to see how much of the local area she could cover. Every road, every side-street, alleyway, and track in the neighbourhood, an hour at a time. Then one day, tyres bumping over gnarled roots on an overgrown track known locally as The Fairy Path, Jen heard the owls.
Eerie screeches mingled with the squeal of brake-pads as she skidded her bike to a stop. The strange sounds Jen thought she’d heard came again, echoing along the narrow, muddy track. Terrified, she looked all around, searching for the source. Something so white it seemed to glow in the dimness of the tree-lined passage drifted silently over her head.
The barn owls had made their nest high in the hollow trunk of an ancient elm. Jen stood and watched as the adults took turns flying out, only to return carrying tiny wriggling things with brightly coloured wings. Maybe they were butterflies or dragonflies, maybe they were tiny birds.
The piercing calls of the owlets, hidden somewhere within the elm never seemed to stop, even as meal after meal arrived. Jen really didn’t like that sound. Not just because it had given her such a shock, but because she felt like there was something wrong about it. Something more than hunger, more than greed. Something wicked, she thought.
She couldn’t remember where she’d read it, but Jen knew that owls coughed up the bones, fur, and feathers of their prey. Pellets, they called them. Searching around the base of the elm, she found them. Half a dozen or so dark, damp looking sausage-shaped things. Jen picked them up in an empty crisp packet, pulling the bag inside out like a dog-walker cleaning up after their pet.
That evening, mum was chatting on the phone to aunty Anne. Aunty Anne’s husband, uncle Dave, delivered parcels. It turned out that uncle Dave had seen Jen pushing aside brambles round the back of the old boarded-up church, making her way onto the Fairy Path. He’d called out to her from his van, but she hadn’t heard him. Jen was in trouble. Mum was furious. No more rides around the block on her own. She couldn’t be trusted.
Jen knew she’d done wrong. Knew mum wouldn’t be happy if she found out she’d been going further than she was supposed to. Even so, she was surprised just how upset mum was. It was Jen’s ride along the Fairy Path which seemed to upset her the most.
Days passed. A week. Jen’s bike leant untouched against the garden shed.
Mum was in a meeting in the kitchen, but no hour’s exercise for Jen. She had to occupy herself quietly in the house. That was when she remembered the owl pellets.
Jen found the old magazine where she’d first read about them. To find out what owls had been eating you needed to soak their pellets in water, then carefully tease them apart. The article included pictures of some of the bones you might find. Tiny delicate jawbones, ribs, and vertebrae of rodents and birds.
What Jen found didn’t match anything in the magazine. Each was no larger than the tip of her finger. The bone – if it was bone – so paper-thin that no sooner had she uncovered one it collapsed in on itself, seeming to melt under the glare of the bathroom light. Skulls.
Tiny skulls with disproportionately huge sockets, where Jen felt certain great big insect-eyes once sat. She remembered the bright, twitching things she’d seen the owls carrying in their beaks. The insatiable screeching of the hungry owlets. That horrible, wicked sound.
Jen thought of her ride along the forbidden path.
Then she remembered its name.
Brambles grow wild across the UK. Their thorny vines bring forth sweet Summer fruit. The berries must never be picked after October 11th. This is when Lucifer fell from Heaven, landing in a blackberry bush. In revenge, he spoiled the fruit by urinating upon them.
—
Michaelmas, the Christian Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, falls on the 29th September, but the feast used to fall on the 11th of October. This is because of the shift from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar — brought in (partly) in order to bring the calendar back in sync with astronomical events such as the equinoxes — which occurred in 1751, here in the UK.
Michaelmas is one of four old Quarter Days, the others being Lady Day (the 25th of March), Midsummer or St. John’s Day, and Christmas Day.
The fruit of the blackberry bramble (Rubus timbroms or fruiticosus) is vulgarly known in this district by the name of bumble kite, from its being supposed to cause flatulency when eaten in too great a quantity.
No knowledgeable boy will eat these berries after Michaelmas Day, because the arch-fiend is believed to ride along the hedges on the eve of that great festival and pollute everything that grows in them, except the sloes, by touching them with his club foot. The same notion prevails further north, where the bramble-berries are called lady’s garter berries. [1]
In different regions of the UK, local folklore says that the Devil stamps, spits, vomits, or even urinates on blackberries all along the hedgerows, rendering them inedible after Michaelmas. Why though?
Saint Michael, aka the Archangel Michael, was a warrior. The Book of Revelation, the final book in the Christian New Testament, describes a literal War in Heaven between one group of angels under Archangel Michael’s command and another band of Rebel Angels, led by “The Dragon”, AKA Lucifer.
The War in Heaven was won by Michael and his angelic troops and resulted in the expulsion of Satan from the realm above into this, the lowly mortal plane. The Devil fell… and landed in a bramble bush. Which, apparently, he wasn’t very pleased with. So every year, on the anniversary of his prickly landing, Old Scratch makes sure to ruin the blackberries.
REFERENCES