SCOOBY-DOOO-WOOOO

SCOOBY-DOOO-WOOOO

I look across the room
And what do I see?
Only a ghost Scooby-Doo
Glove puppet
Not staring at me

MAWH, Nov 1 2018

SCARY STUFF

I wanted to write something really scary for you for halloween night, but I ran out of time, and, to be honest, I also ran out of ideas. Well, any that hadn't already been done far better than I could have done them, anyway.

Fear, you see, despite being a healthy way of reminding us to get ourselves away from our predators, is also one of the most sickly, sweet and devious of the mind's tricks that it can play on us.

We might think that we're struggling to write a few original words, or trying to recollect where the idea that we thought we'd thought of was when we first read about it, but all the time the fear is whispering into our subconscious, suggesting that this is perhaps the first sign that we are losing our mind, that the slow drip-drip of decay is tearing at our memories and our abilities and peeling away at the very heart of us, slowly shredding our notions of what is, in fact, us.

Is it disease, sickness, or old age tapping at the door to claim us...?

You could, of course, argue that the world is currently scary enough without anyone choosing to add anything to what it is already up to. You could, after all, be just walking to your car, or putting out the milk, and find that there's a bag being put over your head to whisk you away to a fate worse than, but not necessarily excluding, death.

Slowly... Painfully... Wretchedly...

Those children that are rat-a-tat-tatting on the front door may not be children at all...

Are they, in fact, far more terrifying dark demons in human form bearing the most malicious of intentions...?

The sinister, faceless terrors that have no name but which we all know are really there if you're unlucky enough to run into one at a moment when you are at your most vulnerable...

Are the strange glowing lanterns, and the mild-mannered extortions just a ruse, a disguise worn along with the horror masks to lull us into a false sense of security before the claw hammer fells us...?

Still, if you're reading this alone, in a dark house, late at night, and you've just had the slight sensation of a draught which you think has just wafted across the back of your neck, causing you to suddenly shiver for no real reason that you can think of, or something has just made the surface of your drink ripple unexpectedly, just remember that the unknowable shocking hordes of the "them" are in the house with you right now, lurking in the darkest corners of the shifting shadows, and when you go to take a sip of that wine, or that coffee, or that hot chocolate, they are just below the surface and waiting to pounce, just as they'll crawl all over you the minute you shut your eyes and try to get off to sleep.

You can convince yourself that it's all just in your imagination, that there's nothing lurking just underneath the surface waiting to leap out at you... and you might even be right...

If you're lucky...

Otherwise... otherwise...

Those strange noises, those odd, unexpected creaks and groans, and that unsettling sense that there's somebody upstairs... they're all true, and they're all going to get you, and there's nothing that you can do about it other than hide under the blankets and hope that they're not really there and, if they are, that they'll not notice you shivering and trembling under there, hopelessly pleading silently that they'll just go away and leave you alone...

But when they rip back the covers and look you right in the eye... You'll know...

You'll just know...

You'll be looking right into the face of your very own demon, the one you made for yourself.

Goodnight, sleep tight, and remember that the bugs will bite.

JACK REVISITED

This didn't draw that much attention to itself three years ago, and I don't suppose that it will now, either, but, seeing as it is halloween night, and there's not really any other night upon which it works, here's "another chance to read" a short story called "Jack" which first appeared in this blog on a dark, cold and lonely evening way, way back in October 2010...

http://m-a-w-h.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/jack.html

THE WITCH IS BACK

A couple of years ago (although it seems far less) I posted a story about "The Wicked Witch of the Woods" on Halloween night 2011 (http://m-a-w-h.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/wicked-witch-of-woods.html) based upon the very eerie sensations I felt after spotting a shape in the woods near to Newborough beach on Anglesey which looked (to me at least) remarkably like a witch crouched down over her cauldron and ready to cast a wicked spell.

So far, so many vivid imaginings...

Still, maybe it's only I that can see it...? Everyone else might just see a clump of old roots and find that there's nothing unusual about that... The mind is, after all, very good at playing tricks and we do like to form patterns that sometimes aren't really there.

Rather strangely, however, I found myself in those very same woods last week,  two years later, and at one point, I looked up and there she was again, as captured in the new picture attached which I found a little bit odd given the passage of time and the general erosion which normally happens to organic matter in an outdoors environment.

Odd, but not unusual.

However, having partially completed the "Saints, Sea and Sand" route of the walk options at this rather fine beach area which has, incidentally, had a bit of an impressive makeover this year, we found ourselves with a couple of hours to fill and decided to try out the "Nature Trail" as well, some of which uses exactly the same route as the trail we had previously walked and during which I had snapped my snapshot.

Only this time, not two hours later, I couldn't see this hunched up old witch anywhere at all... She had vanished back into whatever dark realms she normally inhabits having reminded me once again of her disturbing existence...

He shuddered...

THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WOODS

Deep, deep in the darkest of forests you are all alone. Silence falls, not a bird can be heard. Faraway, in the distance, is that a twig snapping? Is someone there? The silence is oppressive, it closes in, making your eardrums throb, desperately trying to seek out a sound to hear. If a tree falls in the forest, dos someone hear it scream? The silence is deafening, as if it has weight and substance, in envelopes you and you are suddenly drowning in its treacly grasp.

Shapes and shadows shift in the beams of weak light that filter through the green canopy far above your head. You spin around, and around again, but no one is there, but, something moved, something felt as if it was very close, so close that it could reach out and touch you, transform you and hold you here forever.

Faces and forms appear and disappear in the ever-shifting shadows. Is that a buzzard perched over there? Hunched over… Poised… Holding you in its unchanging gaze. Contemplating its next meal… Ready to strike, screech out its victory to all the other buzzards circling above the canopy, so that they too can dive in and join the fray, the orgy of consumption.

Could it be a waiting warrior? Frozen forever as he paused for a moment to take the breath that turned out to be his last. Forever on guard whilst taken off guard, his armour an ebullient mask to the frail figure within the carapace. Weapons halfway to being at an uneasy at ease, but a moment away from action and violence.

Or is it some more fantastic creature. A terrible lizard, or a sleeping behemoth, or maybe a monster from the darker corners of the imagination, lurking, plotting, waiting to strike…? It might be a creature of the purest instinct, a scavenger, a vicious killer that just wants to eat, its talons paused and waiting to strip your flesh from your bones and devour you. It’s waited an eternity now, and all you have to do is take one more little step…

No, I can see it now for what it is, for what she is. Sitting there, hunched over, frozen in time by her own wickedness when it was found out, her cold spindly fingers clutching at the stirring stock, her cloak wrapped around her against the cold and the rain and the eavesdropping villagers who just want to bind her up, drag her away to their pyre and burn her.

She is the wicked witch of the woods, a dark heart of brutal curses and the old magic, whose spells can turn day into night, light into shade and joy into sorrow and heartbreak. If you are lucky she’ll remain too engrossed in watching her cauldron boil to notice you as you stand there, frozen, not daring to breathe lest you get added to the evil mixture as it boils. She has maybe been there for a thousand years, and might remain for a thousand more until an opportunity comes along and she can gain her freedom once again.

Meanwhile, she waits and she waits and she waits.

For you.

You try to get by her without making a sound, your heartbeat now thudding in your ears which escalate its volume so that it blocks out everything else because they have no other sounds to divert them.

So loud, so loud.

Surely she will hear?

You manage to make just one slight and silent movement to the left, and then another and another. Soon you are running blindly on through the woods, the branches whipping at your face and hands, the thorns tearing at your clothes and flesh. You’ve simply got to get away, as far away as you can before she notices you. Behind you, already the dark powers are circling, forming into a whirlwind of sound and noise and fury. Got to keep running, faster, faster, through those bushes and into the light you can just see beyond.

Then you are back in the car park on an ordinary summer’s day. Families play with their children and eat their sandwiches and laugh with each other in a carefree way. A dozing Labrador idly glances your way as you burst out from the trees, but nobody pays you much attention as you regain your breath and your senses.

You breathe deeply, exhale a sigh of relief but then the wind catches just there merest hint of a distant cackle coming from somewhere behind you, and you find that you are shivering despite the sunshine.

JACK

He felt the blade slice deep into his forehead, followed almost immediately by a relentless sawing as the top of his head was cut right off.

With it gone, he felt a tumble of memories pouring out of him with it; the cutting of the umbilical, being bundled into the eternal darkness of the back of that lorry, waking up in a pile of his brothers in a strange storeroom filled with artificial light and plastic music.

He’d been mauled, manhandled and thrown about and eventually wrapped up in a bag and brought to this terrifying place. He’d sat there listening to the mocking laughter of someone who sounded terribly young and heard some talk of knives and cutting, but he hadn’t become truly frightened until he’d heard the clatter of the stainless steel onto the surface next to him, and then the first cut came followed almost instantly by the appalling pain.

After what had seemed like forever, the sawing had stopped and with it the grinding forward and backward movement that had made each moment’s agony seem, if possible, even worse than the one before it. He couldn’t open any eyes or even a mouth. He wasn’t sure how much difference they’d have made to him now anyway, but he didn’t seem to have either, and yet the pain was so totally hideous and he couldn’t even scream.

As the latest hurtful vibrations ceased, the pain seemed to subside to just an angry, relentless throbbing and he felt a slight soothing coolness where the top of his head used to be.

Why were they doing this to him?

What was the point of it?

He heard the clatter of the blades as another implement was collected and braced himself for yet another wave of torment to begin. He didn’t have to wait too long as another blunter, rounder implement came into contact with the soft matter now exposed where the top his head used to be. The last thing he remembered as the agony overwhelmed him again was the laughter of some children as he fell into a merciful darkness.

After a while he woke. His insides felt empty, hollow even. He felt lighter than he ever remembered feeling in his life before. His innards felt like they’d been scraped clean, and there was a slight sense of loss where his insides used to be, but instead of hurting there was a kind of numbness as if someone had taken away his entire nervous system but somehow managed to leave him behind in essence. “Perhaps” he thought, “where there’s no sense, there really is no feeling.”

And yet he did feel. He felt almost spiritual, and strangely euphoric. He kept wondering why he was still conscious, still here, and so he wasn’t really paying much attention to what was going on around him. He was just starting to come to terms with his new state of being when they stuck another knife into him.

The light poured in around the tip of the blade and suddenly he could see them, chiselling away at him with those manic grins on their strange little faces. This was new. He could actually see. He’d never been able to see before. He’d always got by using his wits and his senses, but this ocean of colour pouring into his mind was breathtaking. There was so much of it he felt like he wanted to shut it out. He wanted to blink, but found that he couldn’t because they were still poking that knife into his eye.

Eventually they stopped, and he watched them as they sat back and studied him with a look of strange satisfaction. There were three of them, he thought. A mother and two of her young, but he didn’t have too long to observe them because very soon the blade was back in the older one’s hand and she was hacking away at him again and even more light was soon pouring into his head as another eye opened up in the same agonising manner.

Another moment of relief came when they paused again. Although he wasn’t sure whether it helped, he now had stereoscopic vision. All that seemed to do was make that knife seem even more terrifying as it was waved about in front of his face.

And then they started to hack at him again!

He found that he couldn’t move his eyes though, so he couldn’t get a good look down, but they seemed to be cutting a huge opening right under his eyes, something wide and grinning and full of very sharp teeth…

He had a sinister thought, “They might come in useful.”

And then it all just finished. They all stood back to stare tauntingly at him and admire their butchery. They smiled at him and he had no choice but to smile right back at them whilst glaring with an unblinking gaze. What was that they were calling him? Jack something or other? Well, it was as good a name as any for him now, he supposed.

They seemed to have decided to leave him alone for now. The knives had all been put away and pain had started to subside, so he was on his own and able to take in his surroundings. Sight was a new experience for him, and he started to realise quite how useful it might be. Over here he could see the drawer that they’d put those awful, hateful knives into. In the corner, he spotted a doorway leading to somewhere dark and forbidding, and over there he could see what probably used to be his insides in a pan, quietly bubbling away.

Pretty soon he had a fairly good idea of where everything was.

Eventually they all came back, now dressed in strange ceremonial outfits, which managed to make them appear even more sinister than they had earlier. He watched as they slowly served up and began to eat his innards. He kept watching, broodingly as they devoured the better part of him, and he was still silently watching when the older one lit a small fire and, unbelievably, as if he really hadn’t suffered enough already that day, carried the tiny flame over to him and put it right inside his head. What were they trying to do now, roast him from the inside out as a final indignity?

Oh! How he hated them, how he wished he could pay them back for what they’d done to him.

They carried him outside what he presumed to be their home and placed him on a ledge with a view of the street and they headed off out, just leaving him there, alone. The cool and dark of the evening started to relax him and helped to clear his mind to think and to plot. After a little while he really started to appreciate the warmth glowing inside him and began to absorb its life-giving heat.

Unfortunately though, the smoke was really starting to bother his eyes.

He blinked.

Then he realised that he had blinked.

He blinked again, more deliberately this time.

Then his wide mouth with its jagged rows of sharp little teeth broke into the broadest of smiles.

He was very sure that they’d all be coming home soon.

Jack could wait for them.