#i had the idea of communicating to a ghost through an old telephone and it spiraled from there đ
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
Text
Character idea- a medium runs an antique store and helps ghosts who haunt old objects move onto the after life. One of these ghosts haunts a 1950's rotary telephone and the medium is able to talk to her through the phone specifically but this ghost refuses to move on. Obviously they're lesbians.
Also there's a poltergeist who haunts the store and is just a pest that knocks shit over. The medium never sees the poltergeist (because ghosts can choose to allow her to see them) and so she thinks he's just an annoying pest. Turns out the poltergeist is a ghost cat just doing cat shit.
#i had the idea of communicating to a ghost through an old telephone and it spiraled from there đ#i dont have time for it but i wanna sketch them now#not to mention the completely OTHER fae characters that my sister and I made#i do not have enough time for these ideas
4K notes
¡
View notes
Text
Spirit boxes, radios, and analog ghost hunting
Why is does so much ghost hunting gear resemble tech from the 80s and 90s? Why do paranormal investigators tend to favor old technology? Does that act of using old tech add to the potential allure of ghost hunting?
As I've written about a couple times already, I'm interested in the idea that ghost hunting might be a way to turn away from the internet of today, in favor of interacting with the physical (and invisible) world using older technology. There's a sense of nostalgia there; for elder millennials, gen Xers, and boomers, many ghost hunting tools are reminders of older tech. For gen z and younger millennials, they're relics of an imagined idyllic time of 80's and 90's prosperity, something to satisfy a feeling of anemoia (nostalgia for a time you've never known).
In support of this idea, I'd like to explore different popular ghost hunting tools through the lens of nostalgia.
First up: the spirit box.
Shack Hacks and spirit boxes
Spirit boxes (or ghost boxes) are radios that have been modified to sweep AM or FM stations at a swift rate. (To oversimplify things, spirit boxes are used to communicate with ghosts. The idea is that you can ask questions and potentially receive answers through the garbled audio of tiny snippets of different radio stations.) Radios have been used for paranormal investigation for a while; in 2002, Frank Sumption came up with the first modern ghost box, the Frankâs Box. In the late 2000s, âShack Hacks,â became popular; people would modify cheap RadioShack radios to work as spirit boxes. [^1]
As TV shows like Ghost Adventures popularized the use of spirit boxes in paranormal investigation, purveyors of paranormal gear began selling (more expensive) purpose-made spirit boxes. Nowadays, when you search for info about Shack Hacks, you'll likely come across a lot of websites from 2009 or so. Though many paranormal investigators carry an SB7 Spirit Box these days, the ghost-hunting device is still a humble, old-school radio.
Nostalgia
Everything about the spirit box's origin reeks of nostalgia (for someone my age, at least.) For example, "Shack Hacks" came from RadioShack, a once-successful retail chain catering toward hobbyists. The company had its peak in 1999, began to falter in the 2000s, and finally declared bankruptcy in 2015.
RadioShack still exists, after a fashion, but it's a shadow of its former self. (And honestly, when I went to look it up while writing this, I was shocked to find that they're still around at all. [^2])
I have such clear memories of going to RadioShack when I was a kid. There was one in the strip mall next to the grocery store, and while it never had the allure of larger electronics stores that sold computers, I remember going into the store and looking at their wares, such as radios and landline telephones (including very cool clear phones). And who could forget the novelty items that RadioShack carried, like Robie, an animatronic robot piggy bank? I had a Robie that delighted me when I was a kid.
To me, radios inhabit the same nostalgic space as landline phones[^3]. Radios are an old device, a remnant from a technologically simpler time. We've since replaced most physical gadgets with apps; streaming services like Spotify and internet radio stations have rendered radios nearly obsolete. When was the last time most people used an actual radio to listen to a terrestrial radio station, aside from possibly in an older car?
I'm not exactly a Luddite; I'm pretty into technology (but then again, so were the Luddites, technically, so maybe I am a Luddite). At any rate, I do sometimes wax nostalgic when I think about the days when we were surrounded by physical gadgets. There was something nice about being able to take something apart, see how it works, and fix it. If you had a radio back in the day, you could try to repair it yourself. But if you encounter a glitch in a streaming music app nowadays, you can go through a troubleshooting flow, but you're trying to fix something that's mostly invisible, out of reach, wrapped in code that you can't access and stored in a faraway cloud data center.
There's an immediacy to old tech that it's hard not to feel nostalgic for. And maybe that's one reason why physical gadgets are so popular when ghost hunting; when searching for something as immaterial as a spirit, it's nice to feel grounded by holding a simple, easily understood physical machine. In addition to that, ghost hunting apps are notoriously unreliable and known for putting their thumb on the scale, leading to inaccurate results. Part of that is their sheer opacity--it's hard to trust a random developer to write code that doesn't, say, favor scary-sounding outputs in the hope of pleasing their users. But I don't think that's everything.
These days, spirit boxes are the only sort of physical radios that I see discussed frequently. And so, just like last time, I have to ask myself: when people use vintage tech like radios to communicate with ghosts, are they just hoping to conjure conversation with spirits? Or are they also trying to evoke a sense of nostalgia or anemoia?
[^1]Check out my episode about the Solo Estes Method for my sources and more info about spirit boxes.
[^2] In case you're wondering about other iconic 1990s consumer electronics companies, I also learned that Circuit City still exists, apparently, as does its sibling brand CompUSA (albeit in zombified form).
[^3] And also piggy banks--are they still a thing? Seems like coins are being phased out these days.
#cryptidcore#cryptidacademia#ghost hunting#ghosts#paranormalinvestigator#paranormal podcast#nostalgia#90s nostalgia#80s nostalgia
1 note
¡
View note
Text
Little Angels
One]
It is dark inside a wolfâs belly, but up here the air is clear and bright. Atop the tower of Paradiso, above the city of mist and gray. The roof is all caved in and shattered, scattering brilliant prisms through the fragmented skylight and across the floor. A man stands alone in the wreckage, inside the skeletal remains of this holy animal. He sifts through the books that were left behind until he finds one with a red cover and no title, but the letters A-D embossed along its spine. He flips to a certain chapter, and begins to read.
It was in another kind of tower that it happened. The Detective entered into the penthouse apartment of the Deeds family, a couple from the upper crust who were in a state of panic over their missing teenage daughter. From that first frantic phone call with the grief-ridden Gloria Deeds, Sacha knew the shape of this case inside out, backwards, and upside down. It was a classic.Â
Teenage girl from a wealthy family, sheltered her whole life, the type who could do no wrong in the eyes of her doting, overbearing parents. One night she leaves without warning, to chase some guy or some band or some misplaced sense of adventure. The reasons didnât matter as much as what they were willing to pay for the reassurance that their precious little angel would be home safe and sound.
There were just a couple of details he hadnât counted on.
Sacha sat idling on the side of the road, looking down at the photo the Deedsâ had given him. It was a little roughed up at the edges and faded at the crease where heâd folded it. Heâd forgotten how fragile these old-fashioned print photographs were. Despite the damage, the face of thirteen year old Renee Deeds still looked up at him with those same gentle brown eyes and private smile.Â
The girl in the photo, however accurate it was to real life, had her hair pulled back in a crowd of twin braids that crested over thick dark curls. She wore what Sacha presumed to be church clothes-- tidy blouse and long skirt, an heirloom brooch-- and a pair of crutches braced to her forearms. Her ankles were crossed and tucked limply to one side, away from the cameraâs focus.
The girlâs disability put a complication in the narrative heâd been concocting. According to the Deedses, Renee could only go so far on foot without intense pain and she disliked using her chair. It remained in the hall closet, untouched since her disappearance. Mr Deeds worked from home most days so rather than send her off to school, she was homeschooled by a well-vetted private tutor under her fatherâs occasional supervision. She had few friends, being a reserved child, they said. Sacha thought it probably had more to do with the gilded cage she lived in, lined with bubblewrap and goose down lest she ever bruise her precious knees. But it wasnât his place to say.
Regardless, this left him with a very limited pool of suspects. And suspects they were indeed, since the Deeds were certain Renee had been kidnapped. Such a good girl would never have just wandered off on her own.Â
If that was indeed the case, the culprit had done a remarkable job of covering their tracks. Renee was last seen by her mother who had put her to bed at 9 'o'clock on the dot. The security system had been armed all night and there were no signs of tampering. Besides which, the only way out of the penthouse that didnât involve a several story drop to a very unhappy ending was through the front lobby and the cameras in and outside it didnât detect anyone unusual, coming or going.Â
The parentsâ first move, naturally, was to call the police. The cops questioned the other residents and scanned the security tapes but turned up empty handed and after a few weeks of daily calls the officers on the case all but told Mr and Mrs Deeds that their hands were tied. For once, even money and social standing couldnât hasten the hand of justice. That was when they had called on private investigator Sacha Ferro to get the job done.
All these facts laid out before him, Sacha found himself no closer to the answer than he had been at the start. The difference between then and now was not information but desperation, the heights of which had brought him here. Orphanâs Hollow.
The last few years had hit this city hard, same as it did all of them. It wasnât a single sudden thing, but rather a combination of natural disasters, a virulent epidemic, and the consequential economic collapse that left entire districts barren, now inhabited only by clustered communities of the homeless. The handful of city blocks now known as Orphanâs Hollow was one such district, named so because it was, if stories were to be believed, populated entirely by children. Hollowed out department stores and office buildings and, most notably, the abandoned fairgrounds of Fun Town West became a tragic Neverland for runaways and other parentless youth in hiding from the overburdened childcare system.
Recently, there had been an epidemic of another kind in many of the nearby boroughs. Kids were going missing, just like Renee Deeds had, except most families werenât fortunate enough to be able to hire someone to track them down. From what Sacha could pick up, most of them-- those that were reported-- were girls between the ages of six and sixteen. Other than that, the demographics were all over the map: black, white, rich, poor, healthy, sick. Missing posters spawned and spread like mold across the billboards and telephone poles, while the local government processed statistics with dead eyes and shrugging shoulders.
The unspoken truth seemed to be that if they were anywhere, if they were alive, the missing girls were somewhere in here. But the kids of Orphanâs Hollow were protective of their own and wouldnât likely allow any cops to sift through their ranks even if they did trust their motives. It became one of those open secrets that everyone knew about but no one wanted to touch.Â
On top of that, not every orphan was some scrawny Dickens novel side character; there were rumors of gang activity and even some sort of cult that made the teenagers who ended up in this part of town vicious towards outsiders. Orphanâs Row was a name with more than one meaning, they said, because if you took those kids lightly theyâd turn yours into orphans as well. None of that mattered to Sacha though. At this point, he had little left to lose.
There was a gun in the glovebox of the Detectiveâs hatchback, unloaded, and he hoped it would stay that way. The idea of turning any weapon on a kid, no matter their alleged viciousness, turned his stomach. He would bring it with him to be used, in only the most absolutely dire circumstances, as a threat. Leverage. If it came down to it, he could rationalize that.
As he turned down another vacant street into the ghost town, the weather began to turn as well. It had been drizzling steadily since the evening prior, making the humidity all the more unbearable, but now the rain relented and in its place a clotted mist settled low over the city, like ink diffusing in water. Sacha kept his lights low and foot barely pressing on the gas pedal. Though it was irrational he felt uneasy at the idea of making himself any more noticeable than he was already.
When the car jolted it was like being shaken awake from a dream. At first he thought it was another pothole-- the roads were a wreck after so long untended-- but then there was an audible crunch and a lurch as his front-left tire burst. Without bothering to pull over he got out and found the problem right away. Deep in the tire, lodged between the wheel and its socket, was a doll. Or at least, something that was trying to be a doll.
The body was made out of metal; scraps from perhaps an aluminum can worked together with screws and painted to give it the look of a hoop-skirted dress. Its head was a christmas ornament. He recognized the pink painted cherub cheeks and curling synthetic hair. Some broken edge of the makeshift toy had punctured the tire, and of course Sacha didnât have a spare on hand, even if he could figure out how to rip the damn thing out of the wheel well.Â
He muttered a curse to himself. Heâd have to leave it here and keep going on foot. At least there wasnât anything in the car worth stealing, and he didnât exactly have to worry about getting a ticket.
A sudden shriek made Sacha jump, hand going blindly to the holster under his shirt.
âMy doll!â the child cried again. âYou killed Jessika! My dolly!â
Sacha turned around and saw a young girl, barefoot and wearing what looked like an old halloween costume, standing across the street from him like a specter out of the fog. Appropriate, since she was so keen on howling like a banshee.
âHey, Iâm so sorry about your dolly,â he gentled, crossing to meet her.Â
The girl seemed to be considering running away from the strange man, as would well be her right, but stood her ground instead as her face grew redder.
âYou killed her,â she said again. âShe was a person and you killed her.â
Sacha dropped to one knee. â Iâm sorry about your Jessica--âÂ
âJessika!â
He chewed the inside of his cheek. âI am sorry, but it was an accident, really. Whatâs your name, sweetheart?â
She sniffled. âIâm Princess Ladybird,â she said, as though it should have been obvious. She gestured at her costume, a pink sparkly dress studded with plastic gems around the collar. âWho are you? Youâre not supposed to be here.â
âMy name is Sacha. Iâm a private investigator-- a detective,â he corrected, seeing her confused expression. âIâm looking for someone. Theyâre not in any trouble, I just need to make sure theyâre safe. Do you think you could help me, your highness?â
He kept his voice low and comforting. Dealing with kids wasnât exactly his specialty, but he knew what he was doing well enough.
âNo! No!â the girl cried, more agitated than ever. âNo grownups allowed! Youâll just hurt them, just like Jessika!â
âIâm not here to hurt anyone,â he insisted, growing frustrated. âAnd I told you didnât mean to break your doll. I could buy you a new doll? A nicer doll.â
She shook her head adamantly. âThe store dolls arenât alive. I only play with alive dolls.â
Play along, Sacha. âOkay, where can I get you a new âaliveâ doll?â
âYou canât make an alive doll, youâre too old,â she huffed.Â
Sacha was not going to let himself be offended by a six year old. He wasnât. âIf your dolls are so precious, maybe you shouldnât leave them in the street!â
âMaybe you should look where youâre going!â With that, she stomped on his foot and ran away. Sacha barely felt it through his shoes, but that was a small consolation. In a blink the princess was gone again.
He sighed. It was no less than he expected, but it still didnât feel good. With the world theyâd been living in, it wasnât any surprise that the kids here were a bit strange. At least this one had seemed healthy enough, certainly energetic. That meant there was probably someone making sure she was kept fed.Â
He reminded himself that there was nothing he could do for these kids. Better to focus on what he was here for.
Two]
Sacha walked along the sidewalk without any real sense of where he was going. He occasionally saw clusters of children playing games or jumping in puddles in the street, but most were inside keeping out of the weather. When he looked up he sometimes saw tiny faces peering down at him from high windows or crouched on fire escapes. The ones on the ground didnât spare him a look except in fleeting disgust. There was a girl reading fortunes for her friends from a dented pack of playing cards who went abruptly silent when he passed by, and Sacha came to realize that they were deliberately ignoring him, hoping to shun him into leaving the way he came.Â
When he tried to approach a pair of tweens doing some sort of craft project in a sheltered doorway, they quickly picked up their things and scampered away, leaving only a trail of paint droplets behind them. They didnât look too terribly hard-off; their clothes were sometimes dirty but they were all in one piece and their eyes were bright and lively. It was sort of amazing, Sacha thought, how theyâd really managed to build something of a community here, away from adults. Part of him almost envied them.
âExcuse me,â he tried again with a girl who was a bit older than the last. Her age didnât make her look any more mature really, only sharper, as if she were growing but growing into the wrong shape. âIâm looking for--â
âEveryone knows what youâre looking for,â the young woman said. âYouâre loud enough about it.â
This one wasnât exactly friendly but at least she hadnât run away yet. Sacha went to pull out a photo.Â
âPut that away, man,â she hissed. âYouâre not going to find any girls who look like that here, and the wrong fledgling might just eat you alive for having it.â
âFor having a photograph?â He didnât bother to ask what a âfledglingâ was supposed to be. Some sort of weird slang he was too dated to recognize, he guessed.
âFor keeping another girlâs face! All you need is a face and a real-name and you can make that person do and say whatever you want.â
âIs this some kind of game you kids play? I have no idea what youâre talking about.â
âItâs not a game,â she said gravely. âYou donât understand anything. Walking into this world when you donât know the rules is as good digging your own grave.â
âHelp me catch up, then. Level with me,â Sacha pressed. âI can make it worth your while.â
He didnât have much money on hand, but he had medicine credits set aside for emergencies and that should be worth its bytes in gold in a place like this. Or if not, she could pawn it and buy some earrings or animal crackers or whatever kids liked.
âSave it, I donât have an account. Legally, most of the kids here donât even exist. Youâll have to trade for what you want the old fashioned way, outsider.â
Exasperated, Sacha rooted around in his pockets and came up with a protein bar and a keychain that doubled as a bottle opener. The girl didnât look impressed.
âOkay look, hand over the picture and the rest of it and Iâll tell you where you need to go, but donât say I didnât warn you. Outsiders donât survive long here.â
Sacha wasnât convinced this wasnât all some intimidation game, but he folded up the photo of Renee and handed it to her anyway. If he really needed the visuals he had pictures on his phone. Heâd turned it off shortly after setting out, when the calls and texts from his sister started pouring in, but couldnât quite bring himself to leave it behind in the car. He could just picture Maria pacing around the house scowling at his number as another message failed to go through.Â
Iâll make it up to you, he promised her silently.
âThereâs a spot two blocks that way,â She pointed. âLeft, left, right, down some steps, and youâll see a sign for The Love Nest. Itâs hard to miss.â
Something about the name said through her lips made him want to recoil. The girl scoffed at his unease.
âRelax, itâs just the name left from the old owners. It belongs to the brood now. Itâs a good place, a sacred place.â She sighed, looking up and around as if projecting to an imaginary audience. âNot that someone like you would get any of that, I guess. A lot of fledglings hang around there. If your girl can be found, youâll find her there. If not, sheâs already gone.â
âWhat do you mean âgoneâ?â he demanded.
âI mean gone.â she held up the photograph, still folded. âGone like this.â
She tore the square neatly in two and let the halves flutter to the ground.
âIâm not even supposed to tell you this much, so if you missed your window donât even think about hanging around here trying to dig out more information. Youâre pushing your luck as it is.â
What an angry kid, Sacha thought to himself as he departed. He wasnât too different when he was that age, but outright threatening someone who was only trying to do good seemed a bit extreme, especially when that someone had a good head of height on you as well. Was it the conditions they lived in that made them so temperamental here? Or just adolescent angst? Hopefully he wouldnât be staying long enough to find out.
And just how was he planning to leave, even if he was successful, he wondered. Heâd have to drive them out on three tires. Ruining his car would be well worth it though if it meant ending this.
Angry girlâs directions turned out to be sound and soon enough Sacha found himself at the door of a closed down club that proudly announced itself as âThe Love Nestâ in faded pink letters above the door. The windows were boarded up but there were still some old posters for the upcoming live entertainment pinned to the plywood. It appeared the place had been at least marginally more legitimate than Sacha had guessed by the name, while it had been in operation.
Pushing through the double doors the Detective found himself in a gloomy ballroom, styled vaguely like a vintage cabaret club or perhaps someoneâs romanticized idea of a 1920s speakeasy. There were a few tables-- standing only by virtue of the bolts that held them to the hardwood-- a bar, and a large circular stage in the middle of it all. Sacha toed aside what heâd thought was a trash bag only to hear a grumbled complaint and find another of the hollowâs orphans crawling out of a sleeping bag on the floor.
âWhat are you doing here?â the kid asked, with such pointed accusation youâd think heâd personally wronged them. They were wearing an oversized âFun Townâ t-shirt and flannel bottoms with a paw print pattern.
Roused by the noise, some other children began emerging from their own napping spots to investigate.
âAre you a cop?â one asked.
âNo, Iâm more of a detective,â he replied.
âSounds like a cop to me. And you look like a cop.â
Sacha frowned. âHow so?â
âYouâre old,â the kid said. âAnd you have blood on you.â
He looked down at his hands, his clothes. He saw brown khakis, dusty black loafers, pale patterned button-up shirt. No tie; heâd spilled coffee on it on the drive, hands already shaky from the ill-advised extra caffeine. To his embarrassment, he noticed a faint dampness where the weather and his own nerves had painted sweat across his collar, but no blood.
âItâs okay,â said the first child, yawning. âSnowy sees blood on everyone.â
âI donât see it, I smell it,â challenged Snowy. She took a deep breath through her nose. âAnd you stink of it. Dirty blood, blood that wasnât ready to be shed. Have you ever killed anybody, Mr Detective?â
Sacha fought the urge to roll his eyes. âHave you been talking to a girl in a princess dress?â
âYou mean Princess Ladybird?â
âNever mind,â he said quickly, as if simply mentioning that ridiculous name might conjure up her horrible wailing. âIâm looking for someone. Two someones actually.â
He considered taking out his phone but, remembering how Angry Girl had reacted to the photo, decided to try a different approach.Â
âI was told I might find them here. One is named Renee Deeds and the other is Ana Ferro-Silver, eighteen and fifteen years old. Anything you can tell me about either of them would be a huge help. Iâm sort of hoping one will lead me to the other.â He forced a smile.Â
Kid in the pajamas frowned. âThereâs no one with names like that here. You woke us up over something as dumb as that?â
âI donât think itâs dumb to want to find two girls who might be in a lot of trouble,â he said tersely. âAnd why were you asleep anyway? Itâs three in the afternoon.â
âGrowing makes us tired,â Pajamas shot back. They rolled their shoulders. âAnd sore.â
âAnd hungry!â added a third child. âDid you bring us any food?â
âWhy would I have any food?â
âI heard the gargoyles say you gave Singing Finch a candy bar.â
âIt was a protein bar,â he said before he could think to deny it. âWhat kind of name is âSinging Finchâ anyway?â
âIt wouldâve been Evening Finch, but she tattled so now sheâs Singing Finch,â they explained patiently. âShe tattled on us and then she tattled on you to the gargoyles and the kestrels. She canât help it though. Sheâs a songbird, itâs what they do.â
âSo you donât have any candy?â the other cut in. Sacha put out his empty hands so she could verify and she bit him.
Pajamas laughed as he pulled away with a curse and a cry. âYou are dumb. There arenât any girls in trouble here. Youâre the only one in trouble, but thatâs because youâre an outsider and a cop, so you probably deserve it.â
Sacha felt a muscle in his jaw tense. He was beginning to think this had all been a huge waste of time. These kids operated on their own kind of logic, their own language, one which was foreign to him.Â
âPlease,â he said. âPlease. I know a lot of you are without families, but these girls still have people who care for them, who are looking for them. I have to bring them home.â
The children looked at him, and then a few of them looked at each other, huddling together in hushed conference. The one called Snowy, who was sitting on top of the bar, glared at him, tilting her head as if she were trying to read something written on the side of his head in very small print. He caught himself raising a hand to touch his neck and let it drop self-consciously back to his side.
âIf you keep going like this, you might die,â she told him innocently. âDid you know that?â
The presence of the gun against his stomach, empty though it was, made his skin tingle. âI considered the possibility,â he said, and it was the honest truth.Â
âWhen you die, will you go to paradise?â
âYouâre too young to be thinking this much about blood and death.â
âIâve seen death.â Her voice was without intonation, no defensiveness or accusation anywhere in her tone. She couldnât have been any older than ten. âMy mom died in front of me. She had a fever, but I stayed cold. Thatâs why they call me Snowy.â She paused, shrugged one shoulder. âAlso because I can eat a whole mouse in one bite, like a snowy owl.â
âOh,â Sacha said lamely. âIâm- Iâm so sorry.â
She gave another shrug. âSâokay, Iâm with the brood now and they take care of me just as good as mom would. Iâm just saying, you donât really seem like a guy whoâs ready to die for anyone.â
Amongst all the riddles and nonsense, this at least was something he could understand.Â
âI promise you, I am.â
Pajamas tugged at his sleeve. âHey, hey Detective, have you ever been to Fun Town?â
He blinked, reeling from the non sequitur. âExcuse me?â
They pointed at the garish logo on their shirt. ââFun Town: Itâs the funnest place on earth!â Maybe your friends are there.â
âYouâre not going to tell me I should just turn back now? That Iâm dumb and the kids Iâm looking for are gone forever?â he couldnât help but snark.
âDonât listen to Finch, sheâs a liar. Nobodyâs gone. Different, but not gone.â
Fun Town was an amusement park franchise with a handful of locations all over North America. Had been, that is. Theyâd had to shut down all their locations more than ten years ago, due in part to the outbreak at the time as well as some unsettling information about the eccentric late founder that came out after his death. Something about swaying elections and pouring company funds into an illicit genetic engineering project. Another day, another megalomaniac billionaire exposĂŠ. It had been big news at the time but now it was just another piece of pop culture trivia.
The Fun Town West fairgrounds were now little more than a fancy animatronics graveyard. The rides-- what of them hadnât been torn down and picked clean by opportunistic scavengers-- were sparkling rusted monuments. Any sense of childhood wonder that remained had long since been siphoned off and sold. The kids didnât seem to mind though, for how theyâd congregated around the place. Maybe Pajamas had a point. It was a big, bright landmark, impossible to miss, and as good a place to search as any.
Three]
The Detective left Snowy and Pajamas and the other strange flock of The Love Nest behind, feeling a grim sense of determination The puckered bite mark on his hand throbbed; the little creep had managed to break skin!Â
As he navigated his way to the outskirts of the district, Sacha mulled over the interactions heâd had so far. Reluctantly he pulled out his phone to take some notes, ignoring the voicemail notifications cluttering the screen.
The kids call themselves âbroodâ-- some sort of gang name? The younger ones and/or newcomers to their group seem to be called fledglings. Everyone has a nickname; real names and pictures of faces have some sort of negative significance. And what of the âsongbirdsâ, âkestrelsâ, etc? Songbirds: spread information. Kestrels: Unknown.
He huffed. None of this was bringing him anywhere closer to the truth about the missing girls. None of it was helping him find Ana.
By the time he power-walked to the long neglected fairgrounds, the hazy sky was becoming downright dour. The clouds had turned the color of smoke. Combine that with the stench of burnt plastic wafting from some of the attractions, it made for an unpleasant effect. He felt that a storm was brewing, and hoped that whatever came heâd be able to find shelter before the sky opened up around him.
Heâd been here only twice while it was still in operation; once just him and his parents and once with Maria. By the second visit heâd already lost his sense of wonderment when it came to a day at the fair. The weather was hot and the crowds were annoying and all the games were rigged. Yet there was still a part of him that felt deeply sad to see what Fun Town had become. This was the sort of place that shouldâve been beautiful forever, even as the children grew up and out of their love for it.
As he wove through the rows of darkened kiosks, the fairgrounds suddenly erupted into light. Sacha startled and shielded his eyes. The tired bulbs cracked and fizzled and when he looked up again the desiccated corpse of Fun Town had been revived in a great pulse of electricity. Against the backdrop of perpetual gloom the friendly colors were all the more headache-inducing, and somewhere a tinny recording of calliope music began to play. It all made Sachaâs skin crawl.
Against his every instinct, he let the music lead him to a shack next to the arcade with a mounted loudspeaker, the door marked with a firm âemployees onlyâ. To his surprise, the door was unlocked. Inside, another brood girl in coveralls was fiddling with a fuse box and leaning her hip against a desk with an old CCTV. The security system was so antiquated that it didnât look like it should turn on at all, yet there upon the pixelated screen Sacha could still make out the shape of himself entering the park on a loop.Â
The girl turned around, flipping a frizzy head of hair over her shoulder. Although, it turned out she wasnât so much a girl as a young woman, pushing against the line between teenage and adulthood. His gut reaction was relief. This might be the closest thing to a rational adult he would find around here. Hopefully sheâd be of more help than the others.
Come to think of it, he realized, heâd never considered what happened to the Orphanâs Hollow kids once they grew up. Surely there must be some adults here, somewhere. But then, everyone whoâd met him so far had treated him as a foreign invader. Were all adults so unwelcome, as heâd assumed, or was there something about him in particular?Â
The most rational assumption was that the homeless kids simply became homeless adults. No need for any additional fanfare. They would graduate from the Hollows and go on to squat in other parts of the city. There was certainly no shortage of slums these days, he thought glumly.
Did any ex-runaways ever try to go home, those that still had them? Did that Renee ever think about home?Â
âWhat ho, outsider!â the teen greeted. Sacha felt himself relax despite himself, so glad to be met with at least one friendly face.
ââWhat hoâ?â he parroted lamely.
âItâs theatre-speak for âwassupâ. As in, what the hell are you doing in brood territory?â
She moved quickly. He didnât notice the knife until it was tucked under his chin, pointed at his throat.Â
Sachaâs back hit the wall and he put up his hands in surrender. âHold on, Iâm not looking for a fight.â
âOh yeah?â she giggled. She wrenched up the front of his shirt. âWhatâs this then? A prop? If I shoot it, will a little flag come out that says âbangâ?â
She un-holstered the pistol and pointed it at his forehead.
âThatâs not a toy,â he said slowly. âJust a little insurance. Like your knife there, Iâm sure. I donât think either of us wants anybody to get hurt.â
âThis?â She tossed it in the air and caught it. âNah, this is part of the act. Tonight, Iâm a knife thrower. Iâve never been a knife thrower before. I hope it goes well.â
Sacha tried to speak, but the girl pressed the cold flat of the blade to his lips.
âThe older girls put on shows for the fledglings. Sometimes here in Fun Town, sometimes over in the Nest, or up on the rooftops when the weather is nice. Iâd invite you, but I donât think youâd be welcome.â She adjusted her grip again so that the knife was touching the tip of his nose. âAll day thereâve been whispers about some kind of detective guy putting his nose in our business.â
âI donât care about you brood kids do here.â
âLiar.â
âI swear, I donât. Iâm just trying to find someone. Iâm not even a real detective anymore,â he confessed. âI wouldnât tell anyone what youâre doing here. Even if I did, no one would believe me. Iâm nobody.â
The knife thrower gave a big, hearty laugh, and Sachaâs throat tightened with fear. He didnât consider himself a violent person, but over his career heâd come to blows with enough unruly targets and bitter clients alike that he knew when someone was posturing, and when someone was really out for blood. Normally there was a clear indicator of one kind or another; a tightening of the jaw, a certain nervous tick, a look in their eyes.Â
But this girl he couldnât get a read on at all. He hoped that meant she was still on the fence about the subject.
Struggling to keep his voice level he said, âYou donât have to do this. Something like this will haunt you your whole life, you know, and youâve got so much life left. Youâre still just a kid--â
She reared her hand back and struck at his head with the butt of the pistol. Sacha dodged. It slammed into the fuse box sheâd been working on instead and the lights went out. Taking advantage of the darkness, he shoved past her and in a stroke of blind fortune found the door. There was a sound then, like the rush of wind in his ears. Then a sharp flash of pain as a flying knife split the cartilage of one ear.
He stumbled and hit the pavement. When Sacha turned around, hand clutched to his head, he saw the young womanâs silhouette bracketed by two iridescent black wings. Again that sound, ferocious wingbeats stirring the air. All he saw were two but it sounded like hundreds, a massive flock taking off in perfect synchronicity.Â
âItâs really frustrating when people donât take me seriously,â said the winged creature as she approached him. Maybe it was an effect of the many colored lights, but her skin appeared to have a glossy sheen to it, like an oil painting in motion. âBut you look like youâre starting to get it now.â
âWhat the hell are you?â Sacha asked with a mix of horror and feverish reverence.
âWhat do you think I am?â
The thought came to him unbidden. It was an insane thought, one he didnât even truly believe in, yet this was an insane situation. âThe angel of death.â
That gave her pause. âYouâre not right, but youâre not really wrong either I guess. Truth be told, Iâm heaven on earth. Maybe Iâll cut you some slack if you worship meâ
A wing brushed over his skin, however faintly, and it felt warm and real as the blood cooling on his skin. Not ethereal or dreamlike as he mightâve expected but so real, and all the more hideous for it. He shuddered and said nothing.
The false angel, this predatory animal, took a step back. She spun the pistol around one long finger until it slipped and fell to the ground. She looked at it for a moment, as if surprised.
âHuh. It was lighter than I expected,â she said. Then she kicked it aside. âYou win this one I guess. Iâll let you go.â
He stared at her, mouth agape, sure it was some trick.
âWhat? You donât believe me. I put it in fateâs hand, and for some reason it looks like fate wants to keep you alive a little longer. Itâs not how I saw this going, but I can roll with some improv.â She put up her hands. âDonât bother groveling. I wonât kill you even if you beg. I know guys like you love punishment. Thatâs why youâre here, isnât it?â
âHere⌠in Fun Town? Or, are you asking why Iâm alive?â
She laughed. She so loved laughing. âMorbid! Youâre morbid, man. I mean, why are you here among the brood? At⌠what do the outsiders call it? The Orphan Hole?â she snickered. âYou kind of stick out like a sore thumb.â
âIâm trying to find someone,â Sacha repeated quietly. Heâd said the line so many times he felt it was starting to lose its meaning. âAnd to make up for something I did.â
âWell you shouldâve said so in the first place! If youâre looking to atone you need to meet with the broodmother. If you hurry, you might still be able to catch her. Tonightâs going to be kind of a crazy night once it kicks off, but if you plead your case Iâm sure sheâll hear you out.Â
âI have to keep setting up here. You go on ahead.â She pointed out in the direction heâd come from. âItâs a straight shot to Paradiso. You can tell her the angel of death sent you.â
She spared him one last smirk and then shot up into the air like an arrow loosed from a taut bowstring.
Or a bullet from a gun, even. Sacha considered the discarded pistol for a moment. It seemed so useless now, just a hunk of metal and plastic, just a prop. He walked away without it, pain pulsing dully from his ear. His journey was nearly over.
Time dragged on as he walked, but not enough for him to find the space to contend with what heâd seen. That girl, that creature. She was no angel, that much he was certain of. Angels didnât attack strangers with a knife, he didnât think.Â
What he wasnât certain of was⌠just about everything else. Was he meant to understand that all these girls, these brood, were some kind of bird-beasts taking human shape? Was everyone heâd met an imposter masquerading in the form of a child? Or did they start out as ordinary children and then transform somehow?
He half hated himself for even entertaining such wild ideas, but he had little other choice. âWhen you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truthâ wasnât that so? In any case, speculation did him little good at this point. He could only hope that this paradise and âbroodmotherâ the girl had spoken of could give him some answers.
Four]
Just when Sacha was beginning to wonder if the knife throwing angel imposter was fully fucking with him, he found his destination: The Paradiso Hotel, although the damaged neon sign now read only PRDIO.Â
The building was tall and narrow, so wedged between its neighbors that it looked like any moment it might be crushed. The brickwork was crumbling as it was. Creeping plant life climbed the sides and snuck in through broken windows. The ominous, weathered shape of gargoyles watched from above, jutting strangely out of high corners. This place must have been in dire straits long before it had been taken over by the brood. At the same time, looking at it Sacha got the impression that it had been something glorious in its heyday.Â
There was something almost inviting about the faint glow that came from the topmost windows, filtering pink light through heavy red curtains, and yet Sacha was terrified. His hands trembled on the railing as he climbed the winding stairway.Â
The higher he went, the more his surroundings began to change. The carpet beneath his feet grew soft, damp, dipping slightly with his weight, and when he looked down he found it thick with patchy moss. Mushrooms sprouted from the junction where the floor met the wall. Sacha tore his foot from a tangle of roots heâd caught himself in and wondered, when was the last time heâd seen so much wild living plantlife in person?Â
Finally he reached the top of the tower and opened the door not onto identical hallways and bland hotel decor, but onto a sprawling private library.
The detective could hardly see the walls for the shelves, lined top to bottom with books upon books upon books. There was a desk against the far wall piled high with precarious stacks of paper. They overflowed and spilled onto the loamy floor, whispering under his every step.
Beyond a towering skylight, storm clouds billowed, but that wasnât of any concern to the flock of brood congregated in their wake. The scene looked like something rendered from stained glass, at least a dozen girls with wings of all colors stretched out and fluttering idly behind them as they sat around some sort of shrub or young sapling that was, quite impossibly, growing out of the floor. Its tender boughs bore tiny fruit, several perfectly round red orbs plump and shiny with juice.
The room smelled like a greenhouse, like heat and green growth, flowers and fruit. Intrigue drew Sacha nearer and he detected an undercurrent of something metallic as well. He rounded the desk and his stomach plummeted. The tree was not growing out of the floor. It was growing out of a human corpse nested in a bed of soil.
The Detective choked on a gasp and the brood children looked up. Their hands and knees were dark from their work. A flash of gore passed before Sachaâs eyes and he flinched, expecting to be struck down where he stood. When no killing blow came, morbid desire took hold of him and he took a second look. The tree was still there, and the body, but the body was not as heâd thought. It looked dry, mummified, more root than rot. Still staring, one of the brood girls plucked a berry and crushed it between her teeth. The smell intensified, iron and something sweet, heady as any wine.
One of the girl-beasts stood, and she seemed older than the rest somehow, not just in body but in her eyes, gray as the growing storm and so clear that Sacha feared if he looked too long he would fall through them. Her face was smooth and free of wrinkles or worry, but the long hair that fell about her shoulders was white as bone. She wore something like a shawl that hung lazily off her shoulders and down past her knees. Unlike the others, she had no wings.
âSo youâre the one all my girls have been making such a fuss about,â she said, and her voice was a choir, her words an indictment.
Sacha felt a strange spike of anger at this creature that looked like a woman and talked like a mystic and was neither. âAnd youâre the broodmother, whatever that means! Your girls make you out to some kind of god. But youâre not a god, and youâre not their mother. I donât know what you are and I donât care. I just want to know why youâre doing this.â
âWhat am I doing?â
âYouâre- youâre taking them!â he stammered furiously. The pieces were coming together, albeit in a hectic jumble. âAll the missing girls! You abduct them, or call them to you, or something! It changes them!â He flung his hand out towards the body. âYouâre a killer! You're some kind of crazy death cultist and you turn these kids into killers!â
The broodmother quirked her head to the side, not quite smiling. âYou talk with a lot of confidence for a man with only half the story.â
âThen explain it to me,â he demanded. âMake it make sense. Because Iâve been running around this madhouse all day and so far, nothing does.â
She hummed to herself, considering. âIf youâre so eager for a tale, letâs start with yours.â
One of the other little brood leapt up and wrapped her arms around her waist. âIs it time for a story, Nightingale?â
âYes, I think so. Do you know which book to get?â
âD for Detective!â she cheered.
âVery good.âÂ
The girl scampered off and returned with a big book bound in red. Nightingale took it and ran her thumb over the pages, flipping it open with a calm certainty that boiled Sachaâs blood.
âLetâs see⌠Detective Sacha Ferro. You were born in this very city, had a fairly normal childhood until,â She traced the tip of her finger along the page and Sacha noticed for the first time how it curled, a ghastly hook-like talon. âOh, thatâs right. There was an accident. Your parents⌠Tragic. Just terrible.â
Astonishingly, she sounded as though she meant it.
âYou were in high school at the time. But your sister, Maria, she was still just a kid. You always struggled to relate to her as a brother, with her being so much younger than you, but after that day you had to become like a parent too. You really stepped up, it looks like. That didnât change the fact that you were still a kid yourself. You made mistakes, and the two of you grew apart.â
Shame curdled in Sachaâs gut. He couldnât speak, couldnât move. The most he was capable of was curling his hands into white-knuckled fists at his sides.
âGet out of my head.â
âIâm not in it. Frankly, Iâm not that interested in your editorializing. This is the truth. Now, where was I?
âYouâd always dreamed of being a police detective, like the ones on TV,â she continued. âBut became disillusioned with the idea once you grew older. So you became a private eye, but that too got old. You were tired of acquiring blackmail material for shady characters and helping angry wives catch their cheating husbands and so on. Meanwhile little Maria had grown up and moved on and the neighborhood youâd lived in all your life was going more and more downhill by the year. You wanted out.
âThen you got a call from a Mrs Gloria Deeds.â Her eyes widened dramatically. âShe wanted you to track down her poor missing daughter. The Deedses were wealthy, desperate, and just perfect. You requested an advance payment, a big one, big enough for a down payment on a new life and the gas to get you there. They didnât even blink as they pulled out the checkbook. It was all so easy.
âYou took the Deedses money and you ran away. Forget the kid, chances were sheâd turn up on her own in a week or two after getting whatever rebellious phase out of her system. Thatâs not what happened though, is it? More and more girls started disappearing. Renee wasnât the first though, or was she? Could she have been the catalyst for all this? Youâd never know for certain. The wondering ate you up inside, but not enough to make you turn back.
âYou got yourself a new apartment and a regular nine-to-five job. You quit smoking. You adopted a dog. You started letting people in. You even called up Maria begging to be a part of her life again and shockingly, she agreed! You started spending weekends with her and her wife Kara and their sweet little girl Ana. Your motherâs name, wasnât it? Well, anyway.
âEverything was all going so terribly well until just a few days ago. Nearly five years on the dot since you took the Deeds case and Maria calls you in tears, tells you that Ana has gone missing. You drop the phone, your blood running cold. Sheâs fifteen. Just a year or two and sheâd be out of the target demographic. Neither you or your sister has set foot in this city in years. What are the odds she got taken? But you canât let it go until you know for sure.
âFeeling frantic, you pull up the stuff from the Deeds case for the first time in what feels like an eternity. You do some digging. Renee Deeds was never found, nor were any of the others who vanished after her. The cops are still as apathetic and incompetent as you left them. Theyâre blaming it all on an epidemic of gang activity stemming from somewhere the locals have started calling âOrphanâs Hollowâ. It didnât used to be called that though, did it? Do you remember? How gutted you were when you found out? No way you could tell Maria where you were going. Back home, back to where it all started.â
âStop.â Sacha found his voice at last, though to what end?
Nightingale looked up at him, feigning shock. âBut donât you want to know how it ends? Whatever does happen to the guilt-ridden detective trying to right a wrong? Hoping against hope that if he can fulfill the promise he broke that all of this will be set to rights, and little Ana will return home with him safe and sound.â
âPlease, please, stop.â He covered his ears and felt the cut throb against his fingers.
âYouâre not really in any position to be making demands, Detective. You came to me. You followed my song. It doesnât usually work on grown-ups, you know, but you were always sort of a special case I think. Iâm glad I kept an eye on you. This has turned out more interesting than I thought.âÂ
She crossed the room to stand before him, cupping his hands with her own. âYou never really stopped being that kid, did you Sacha? You run and run and just keep him right there, locked away in your chest. Look at me Sacha. Look at me. You need to be a grown-up now. I donât have her, Sacha. I donât have Ana.â
Slowly Sachaâs hands dropped to his sides, his eyes wide and wet. âWhat?â
âThatâs right,â the broodmother said cheerily. âAna isnât here. In fact, sheâs at home with her moms right now. Mariaâs been trying to call you for days now. You were too ashamed to pick up, couldnât tell her how this was all your fault. Itâs not actually, by the way. You were a self-serving bastard, but not enough to bring down that kind of karmic wrath.
âAlthough Iâdâve been happy to have her, Ana already has two loving mothers, and an uncle that⌠has his moments.â She patted him on the shoulder. âThe children who follow my song arenât like that. They come willingly, and they change because change is what they need. I wonât pretend itâs not a messy process. Sometimes blood needs to be spilled to create a paradise. But âbe not afraidâ, Detective. I would never let my little angels get hurt.â
âI still donât understand,â he all but wept. âWhat about Renee Deeds?â
âYouâre never going to let that go, are you?â Nightingale groaned. ââWhat are you? What are you? Whereâs the girl? Pow! Blam! Iâm a big scary action hero and Iâm here to save you or kill you trying!ââÂ
She shook her head. âYouâre not the hero of this story, Detective. The girl you knew as Renee doesnât exist anymore, but sheâs alive, not because of your intervention, or lack thereof. Not even in spite of it. What am I? What is she? And what are we when weâre together? A thing that lives without your permission. You need to understand for it to be true.â
She looked at him then with all the sympathy of a mother comforting a crying child. She handed off the storybook to one of her young attendants, and as she turned around she swept aside the cover of her shawl to reveal her bare back. Her skin was twisted with badly healed scars, the flesh raised in the shape of two jagged cuts curving around the shape of her scapula.
âHereâs another story for you. Once upon a time,â she said. âA ship of men was cast from its course and lost at sea. Just when it seemed all hope was lost, they found themselves on the shores of a mysterious island full of the tallest, greenest trees theyâd ever seen. The people there had wings like a bird, and they were so beautiful and kind that the men decided they must be angels, and this was paradise.
âThe angels let them stay there a while and lick their wounds, but warned them that they couldn't remain forever. At first they accepted this, but as the time to leave for home grew nearer they became obsessed with the wonders of the island and couldnât bear to go without taking a piece with them.Â
âSo enamoured by the beauty of the angels, yet fearing their heavenly wrath, they lured away the smallest one and imprisoned her in the lower decks of the ship. When she realized what had happened, she tried to escape, so they broke her wings until just moving them caused her horrible pain. She did get free in the end, but only once the ship returned to port and by then she was far, far from home and knew not how to find her way back.Â
âShe knew she wasnât safe among the wingless people, so she hid herself away until nightfall, singing her song by the light of the moon in hopes that one day someone would return her call. When someone finally did, it wasnât at all who she expected. It was a young human girl, a daughter of man, who recognized her song of pain and loneliness because these were things she knew well herself. When the angel and the girl finally found each other, the angel bid her to cut her useless wings and drink her blood, and together they escaped on new wings.â
As she spoke, the storm outside grew stronger until the wind rattled the very walls, knocking books loose from their shelves. The brood, with their many colored wings and many sweet voices, began to sing in wordless harmony, a hymn from such unfathomable depths and dizzying heights that Sachaâs legs nearly gave out beneath him.Â
âDonât be sad, my mourning dove. This is a happy story. The Nightingale fell in love with the Swiftlet, the song and the storm, and they carried each other to a place where they could make a new paradise, a garden of their own.â
That was when the ceiling began to cave in. Sacha fell to his knees and covered his head with his hands, blinded by what he was sure was a bolt of lightning. When he looks back on it later, he wonât be so sure.
Again came that sound, the torrent of wind and a hundred wings beating within it. Sacha forced himself to raise his head, squinting against the light, and there he saw dancing in the open air above the wreckage-- for dancing was the only way he could think to describe it-- a girl he once knew. Though they were less than strangers, especially now, he recognized her kind dark eyes, her secretive smile.Â
Her hair was loose, a halo of electrified black curls, and her wings a dusky brown with the sharp, precise plumage of a swift. Her legs still didnât move so freely as the rest of her, but she wasnât bothered. She didnât need them.
Nightingale ran and leapt and took her in her arms with a loverâs embrace. Off a ways behind them, their brood took flight as well, swooping and shrieking their delight as if they were a single entity, metamorphosing into something new, something so nearly divine.
Sacha did weep then. His vision blurred with the shape of his grief, then his longing, a child and a man and a hairâs width away from paradise. Eventually the storm subsided, but he didnât see the angel and her love again after that. He thought perhaps that was for the better.
The sky cleared. The sun came out. Elsewhere, young girls planted gardens and played games and put on shows. The world went on, however changed.
This is where past and present collide. In the aftermath of a mystery, a man named Sacha Ferro picks up a book from in amidst the rubble and holds it up to the light. He flips to D for Detective and begins to read, anxious to find out what happens next.
Epilogue]
âEveryone settle down. Places! Starling, for the last time, âLittle Red Riding Hoodâ doesnât call for a knife thrower.â
âAnd why not?â She wiggles the blade in her direction. âThis showâs so boring. Everyone already knows how it goes. Let me spice it up a bit.â
Finch rolls her eyes. âWhatever. Just, donât jump ahead of your cue this time. And stop making up extra lines. You almost blew it last time.â
Starling sticks her tongue out but she has a skip in her step when she returns backstage. On the other side of the curtain, the audience is starting to take their seats. There arenât enough chairs-- and most of the âchairsâ are actually old boxes and things to begin with-- so some of them have to stand. An older brood allows Pajamas to climb up onto her shoulders, reminding her to be mindful of her wings, which are still fairly fresh and tender where they join with her back.
âGreetings, Princess,â says the fortune teller Resplendent, dressed in her good theatre clothes, as she sits down beside her. âWhoâs this?â
Princess Ladybird holds up the dented ornament head. âThis is Jessika. The doctors managed to save her but she needs an emergency body transplant, stat! Iâm going to find her a new one after the show.â
She nods. âGreetings, Lady Jessika. I hope you have a speedy recovery.â
Ladybird holds the doll head up to her ear and hums as if in response to something.
âCan I hear too?â
She obliges, and Resplendent listens. Thereâs a quiet buzzing from inside the hollow tin skull and it echoes hauntingly in the emptiness.
She whispers, âThereâs a bug inside of Jessikaâs brain keeping her alive. Thatâs why she can still talk without a body. If Jessika dies, the bug will get out. Ick!â
The other girl chuckles. âYour name is a kind of bug, you know.â
âNo! Itâs a bird! Lady-bird!â
She bites back another laugh and points towards the stage. âShh, the showâs starting.â
Sure enough, the songbird choir starts up, bidding the chattering spectators to quiet down and listen up. A girl comes out on stage wearing a corner of the curtain as a makeshift hood. She says,
âIt is dark inside a wolfâs belly.â
#dark fantasy#horror#angels#short fiction#novella#dystopia#long fic#mystery#My writing#writeblr#original fiction
25 notes
¡
View notes
Text
Number Cannot Be Reached
Part Five of the Calling Series
Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader
Warnings: NSFW, 18+, Naughty, Naughty Smut!
You stood in front of the door, biting your lower lip and staring at the message on your phone. You'd been up for hours debating whether or not this could wait until morning. Waking up Steve Rogers in the middle of the was not something you wanted to do. Still, every instinct in your being screamed to do something.
Taking a deep breath, you rapped on the door a couple times and stood back to wait. It only took a moment for Cap to open the door wearing old sweatpants and a tank. He looked half asleep until he got a look at you. His eyes perked up and he stood a little straighter. Â
"Y/N," his voice sounded rough with sleep. "Are you okay?"
"I'm really sorry to bother you, but I just need to..." you stalled, not sure how to explain the problem without opening a can of worms. Â
âWait,â he stepped aside. âPlease, come in. Sit down.â
Moving over to the sofa, you lowered yourself onto the edge of the seat. âIâm really sorry to wake you, Steve.â
âItâs alright.â He joined you on the sofa. âWhatâs wrong?â
âOkay,â You rubbed your forehead. âI know that I donât have clearance to know what Bucky is doing on some of his missions.â
âI donât really care what he tells you. I trust his judgement.â He shrugged.
âThanks for that.â You smiled, but it didnât reach your eyes. The frown returned quickly. âThing is, I donât know what heâs doing this time or where he is. I need to know if you do.â
âWhy?â Â
âWeâve worked out keeping in touch. Codes for texts. Call times.â You turned in your seat to face him. âThis morning he didnât answer. I send a message, but he never answered. Then he never called when he was supposed to call tonight.â
âY/N, Iâm sure that...â
You cut him off. âSteve, when I tried to call after he didnât call me, I got this message.â Â
Showing him the phone, he read âThis number cannot be reached. The number may have been disconnected or is no longer in service.â
âI know enough about Tonyâs infrastructure. That message would only show up if someone deleted his phone from Starkâs database, if the satellite is totally down, or if someone is ghosting his communications.â
Steve handed you back your phone, his face growing hard.
âIâm right, arenât I? Something is wrong.â You found yourself holding the phone close to your chest. âBucky would have told me if he was burning his number. He would have sent a message. Hell, we have a plan for that.â
âWhat?â Steve stood up to get his own phone from the kitchen counter. âWhat plan?â
âIf I need him and heâs not supposed to communicate, I have a burner phone that Iâm supposed to use to text him a bogus confirmation. If itâs medical, I send a prescription refill confirmation. If itâs something here in the tower, I send a spa confirmation. If itâs something else and I need him to call, I send a package delivery confirmation. He uses the same ones, but if heâs going off the grid, he sends me a cancellation of services confirmation. If we use C to confirm in the message, then we can call the burner phone. If we use a number to confirm, then thereâs no contact.â
âWow. You guys have it covered.â Steve dialed the two numbers he had for Bucky. Both kicked back the same message. âOkay, yeah. Somethingâs not right.â
âSteve. Iâm not supposed to know. Bucky wasnât supposed to set up our communication like he did.â You slumped back into the seat. âI know youâre going to go do everything you can, and I donât want to put you in a bad situation-â
His hand rubbed your shoulder. âIâm going to make sure youâre kept in the loop. In fact, Iâll go have a talk with Tony about your clearance.â
âThank you.â You got up and he held out his arms for a tight hug. Â
âTry to get some rest. Keep those phones close.â He ran his hand through his hair. âIâll let you know as soon as I have anything.â
As soon as you left, Steve threw on some clothes before leaving for the command room. The halls were empty and dark, only the buildingâs AI lighting his way. Upon entering the command room, default start up protocols began booting computers and turning on monitors. Â
âGood morning, Captain.â F.R.I.D.A.Y.âs voice filled the room. âHow may I be of assistance?â
âI need an update on Bucky and Clintâs mission.â
âAccording to their last communique, they tracked Mihov to Tasucu, Turkey anticipating he would lead them to the target within 24 hours.â
âCan you reach Barton?â Steve leaned on the smart table. Â
âAgent Bartonâs telephone has been deactivated.â
âOther means?â
âNo, Captain. His computerâs satellite connection is offline. There are no other mobility devices assigned for this mission.â
âDammit.â
âF.R.I.D.A.Y., begin bio-locator protocol for Agency Barton and Seargent Barnes, authorization Rogers two-one-papa-six-juliet.â
âYes, Captain. Search in progress.â
He moved to the window, looking out at the night sky. Twenty-four hours. Theyâd dealt with longer periods off line. At least they had a solid time frame of their disappearance, thanks to the communications arrangement Bucky set up. Still, a lot of ground could be covered in that amount of time. Â
âWhat the hell has you up at this seriously un-godly hour?â Tony walked in. Â
âClint and Buck are missing.â Steve frowned. âSomehow their phones, everything are totally unresponsive to the network.â
âWhat?â Tony called up a virtual screen, flying through data and system architecture at a pace that made Steve dizzy. âSon of a bitch.â
Cap just gave him a âwhatâ look.
âThey werenât destroyed. I have a damage report protocol on all our toys. Theyâre not just powered off. I can power them up from here. Theyâve just been, wiped. Whoever did this knew what would trigger an alert and how to make them unreachable.â Tony turned fully to Steve. âHow did you know?â
Steve lowered himself in a chair. âY/N.â
He explained the system you and Bucky worked out. Tony chuckled. âWell, the Doc has it down.â
âYeah,â Steve agreed. âWe need to talk about her security clearance.â
âHey,â Tony held up his hands. âIâm the last one to bitch. Do you have any idea how much Pepper knows? That woman could run the world if she wanted to. Iâll back you. Whatever you want to let her in on.â
âWeâre going to need to send in an extraction team as soon as we have a location.â Steve chewed his lip.
Tony sighed. âYou take care of it. Take whomever you need. Iâll give Rhody a call and we can take care of the Senators.â He tossed a sarcastic grin. âIâll take them to lunch and watch them have a coronary when I act like Iâm going to slide them the bill.â
âThanks, Tony.â Â
âNo problem, Cap.â He typed in a few more commands on the interface. âThis will kick of the detailed analysis of their mission so far. Locations, contacts, all of it. If you run into anything F.R.I.D.A.Y. canât provide, have her call me.â
âI will.â
âYou going to tell the Doc whatâs going on, or wait until you have something?â
âI think sheâd rather deal with the facts than be left wondering.â Steve sighed. âIâll call her.â
o o o o o Â
You curled around Buckyâs pillow, but sleep would not come. There could be no doubt that Bucky was counted among the most dangerous people in the world, one of the greatest survivors ever. If something bad happened, every logical argument could be made that if anyone would, survive, Bucky would. You should not be so worried.
Flopping over on your back you stared at the ceiling. Waiting sucked. Doing nothing sucked worse. You werenât a soldier, or a strategist, or even a technician. Being a doctor proved to be no help in this situation. Waiting sucked balls.
Giving up on sleep altogether, you got up. Pulling on your yoga pants and one of Buckyâs sweatshirts, you moved to the sofa and flipped on the television. It turned on to one of the movie channels. You smiled at the scene.
Inigo Montoya fought Wesley, as the Dread Pirate Roberts, on top of the Cliffs of Insanity. Â
Youâd shown Bucky this movie a few weeks ago. He laughed at the Pit of Despair and thought Wesley should have just killed Humperdinck. Even explaining it was essentially a children's story, didnât make a difference. The Prince should have died.
Itâd been a great night, relaxed, and curled up on the sofa. Heâd always been fine with casual touches in public, a hand on your back, touches on your shoulders, even a chaste kiss. But when you were alone Bucky had two speeds, full on fuck me mode or endless cuddles, No in between. You really wanted to be wrapped in his embrace. Â
Lost deep in thought you physically jumped when the phone rang. You answered immediately. âSteve.â
âHey, Y/N. You were right. The mission went sideways. Iâm pulling the team together. If you want to hear whatâs going on get up to the command briefing room. Do you know where?â
âEighty-sixth floor. Thatâs all I know, I donât have clearance to be up there.â
âYou do now.â Steve assured you. âHow long will you be? I can meet you at the elevators.â
âIâm leaving the apartment now.â
As you stepped off the elevator on the high security floor, Steve wrapped his arms around you again, whispering in your ear. âDonât worry. Iâll bring him home, no matter what.â
âThanks.â You squeezed him back. Â
âCome on.â
You walked into the room where Sam, Natasha, Wanda and Vision waited. They all looked at you with a bit of shock, all except Sam. He got up and met you half way across the room, giving you a brief hug. âHey Doc, how you holding up?â
âIâm... okay.â You sat down in the seat Steve held out for you. Â
âCaptain Rogers,â Vision spoke up. âI was not aware that Dr. Y/L/N held a sufficient security clearance for this briefing.â
âVision.â Wanda shook her head with a roll of her eyes. âSorry, Y/N.â
âShe does now.â Steve answered Vision. âIn fact, her clearance has been increased beyond this briefing.â
âVery well.â Vision nodded a greeting your way. Â
Over the next hour you learned everything about the mission, who Bucky and Clint were chancing down and why. It turned your stomach to think they were searching for someone who was selling reverse engineered space weapons to the highest bidder. Apparently, things went wrong somewhere on the coast of Turkey approximately nineteen hours ago. Â
âCaptain Rogers.â F.R.I.D.A.Y.âs voice interrupted. âI have narrowed down the location of Agent Barton and Sergeant Barnes.â
âReport.â
The AI projected satellite footage of a small town, on the outskirts of which were a complex of modern warehouse and ancient stone buildings. It was approximately one hundred miles inland from where they were last reported. Â
The team listened to a detailed breakdown of the area and all potential threats. They asked questions, formulated a search and extraction plan. You barely heard any of it. Your eyes were focused on the image. Bucky was there somewhere.
âSuit up.â Steve stood. âWe leave in fifteen.â
He stopped at your seat, âY/N, do you want to come with us? You can stay at the safe house.â
âOkay.â You stood up, taking a deep breath. âI may not be a trauma doctor, but I could be of use in a pinch.â
âItâs not going to come to that.â Steve squeezed your shoulder. Â
o o o o o Â
You paced around the room. The clean minimalist design gave you nothing to focus on. Out in the middle of nowhere, Starkâs safe house looked like any other rich industrial mansion, but the interior held secret garages, a quinjet bay, and subterranean levels full of labs, storage and medical bays. Â
A tone alerted you to the landing of the quinjet. You ran down to the bay entrance, waiting for the jet to land and the outer doors to close. As the rear ramp to the quinjet lowered, you ran out. Â
Natasha and Wanda pushed Clint out on a stretcher. He was unconscious, filthy and had several fresh trauma dressings applied. Steve and Bucky came down next. Your eyes looked on him. A trauma dressing was wrapped around his right arm. Â
His blue eyes went from confusion to an unreadable intensity. He strode forward taking your face in his hands and kissing you hard. Â
âDoc!â Natasha yelled. âBarton needs help!â
You pulled away from Bucky, eyes locked on his. âMed Room! Iâm coming!â You turned and followed them at a run. Â
Natasha helped you cut away the clothes from his wounds. He had a gunshot wound to the left shoulder and wound to the back of his head. Evidence of restraint and abuse littered his body. Â
âThe shoulder is a through and through.â Natasha reported. Â
âOkay, letâs focus on the head wound.â You checked his pupils, they were even. Good. Beginning to pull out the mobile scanners, you directed Nat to help you get set up. Soon you confirmed he was lucky. No sub cranial swelling. No skull fractures. Â
You had Nat start him on an IV while you began suturing up his head wound. All you could do was stabilize his shoulder and temporarily close up the wound. Â
âY/N?â Steve came in. Â
âHeâs going to be fine. Lost a lot of blood. He should come around now that weâre getting fluids in him. No lasting head trauma that I can assess with what I have. Iâve immobilized the shoulder, heâs going to need an orthopedic in there sooner than later. He will be okay to fly as soon as we get his pressure back up.â You reported.
âGood.â Steve stepped a little closer. âAs soon as youâre done your other patient wonât let anyone else touch him.â
You looked up into Steveâs eyes. Something between worry and amusement looked back at you. âHe okay?â
âHe thanked me for bringing you, and told me he was going to beat my ass for doing it.â Steve half smiled. âHeâs going to need his arm cleaned and taped up until it heals. He wouldnât let me do it.â
âOkay, Iâll be right there.â You pulled off your latex gloves. Â
You found Bucky in a room down the hall. It was just like any other basic examine room with an exam table, a wall cabinets, a counter with a sink and more storage. There were no windows, being underground. You locked the door when you came in.
As soon as the lock clicked over, he was on you. Â
Buckyâs hands buried in your hair. His mouth crashed into yours, desperately drinking down your kiss. Tongues and teeth, you met his need with your own. He smelled of dirt, sweat and gunpowder. Still, you wanted to drink him down.
His powerful body pinned you to the door, thigh pressing between your legs and practically lifting you off your feet. You pulled at his shirt, desperate for even more contact. Bucky leaned back enough to pull the shirt over his head. Â
âYour arm.â Â
âLater.â Bucky growled as he tugged your clothes off. âNeed you.â
His mouth latched onto your neck. Your breasts pressed into his chest, skin hot. The sound of his breath, the feel of skin, the press of his body, it anchored that he was safe. He was here, in your arms, setting you on fire. Â
Bucky dropped to his knees, laying wet open mouth kisses across your belly as he undid and pushed down you pants. You toed off your shoes and he tossed your clothes away. The intense look in his eyes, as he ran his hands up your thighs, over your hips, your breath hitched.
He guided your right leg over his shoulder and growled as his mouth descended on your wet cunt. Buckyâs tongue delved between your folds, lapping up your honey. He sucked roughly at your clit, causing your back to arch and mewls of pleasure to pour from your mouth.
âOh shit, Bucky.â You panted. âNeed you. Yes.â
He suddenly stood, lifting you off your feet and planting your ass on the table. Bucky didnât even loose the rest of his clothes, he just released his cock. You reached down, stroking him hard. He moaned, pulling you by the hair to possess your mouth again. Hitching your leg over his hip, you rubbed the head of his cock against your wet cunt. He growled.
Grabbing your ass, Bucky pushed into you. Inch by inch, you savored every sensation. The stretch, the weight. Your hands gripped his hair, teeth nipped his lip. âFuck me, Buck. Hard.â
A raw feral sound erupted from his chest. His fingers dug into your ass, cock slamming into you with raw power. Yes. You just held on. Buckyâs groans and growled breaths filled your ears. âFuck. Yes. Mine.â Â
âYes!â Fear, worry, anger exploded into overwhelm need. Pleasure tinged with pain swirled through your core, flooding your body in heat. Legs shaking. Fingers pulling at his hair. Skin slapped on skin. Your orgasm hit you hard, fast, sending a flood over Buckyâs cock. He pound into deep as you clenched around him. Â
âOh, shit, yes, Doll.â He panted. Buck press into you hard, hold you against him as he came. âOh, fuck, yes!â
You clung to each other, not wanting to let go. Your breath slowed. Buckyâs lips trailed gentle kisses along your neck and shoulder. Tears youâd been holding back began to fall, only now they ran down your cheeks with relief. Â
Still holding you tight to his chest, Bucky whispered. âHow are you here?â
âSteve.â You sighed, rubbing your nose along his neck. âI went to him.â
âI need to thank him,â he breathed. âThen Iâm kicking his ass for bringing you into the field.â
The laugh bubbled up from your toes. Â
TAGS:
@the-omni-princess / @theneuropsychwriter / @buckybarneshairpullingkink / @lbouvet / @geeksareunique / @beautifullungs / @sammghgecko / @josie605 / @florenceivy / @jennmurawski13 / @minillamakeup-blog / @vanillabunn21 / @lexie-mo / @dsakita /Â @sweetkingdomstarlight-blog Â
If you would like to be added to my tags, removed, or have a story request, please message me!
613 notes
¡
View notes
Text
A Voice From Darkness - Ep1 - The Black Door
What follows below is a transcript of the first episode of A Voice From Darkness. To listen to the podcast - look for it on Apple Podcasts, Google, wherever you normally listen to podcasts, or here.
INTRO
Dark ambient drone.
RYDER
You find yourself alone in an abandoned manor. The furniture moves of its own accord, whispers resonate from empty rooms. The dead are unquiet all around you.
A beat.
RYDER
You need my help.
Dark ambient drone changes to:
INTRO MUSIC
RYDER
This is A Voice From Darkness.
Intro music continues, but gradually fades out.
ACT 1
RYDER
Hello. As always this is Dr. Malcolm Ryder, parapsychologist. Youâre listening to A Voice From Darkness. If youâre having any problems that are paranormal, supernatural, unexplainable in any way please call in.
A beat.
RYDER
Iâm here to help. Oh, and my producer is letting me know we have a call on the line. Tell us your name, caller.
All of Amanda's dialogue has the SFX as coming through a telephone.
AMANDA
Hello, Dr. Ryder, my name's Amanda Ful-
She cuts herself off.
AMANDA
Just Amanda.
RYDER
That's all right, Amanda - we don't need to know your last name. But we do need to know what you're calling about. What unnerving situation have you found yourself in?
AMANDA
Can I ask you a question first? Is that all right?
RYDER
Of course, please - ask away.
AMANDA
To be completely honest - and I'm sorry - but I've never listened to your show before. I've heard of it - obviously - otherwise I wouldn't be calling. But... do most people call in about vampires, zombies, werewolves? Those sorts of things?
RYDER
If I understand your question, what you're asking is: do most of our calls involve familiar paradigms of the supernatural? Is that correct?
AMANDA
Yes. I guess that's what I was getting at.
RYDER
Believe it or not - no. Most calls are... stranger. Outliers. Every conversation on this show, at its root, features an occurrence that the caller cannot explain by simply invoking the natural world. Vampires, werewolves, demons - perhaps sometimes people interpret the raw sensory data they take in as such creatures. But that does not mean they exist. At the very least not in ways we've traditionally conceived them. Does that make sense? Did I answer your question?
AMANDA
No. No - that answered my question. Thank you. It makes me feel better too. What I'm calling about - it's not like a ghost or demon. I don't think? I don't know what's happening, really.
RYDER
And what is that you've called about, Amanda?
A beat.
AMANDA
(uncertain)
A black door?
RYDER
A black door? Have you walked through this door and something happened? Did you witness a terrible being emerge from the door?
AMANDA
No. I haven't gone through - or any of that. I... I... I'm sorry I should have thought about what I wanted to say before calling. It's - it's complicated.
RYDER
For complicated things - I think it's best if we start at the beginning. When did you first notice the door?
AMANDA
The first time. Right, I probably should start with that. The first time was at a charity event at an art museum. I was there on a date - our second - the guy and me. The first didn't go great - but it wasn't terrible either - so I figured I'd invite him along with me. Only it was awful. Soon as we got there he ran up to the hor d'oeuvres and stuffed his face. Having a guy ignore you to graze on cocktail shrimp is... it's not attractive. Everyone was in the Impressionist wing. That's where the event was. So I slid myself under a velvet rope and took a stroll over to the Postmodern Contemporary Sculpture wing. It's my least favorite kind of art. I figured, "Why would anyone come here when they can spend the evening looking at real art?"
RYDER
I think you're being a little unfair. There's a few contemporary pieces I've seen that-
(interrupts self)
But you didn't call to talk art. Not the point of this call or show. Please - continue.
AMANDA
Right - so between this "sculpture" of a trashcan with the American flag in it and a robot standing in front of a tombstone that reads: RIP The Working Class - there's this black door. The Black Door.
RYDER
It's an art piece? Part of an exhibit?
AMANDA
That's what I thought - at first. The black door was the only thing in the room that didn't wear its subtext on its sleeve, so I went up to it. I wanted to figure out what the artist was communicating. I got close-
(interrupted)
RYDER
What about the door suggested the supernatural to you?
AMANDA
It just... drew me in. It felt like only a few seconds had passed - but this security guard shook me by the shoulder. Asked what I was doing there. I told him I was at the charity thing. He told me that ended hours ago. It was past two in the morning. My bad date and I, we'd gotten there -Â I don't know - around seven? I'd been staring at this black door for several hours.
RYDER
You experienced unexplained and mysterious passage of time? That's fantastic.
AMANDA
Why is that fantastic?
RYDER
Well it's not - I mean for you - but it's common across a multitude of sub-fields within the paranormal - from hauntings to alien abductions. So many possibilities...
AMANDA
Is it ever associated with black doors?
RYDER
I'm not sure. What did the guard say about the door?
AMANDA
The guard. I asked him about the artist responsible - who made the door - I thought it was a hypnotic sculpture or something? But he had no idea what I was talking about. He said he didn't see a door. Had never seen one there.
RYDER
It was invisible to him?
AMANDA
No. It vanished. I turned my attention away - to the guard - and when I looked back... it was gone. Disappeared.
A beat.
RYDER
A door that causes time lapses and can disappear? I can't explain it right now, but I'd be happy to research and get back to you on another night, Amanda. Would that be all right?
AMANDA
Doctor, I'm not done. That was just my first encounter. The black door - it's... following me.
A beat.
RYDER
Following you? How? Wait - hold that thought, Amanda. My producer is telling me we need to cut to our pre-recorded segment. I'm sorry, please stay on the line.
TODAY IN ODD AMERICA:
Eerie music plays in the background.
RYDER
On this day in Odd America we find ourselves in Moline, Illinois - the year 1938. After attending a community meeting at the First Methodist Church, the Dhondt family were never seen again. Husband and father Bryan spoke at that night's meeting. His wife Claire accompanied him, as did their only child - seven year old Sarah. Reports at the time stated the family walked home as they lived close to the church. Evidence suggests they arrived safely as daughter Sarah made a diary entry that very night - which noted nothing out of the ordinary. Sarah had played with her friends while her parents attended the meeting. They all went home in high spirits.
A beat.
RYDER
But the next morning, Bryan did not report to work at the John Deere factory. Claire missed her weekly Bible study. Sarah did not show up to school. Friends and family went to their home to learn the cause for their absences. Upon arrival, they found jack-o-lanterns in the bedrooms - two larger for the parents.
One smaller for the daughter. Each carved face made to resemble one of the Dhondts - Bryan, Claire, and Sarah. All contained burnt-out, melted candles.
A beat.
RYDER
The disappearance of the Dhondts is the first recorded case of the Jack-O-Lantern Murders - they're called murders - though this is a misnomer as no bodies have ever been recovered - only pumpkins carved to resemble the missing. Several cases every year have been reported across America since the Dhondts's disappearance. Who's committing these terrifying acts? Is it a singular entity or a coterie that's passed down this dark tradition over the years? And what's become of all the bodies? This is a wide and lonely country. They could be anywhere. And so - it remains a mystery.
A beat.
RYDER
This has been today in Odd America. Now back to our main show.
MUSIC FADES OUT.
ACT II
RYDER
All right, Amanda, we're back. Now, you were saying, the black door is following you?
AMANDA
I see it everywhere. Most places I go - the same door is... there.
RYDER
How do you know it's the same door? What does it look like? I mean, other than being black.
AMANDA
The doorknob's a dull, unassuming brass, I guess? The rest... The door itself it isn't wood or metal painted black. I don't know what it is, but it's darker. Like...
A beat.
AMANDA
Like the center of a black hole. Like the color of absence. It hurts to stare at. I could feel a strain in my eyes... and my chest at the museum... Not just then - every time I look at it, really.
RYDER
The color of absence? That reminds me of the Nietzsche quote, paraphrasing but, "Fight not with monsters lest you become one. And gaze not into the abyss, for when you do the abyss gazes into you."
AMANDA
That's exactly how it feels - when you stare at it - this black void is staring right back into you. Feeling your insides.
RYDER
And this door, that's the color of absence, is following you?
AMANDA
The black door's everywhere. My apartment building, work, the grocery store. Everywhere. But never in the same spot. One day it'll be next to the copy machine at work, then down the hall of my apartment building. The door's always moving. But always near me. Like a shark circling its next victim.
A beat.
AMANDA
I've asked others if they see the door - most the time it disappears after I ask... but sometimes... Sometimes a co-worker or someone - I'll ask them - and they will see it. They'll stop and stare at it - into it. I'll have to shake them - Force them to look away. Then... I'll ask about the door again. And they all say me the same thing: Open the door.
A beat.
AMANDA
Everyone who's seen the door tells me I need to open it. After they say that - the door disappears, and they forget. The worst time... The worst time my best friend at work. We were in the break room, alone, during our lunch and it appeared. Unannounced. Unwelcome - like always. I pointed to it - hoping it'd just disappear and we could keep talking about whatever Netflix show she'd watched last night. I think that's what we were talking about. Only...
A beat.
Before I could lower my hand, she dug her nails into my wrist. Her eyes were locked on the door. Her nails pierced so far into me - I bled. Not a little either. Before I knew it, there was red everywhere. The table. The floor. Her. I couldn't get her nails out of me - or get her to look away. She's one of my closest friends - I was a bridesmaid at her wedding, and... I had to throw her against the ground. To get her to stop. To get her to look away and let go. After I did... she gently released me, put her bloody hands on my face, and told me to open the door.
RYDER
(empathetic)
That's terrible.
I'm sure it was traumatic to go through.
(back to business)
You haven't opened the door though, right?
AMANDA
No. No. I haven't.
A beat.
AMANDA
Not yet, anyway. I guess that's why I really called. What would happen if I did open it? What's behind it? At the very least, if I opened it, even just a crack, would - would it stop following me? Do you know, Doctor?
RYDER
Amanda, under no condition should you open the door. I'll be honest - I have no idea what's on the other side. I've never heard of anything like this before. But from everything you've said - I can't imagine it's anything good. You agree with that, right?
Dead air.
RYDER
Amanda?
AMANDA
(disappointed)
Yes - I mean, I guess I do.
A beat.
AMANDA
I was really hoping you could help me, Doctor.
RYDER
Amanda, I can help. But you need to give me time to research. Promise me you won't open the door - won't touch it - won't go near it. We need to figure out what it is.
AMANDA
Yes. Yes I promise not to open the black door.
A beat.
AMANDA
For now.
Her phone disconnects.
RYDER
Amanda?
A beat.
RYDER
I believe she hung up. Well if you're still listening, Amanda. Stay strong. I'll get back to you as soon as I can. But that's all the time we have for now. Remember - if you are bothered by anything supernatural or unexplainable - please give me a call - next time on A Voice From Darkness.
OUTRO MUSIC
#creepypasta#nosleep#audiodrama#audiofiction#horror#dark fantasy#audio drama#audio fiction#podcast#avfd#transcript
4 notes
¡
View notes
Text
Main Street in Regan, ND 1
And on we go to main street! Which thrilled my very soul because oh my word does this ghost town have a fantastic main street! Just look at all these great buildings!Â
If only I knew what this, my very favorite building in town, used to be. Itâs made of what looks like fieldstone. And has an overgrowth of vines. And itâs totally caving in - roof first. If anyone has any idea what this used to be - please tell me! All Iâve been able to find is a photo from the centennial celebration that had posters up on this building of a telephone operation so maybe thatâs it.
So, since I donât know for sure what this was, let me tell you what I do know about the town! First, it was founded in 1912. So, much later than a lot of other North Dakota hamlets.Â
The little website for Regan had a very nice history section! Thank you to whoever put that up. Hereâs some history from the site:Â
âRegan owes its beginnings to the coming of the railroad. Before the Northern Pacific started regular runs in1912, the town site was just an empty spot on the prairie. The first building, Tolchinsky's cream station, quartered in a small shack, stood alone on the site for a time. Early settlers recall selling their cream there and then driving their teams to Canfield for groceries.
The village was named for J. Austin Regan, a Fessenden businessman who was also an official of the Dakota Land and Townsite Co. which platted the town on Section 35 of Estherville Township in 1910.â
âBy December, 1912, the Wilton News reported that the following buildings had been completed and were occupied: two general stores, a hotel, a butcher shop, a land office, a drug store, two banks, a livery and feed stable, a blacksmith shop, a pool room, a lumber yard, two elevators, and a dozen residences. That same month, mail service to Regan was established on the railroad, bringing about the discontinuance of the Wilton- Canfield rural route that had first served the town.
The erection of the Farmers Union Hall in 1914 offered a place for gatherings important in the social life of the community. Construction was also begun on a new school building.â
Iâm always on the lookout for pressed tin in or on any abandoned thing so the back of the field stone building didnât disappoint!Â
Hereâs a little peak through the breaking boards on the back of the building. Not in great shape.
Yeah, Iâm still going on about this place. I canât stop posting photos of it. Itâs my favorite.Â
Below: a side view.
Ok ok..
...Iâll stop. And move onÂ
To this!
Someting that, to me, looks like an old school. But Itâs on main street.
It also looks kind of like a house. But again...on main street.
There are quite a few things behind it. Like of course, an outhouse.
With two doors.
And a cool old farm truck!Â
And old cars, including a very strange one.Â
For a derby?Â
Also what seems to be an ice shack that has seen better days.
And back around we go.
All I could see was curtains. The windows had obviously been shortened.Â
And what is this?
A speaker thing in a bell?Â
What an odd place.
Someone enlighten me on what this used to be!
Next up, part two of main street! Such cool buildings ahead!
youtube
2 notes
¡
View notes
Text
Your Ghost - Chapter 1
New York, 1999.
He wanted her to live again, even if she could only come back to him through the pages of a book.Â
A/N: Hi all. Iâve been sitting on this for a while I finally decided to post the first chapter. I have a rough outline but I donât know how many chapters there are going to be, maybe 6? This is AU, Mileven, takes place 15 years after Eleven disappeared. Most of season 2 still happened, but there was no Mike/Eleven Reunion at the end of episode 8. Will eventually post on Ao3, but I dunno when Iâm gonna get my invite to set up an account. Enjoy!
28 October 1999
 âLadies and gentlemen thank you for coming here today. There will be a book signing of this amazing book after this session. Now, the reason for why we are all here today, and why some of you have been lining up outside the venue all night, is currently backstage, waiting patiently for me to stop nerding out and pull myself together to introduce him!
 After publishing his first novel and topping the New York bestsellerâs list at only the age of 23, he is here tonight to talk about his newest novel, titled the Ides of Winter, and the third book in the world famous Montauk series. Everybody, please join me in welcoming to the stage, Michael Wheeler!â
***
It was one month and 17 days into the book tour. Mike had one more stop in New York before he could call it a day and go home.
He was so goddamned tired, he still had several book signings, an interview with the New Yorker (with that pretentious prig, Howell), a TV appearance on the Today Show, and, a few radio interviews, before he can escape back to the Lake house in Lovell, Maine which he now called home.
Itâs not all bad news though. New York means seeing Will again for the first time since Christmas.
Not that Mike has completely lost all touch with his old friends, quite on the contrary. Â
After graduating from a fine arts course at his brotherâs alma mater, NYU, Will had decided to stay in the city. Heâd eventually landed an unpaid internship at a small start up animation studio. Now Will split his time travelling back and forth from California to New York as the head character designer on a number of superhero animated cartoons that Mike watched religiously on Saturday mornings.
It wasnât hard to stay in touch with Will, it was just that this last year had been manic. Mike had barely fit in time for sleep what with working frantically to get his novel finished, having to attend stressful and tense meetings with his editor, forcing himself to return his lawyersâ phone calls about a copyright infringement litigation his publishers had commenced on his behalf, and having to deal with ideas about for the short story anthology he had been working on springing up at the most inconvenient times.
He and Will still managed to talk every other day though, either by telephone or AIM.
Ever since Nancy and Jonathan officially became a couple around Christmas of â84, Jonathan and Will became regular dinner guests at the Wheeler residence. He and Will had become almost inseparable, more than anybody in the party.
During his parentsâ divorce, which took place during Mikeâs sophomore year of high school, with Nancy and Jonathan away at college, Mike spent more and more time at the Byersâ residence, trying to escape the tensions at home, right up until he left for college in â89.
At college, Mike made new friends, attended dumb keg parties, dated girls, but he never lost touch with Dustin, Will, Lucas, or Max.
You didnât help save the end of the world with your friends, twice, and then drift away from them over trivial things like distance and attending different colleges.
In fact, Mike had just met up with Dustin only a few months ago. Dustin had been in Maine for some reason connected with his annoyingly mysterious job.
After Dustin had graduated from MIT he had immediately been recruited by a secretive tech company in California. Dustin couldnât talk about where he worked or what he did at his job. Whenever people asked him where he worked heâd tell them Cyberdyne Systems with a straight face.
He and Dustin had attended the Phantom Menace premiere together with Dustinâs then-girlfriend, Cindy. The boys had left the movie theatre deflated and heartsore while Cindy had tried valiantly to console them by saying all the wrong things.
Dustin called Mike a few weeks later to inform him that he and Cindy were no longer going out.
âI had to dump her Mike, she said she thought Jar Jar Binks was cute. Also she refused to share her food with me when we went out.â
âSo?â
 âSo? So? Itâs weird. We go out for Italian and I end up having to eat an entire Pepperoni pizza on my own, which I donât really mind, but then her ravioli looks good too, but she wonât let me have any because she likes us to have our own meals. And donât even get me started on that time I took her to Wangâs Treasure Palace.âÂ
Besides those occasional and surprising visits during the year there was always Christmas and New Years at Lucas and Maxâs place to look forward to.
Of all of them only Lucas and Max had opted to return to Hawkins. Lucas quit his mechanical engineering job and got a position as an assistant professor, teaching at the community college only after a few years in Chicago. Max got a job as a mechanic at a garage. They bought a house, got married, and got busy starting a family.
Mike smiled at the memory of last yearâs Christmas.
Heâd practically lived at Lucas and Maxâs house the whole time he was there since the picture perfect Wheeler family Christmases that his mom had worked so hard to create during his childhood was now only a distant memory.
Nancy preferred to spend her Christmases in New York with Jonathan and Mrs Byers. The Wheeler home had been sold a few years ago when Holly had left to go to college. Holly preferred to spend her holidays in Chicago with her boyfriendâs family.
His mom was away on another cruise, and, his dad was busy with wife number two.
So, Mike spent his Christmas and News Years at the Sinclairs. Heâd taught their three-year-old son, Robbie, how to build a snowman. He conducted a twelve-hour D & D Campaign, pelted Dustin with snowballs, watched a pregnant Max eat all the ice-cream and listened to her complain about how gassy pregnancy made her, watched a star wars marathon and gorged on pizza on Christmas day (just because Max was the only girl in the party did not mean that she would be cooking and cleaning for four man-child wastoids who liked to mooch off her and Lucas). Â
Mike considered a detour to Hawkins for a visit after New York so he could meet the newest addition to the Sinclair family, baby Grace, who was about to turn 6 months old. He decided to bring it up with Will tonight at dinner.
Mike pulled himself back to the present and to the interviewer who was introducing him to her broadcast audience. Â
âYouâre listening to Terry Gross on Fresh Air. Joining us today is Michael Wheeler, author of the best selling book series, Montauk. The series is set in the 60s, in the small town of Montauk in upstate New York, the town is haunted by the misdeeds of its occupants.
The main protagonist is Millie, a brave young girl, with a few secrets of her own.
When Millieâs best friend, Noah, goes missing in mysterious and sinister circumstances, she sets out on a journey into the woods near the town to find him. The first two books in the series have already sold over 80 million copies worldwide and a movie adaptation of the first novel is currently in the works. The third book in the series, Ides of Winter, was released recently.
Michael was only 23 when the first novel in the series was published. He was awarded the Hugo Award for best new author in â95 and he has been named one of Timeâs most influential people of the year. Michael thank you so much for joining us today.â
âOf course, thank you for having me.â
Terry was one of the best interviewers Mike had the pleasure of meeting. Her soft spoken and inquisitive questions put him immediately at ease, so much so that so he almost forgot he was being interviewed on radio.
He didnât forget to lie though.
When Terry asked him about where heâd drawn inspiration from for his twelve-year-old girl protagonist, he told her Millie was a blend of himself and the two sisters whom heâd grown up with.
When Terry asked him what drew him to the supernatural and horror themes prevalent in his novels, he only talked about the books and authors heâd read growing up.
âMichael, my favourite chapter of your second novel is the Cave of Horrors. Iâm sure you get that a lot. I just wanted to ask you about that chapter, because itâs pivotal, its when Millie comes to believe that she may have truly lost her friend forever, and you write so well about grief, and loss, and the trauma associated with that at such a young age. I guess what I wonder is, was this kind of loss something you had experience with?â
Mike pauses for a long moment.
He doesnât know what it was, perhaps itâs the kindness in Terryâs voice.
Maybe it was the year heâd just had, itâd been especially difficult. Â
Maybe it was the tour.
Maybe it was the thought of that big empty lake house waiting for him at the end of the tour.
Maybe heâs just so tired of the lies and the bullshit. He didnât really even understand why he still did it; itâs as natural as breathing, but its been almost 15 years. All the men who could punish him or his friends for saying the wrong thing are long gone.
He doesnât know why or what it is, but all of a sudden his chest feels as if itâs been cracked wide open and its like everyone can see the wound inside him, vulnerable and raw as the day it happened. He wants to tell the world about her, he wants to scream it from the top of the Empire State Building.
Heâs twelve years old again, he can smell the tang of blood and the smoke of ashes that had never touched fire. He can hear the violent and desperate screams of a dying creature ringing in his ears and in between darkness and the flickering fluorescent lights, he sees her eyes, tired, resigned, and filled with pain.
Goodbye Mike.
He wanted her to live again, even if she could only come back to him through the pages of a book.
So heâd saved her the only way he knew how. She came back to life by people reading his book, by growing to love and adore Millie, the brave and wonderful girl that would face monsters and death in order to save her friends.
âIâŚ.I lost a friend when I was a kid Terry. I donât really speak about it often. But the way that it happenedâŚ.it was violent and sudden. I donât think I was able to come to grips with it for many years. Itâs hard to admit sometimes, I think I lie to myself about it, but so much of her is in my writing.â
Terry nodded thoughtfully even though though the gesture wonât be captured by the microphone.
âDid writing help you with dealing with that loss?â
Mike answered honestly, âI donât know. Some days I think itâs made it worse, because sheâs with me, everyday. I live and breathe the loss of her in work. But its just become inseparable from me, the pain. I think itâs just like an arm, or a leg. You heal, but youâre not ever the same. And you never really forget what you lost.âÂ
45 notes
¡
View notes
Text
before sunrise and psychology
attempting to fit some of jesse and celineâs conversations from before sunrise into arthur aronâs question set for accelerating intimacy between 2 strangers. (remember how someone tried this out in real life, and wrote about it in the new york times?). iâve put in some quotes that donât donât directly answer the prompts, but i think they hit at the heart of them anyway. before sunset version to follow eventually, hopefully.
Set I
1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?
4. What would constitute a âperfectâ day for you?
5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?
7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die? Celine: I think I'm afraid of death 24 hours a day. I swear. I mean, that's why I'm in a train right now. I could have flown to Paris, but I'm too scared...When I'm in a plane, I can see it. I can see the explosion. I can see me falling through the clouds, and I'm so scared of those few seconds of consciousness before you're gonna die.
8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.
9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be? Celine: But you know what, if your parents never really fully contradict you about anything, and like are basically nice, and supportive, it makes it even harder to officially complain. You know, even when they're wrong, it's this, it's this passive-aggressive shit, you know what I mean, it's...I hate it, I really hate it.
Jesse: Well, you know, despite all that kind of bullshit that comes along with it, I remember childhood as this, you know, this magical time.
11. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible. Celine: You know, my parents never really spoke about the possibility of my falling in love, or getting married, or having children. Even as a little girl, they wanted me to think of a future career, as an interior designer or a lawyer or something. Iâd say to my dad, âI want to be a writer,â and heâd say, âjournalist.â Iâd say I wanted to have a refuge for stray cats, and heâd say, âveterinarian.â Iâd say I wanted to be an actress, and heâd say, âTV newscaster.â It was this constant conversion of my fanciful ambition into these practical, money-making ventures.
Jesse: I always had a pretty good bullshit detector when I was a kid. I always knew when they were lying to me, you know. By the time I was in high school, I was dead set on listening to what everybody thought I should be doing with my life, and just kind of doing just the opposite.
12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?
Set II
13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?
14. Is there something that youâve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why havenât you done it?
15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
16. What do you value most in a friendship?
17. What is your most treasured memory? Jesse: My great-grandmother had just died, and my whole family had just visited them in Florida. I was about 3, 3 and a half years old. Anyway, I was in the backyard, playing, and my sister had just taught me how to take the garden hose, and do it in such a way that you could spray it into the sun, and you could make a rainbow. And so I was doing that, and through the mist I could see my grandmother. And she was just standing there, smiling at me. And then I held it there, for a long time, and I looked at her. And then finally, I let go of the nozzle, you know, and then I dropped the hose, and she disappeared. And so I went back inside, and I tell my parents, you know. And they sit me down give me big rap on how when people die you never see them again, and how I'd imagined it. But I knew what I'd seen. And I was just glad that I saw that.
18. What is your most terrible memory?
19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why? Celine: Everything is so finite. Jesse: But donât you think thatâs what makes our time and specific moments so important?
20. What does friendship mean to you?
21. What roles do love and affection play in your life? Celine: I think I can really fall in love when I know everything about someone. The way heâs going to part his hair, which shirt heâs going to wear that day, knowing the exact story heâd tell in a given situation.
Jesse: Love is a complex issue...I mean, yes, I had told somebody that I love them before, and I had meant it. Was it totally a totally unselfish, giving love? Was it a beautiful thing? Not really, you know.
22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items. imaginary telephone conversation:
CÊline: He has beautiful blue eyes, nice big lips, greasy hair, I love it. He's kind of tall, and a little clumsy. I like to feel his eyes on me when I look away. He kind of kisses like an adolescent, its so cute. Yeah, we kissed. It was so adorable. As the night went on, I began to like him more and more.
Jesse: You know how they say we're all each others' demons and angels? Well, she was literally a Botticelli angel. Just telling me that everything was gonna be okay...She was sitting next to this very weird couple who started fighting so she had to move. She sat right across the aisle from me. So we started to talk, and she didn't like me much at first. She's super smart, very passionate, um... and beautiful. And I was so unsure of myself. I thought everything I said sounded so stupid.
23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other peopleâs? Celine: I really can't complain about anything. You know, [my parents] love me more than anything in the world, and I have been raised with all the freedom they had fought for. And yet for me now, it's another type of fight. We still have to deal with the same old shit, but we can't really know who, or you know, what the enemy is.
Jesse: Everybodyâs parents fucked them up. Rich kidsâ parents gave them too much. Poor kidsâ, not enough. You know, too much attention, not enough attention. They either left them or they stuck around and taught them the wrong things. I mean, my parents are just these two people who didn't like each other very much, who decided to get married and have a kid, and the try their best to be nice to me.
24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother? Jesse:Â I remember my mother once. She told me, right in front of my father, they were having this big fight, that he didn't really want to have me, you know, that he was really pissed off when he found out that she was pregnant with me, you know, that I was this big mistake. And I think that really shaped the way I think. I always saw the world as this place where I really wasn't meant to be.
CĂŠline: I think [Iâm close with my grandmother] because I always... I always have this strange feeling that I am this very old woman laying down about to die. You know, that my life is just her memories, or something.
Set III
25. Make three true âweâ statements each. For instance, âWe are both in this room feeling ...â
26. Complete this sentence: âI wish I had someone with whom I could share ...â Celine: So often in my life, I have been with people or shared beautiful moments like traveling or staying up all night and watching the sunrise. And I knew those were special moments, but something was always wrong. I wish Iâd been with someone else. I knew that what I was feeling, exactly what was so important to me, they didnât understand. But Iâm happy to be with you.
27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know. Celine: I told him the story about the woman that kills her ex-boyfriend, and stuff. He must be scared to death. He must be thinking I'm this manipulative, mean woman. I just hope he doesn't feel that way about me, because you know me, I'm the most harmless person. The only person I could really hurt is myself.
28. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone youâve just met. see #22
29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life. Jesse, on his recent breakup:Â I didnât want to see anybody I knew. I just wanted to be a ghost. Completely anonymous.
30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself? not crying, but #29
31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already. Celine (telephone conversation): We were in the lounge car, and he began to talk about him as a little boy, seeing his great-grandmotherâs ghost. I think thatâs when I feel for him. Just the idea of this little boy with all those beautiful dreams. He trapped me.
32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about? CĂŠline: I... I kind of didn't really like this reaction back at the palm reader. You were like this rooster prick...You were like a little boy whining because all the attention wasn't focused on him.
33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why havenât you told them yet? Jesse: If somebody gave me the choice right now of to never see you again or to marry you, I would marry you. And maybe thatâs a lot of romantic bullshit, but people have gotten married for a lot less.
34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?
35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why? Celine: I used to think that if none of your family or friends knew you were dead, it was like not really being dead. People can invent the best and the worst for you.
[she discusses the death of her grandmother in Before Sunset]
36. Share a personal problem and ask your partnerâs advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.
6 notes
¡
View notes
Photo
The Haunting of Thores-Cross
Ghosts of Thores-Cross Book 1
by Karen Perkins
Genre: Paranormal Suspense
 "The ghost of a wronged young woman in the village of Thores-Cross waits 230 years to have her story told in Perkins's suspenseful and atmospheric first Yorkshire Ghost novel"
- BookLife by Publishers Weekly
*Silver Medal Winner, European fiction - 2015 IPPY Book Awards
*#1 Bestseller in 6 Amazon Categories, including Ghost Suspense, British Horror and Gothic Romance
*Top 10 Bestseller in 8 more, including Historical Thrillers and Occult Horror
*Over 100 5-STAR reviews on Amazon.com
Likened by independent reviewers on Amazon to the BrontĂŤ sisters, Edgar Allen Poe, Barbara Erskine and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Karen Perkins' novels are filled with unflinching honesty and an acute understanding of human nature. She explores not only the depths of humanity, but the depths of human motivation behind the actions and pain people inflict upon each other, as well as the repercussions of these actions not only in the short term, but also the later generations who live with the implications of the past.
Emma Moorcroft is still grieving after a late miscarriage and moves to her dream house at Thruscross Reservoir with her husband, Dave. Both Emma and Dave hope that moving into their new home signifies a fresh start, but life is not that simple. Emma has nightmares about the reservoir and the drowned village that lies beneath the water, and is further disturbed by the sound of church bells - from a church that no longer exists.
Jennet is fifteen and lives in the isolated community of Thores-Cross, where life revolves about the sheep on which they depend. Following the sudden loss of both her parents, she is seduced by the local wool merchant, Richard Ramsgill. She becomes pregnant and is shunned not only by Ramsgill, but by the entire village. Lonely and embittered, Jennet's problems escalate, leading to tragic consequences which continue to have an effect through the centuries.
Emma becomes fixated on Jennet, neglecting herself, her beloved dogs and her husband to the point where her marriage may not survive. As Jennet and Emma's lives become further entwined, Emma's obsession deepens and she realises that the curse Jennet inflicted on the Ramsgill family over two hundred years ago is still claiming lives.
Emma is the only one who can stop Jennet killing again, but will her efforts be enough?Â
Goodreads * AmazonÂ
Video Trailer:Â
https://youtu.be/qas3UEht_6YÂ
The Haunting of Thores-Cross - Excerpt
  I could not look down at myself. I could not bear the sight of Mamâs clothes on me. Both skirt and shawl itched. I knew I would be aware of every thread of wool on my skin all day. More noise at the door, and I followed Mary downstairs. Digger and his son, Edward, had arrived with the cart to take Mam to the church. I let Mary Farmer organise them. It were Mary who urged their care. Mary who gave instructions to John over Pa. Mary who pushed me through the door and out into bright sunlight. It were Mamâs funeral, how could the sun shine? I looked back at the house and, for a moment, pity for Pa mixed with my despair. How long before Diggerâs cart came for him?
âCome on, lass, no dawdling!â
I turned back to the cart and started the long walk behind it down the hill, Mary Farmer at my side. After a few steps I stopped hearing her endless chatter. It became just another sound of the country, like the birdsong. Ever present but meaningless. We passed the smithy and William Smith joined us, then the Gate Inn and Robert and Martha Grange.
One by one, the village turned out, dressed in their best, and fell in behind us. Mary Farmer greeted them all. I hardly noticed. I felt as if my insides had frozen. My heart, my lungs, belly, everything. With each step, they splintered further. I wondered if I would make it as far as the church at the other side of Thores-Cross or whether I would be left on the side of the lane, a heap of cracked and broken ice.
âHere.â Mary Farmer nudged me and held out a handkerchief. âThought this might come in useful. John wonât miss it. Not today.â
I took it. I had not realised I were crying, but when I wiped my face and eyed the scrap of cloth, it were sopping wet. My eyes and nose must have been streaming since we left the house.
I scratched my shoulder. Remembered I were wearing Mamâs clothes and lost myself in sobs. Mary Farmer tried to put an ample arm around me, but I shrugged her off. I wondered if I would ever stop crying. The cart reached the bridge and turned right. I followed, walking alongside the river, the same walk I used to make every other Sunday with Mam and Pa. We shared a curate with Fewston and would have to make that walk twice a month, unless Robert Grange were making the trip in his dray cart and we could ride the two miles over the moor. I realised with a start that I would not have to do that any more â not if I did not want to. Less than half the village made the trip to Fewston, claiming a variety of ills, and we only went because Mam insisted. I cried harder at the jolt of relief I felt.
âHere we are, lass. Thee stick with me, Iâll get thee through this.â Mary Farmer clung to my arm and I peered at the church. Digger and Edward lifted Mam down from the cart, ready for various men from the village to carry it inside. Robert Grange, William Smith, Thomas Fuller and George Weaver. Our closest neighbours. I took a deep breath and followed them into the plain single-storey stone building with the steps so worn they were more like a ramp. It were cold inside, despite the July sun. Or maybe that were me. Still ice, still cracking, but still in one piece.Â
Cursed
Ghosts of Thores-Cross Book 2
 Jennet's here. No one is safe.
A skeleton is dug up at the crossing of the ways on Hanging Moor, striking dread into the heart of Old Ma Ramsgill - the elderly matriarch of the village of Thruscross. And with good reason. The eighteenth-century witch, Jennet, has been woken. A spate of killings by a vicious black dog gives credence to her warnings and the community - in particular her family - realise they are in terrible danger. Drastic measures are needed to contain her, but with the imminent flooding of the valley to create a new reservoir, do they have the ability to stop her and break her curse?Â
Goodreads * AmazonÂ
Cursed - Excerpt
 Thruscross, North Yorkshire
 7th August 1966 â 11:30 a.m.
  âRight, tea break over, lads, back to work. Rog, Steve, youâre up on Hanging Moor in the bulldozers. As soon as theyâve gone through, Paul and Simon, you get the chippings down. And take care â donât go past the markers, that dropâs lethal.â
The road crew groaned, threw their dregs of tea to the ground and refastened their flasks before clambering into their machines to dig out the access road to the new dam spanning the Washburn Valley. The valley would be flooded in a monthâs time, creating the new reservoir for the Leeds Corporation Waterworks to supply half of Leeds with drinking water, and the road should have been completed last month.
Rog led the way, the large bucket scraping heather and peat, then dumping it into the waiting tipper truck.
Steve followed, making a deeper cut. Together they gouged an ugly scar over the pristine Yorkshire moorland.
âBugger,â Steve cried out and jolted in his seat, knocking the control levers. The big digger wobbled, teetered, then slowly toppled over towards the edge and a sheer wooded drop of a hundred and fifty feet to the valley bottom below.
âSteve!â Rog cried. âLads, help!â
The rest of the crew downed tools and diggers and rushed to the stricken bulldozer. By the time they reached it, Rog was already clambering on to the cab, desperately trying not to look at the vista that opened up before him only a few feet away.
âSteve?â he called again. No answer. His mate lay unconscious, twisted in his seat. âNo!â The digger slid a foot or two in the wrong direction.
âRog, get down; sheâs going over!â Andy, the foreman, shouted.
âNo â Steveâs out cold.â
âYouâre no help to him if your weight pushes it over the edge â get down! Weâll get help, but we need to secure the digger somehow, keep her steady.â
Rog took a last look at his mate then nodded. He realised he couldnât get into the cab without destabilising the digger further and he had no idea how serious Steveâs injuries were. He climbed down carefully, just as Simon drew up in the tipper truck. Half full of soil and rock, it was the heaviest vehicle there.
Andy got on the radio to inform his boss at the dam where there was a telephone to call for help, while Paul ran over with a chain. He secured it round one of the digging arms, and Simon backed up â slowly â until the chain was taut.
The digger shifted, turning around the pivot point theyâd created. The back end now hung off the edge of the cliff.
âKeep it there, Simon,â Andy called. âAnd keep it in reverse â if the edge fails, youâll need to pull him backwards.â
âCanât he just do that anyway?â Rog asked.
âWe donât know how badly heâs hurt. If heâs broken his back or neck, moving him could make it worse. We donât want to move him unless we have to â not until the Fire Brigade and ambulance get here. What happened anyway?â
âUh.â Rog pulled his attention away from the downed machine. âI donât know â he shouted out, then rolled it.â
âHe shouted before he rolled?â
âYes.â
âAndy, Rog. Come and have a look at this,â Paul called and beckoned them over to join him where Steve had made his last cut.
âWhat is it?â Andy came hurrying over.
âUh, looks like a skull.â
âWhat? Oh Christ, itâs a bloody skeleton! Well, thatâs us finished, lads, no more work here for at least a month while they sort this one out,â Rog said.
âForget that, weâll just go round it,â Andy said.
The three men looked over at Steve, then back into the grave. Only the skull and shoulder girdle were visible. As one, they shuddered as a worm pushed its way out of the compacted earth behind the jaw bones, for a moment looking as if the skull had stuck an emaciated tongue out at them.Â
Jennet
Ghosts of Thores-Cross Book 3
 âJennet will have your heart and your fear in equal measureâ
âThrough Jennet we see how cruelty can drive even the most ordinary people to hatred and, in Jennet's case, evilâ
Yorkshire is in the grip of a heatwave, and Thruscross Reservoir has dried up to reveal the remains of the drowned village of Thores-Cross beneath.
Playing in the mud which coats the valley floor, four-year-old Clare Wainwright finds an old inkpot, and canât wait to show it to her best friend, Louise. But when Louiseâs mother, Emma, sees it, her reaction is shocking, and both families are plunged into their worst nightmares.
Emma knows what the inkpot portends:
Jennet has woken.
Now she wants the children.
This is not a gore-ridden, jump-scare horror story. This is more real than that. Jennet is a story about the horrific things that people do to each other, and the way we react to that maltreatment â which does not always end with death.
Jennetâs story is a horror story because itâs not necessarily fiction. It reflects the way women were treated in the time that Jennet lived. It reflects the psychology of the abuse cycle. And it reflects real life. All of it.
If, as I believe, the spirit does not die when the physical body dies, then how many spirits are looking for vengeance today?
What wrongs will you want to right when you pass through that veil? What will I?
This is the conclusion of Jennetâs story, which began in The Haunting of Thores-Cross. I hope she finds peace. I really do.Â
Goodreads * AmazonÂ
Jennet - Excerpt
  Ma pulled her coat tight around her body and, head bowed to the wind, pushed forward with as much strength as she could muster. No wonder Spencer hadnât wanted to shift.
âSensible hoss,â she muttered, but knew she had to push on.
With the headwind she could not hear anything from behind, and forced herself to stop and turn to check the others were following.
Biddy hooked her arm in Maâs as she reached her, and Winnie took her other arm.
Elsie Grange and Babs also linked arms, and together they fought their way into the headwind, Nell and Rachel carrying lanterns on the flanks of the group.
Winnie came to a sudden stop, pulling on Maâs arm, and Babs bumped into her back. âListen!â
The women huddled together.
âI can only hear the wind,â Elsie complained.
âHush. Winnieâs right, thereâs summat else,â Ma said.
This time they all heard the low growl, and Babs squeaked. âThatâs what I heard at the fairy spring!â
âHold the lanterns high,â Ma instructed.
Nell and Rachel obeyed, and the seven women peered into the darkness. They jumped when it was split by a streak of bright light.
âThere, something moved!â Rachel exclaimed.
âCome on, hurry,â Ma said as a loud growl competed with reverberations of thunder.
The women got moving once more, their steps quick and purposeful along the lane.
Even Ma jumped at the next growl. It came from right behind them.
Babs hurried to the front of the pack, her terrified tears blending with rainwater on her cheeks. Ma took pity on the young lass, and hustled forward to join and calm her.
They paused at the stile in the wall bordering Ratten Row. Wolf Farm lay a few yards beyond.
Ma turned to Babs. âNearly done,â she encouraged.
The wind tore at their coats, and the two women crouched down by the wall for a little shelter, then froze. There had been another sound; more a snarl than a growl, Ma was sure of it. Was Jennet here? Was she in the form of the black dog or wolf which had been the cause of so much recent grief?
They listened hard as the rest of the women joined them, but could hear little over the shriek of the wind, the pounding of the rain, and the rumbles of thunder. The church bell tolled once more and Ma shivered. Had she taken on too much? Was the witch too strong for her?
But she could not waver now. âCome on,â she shouted, and turned to drag herself over the stile. She felt hands helping her up, and swung her leg over the capstones. She nearly overbalanced as a gust hit her, but her friends kept her upright and she was soon over.
Biddy, Winnie and Elsie followed, then the younger women clambered across, Nell once again at the rear, brandishing her lantern, which Rachel took off her while she made her climb.
âCome on!â Ma bellowed, but her leg slipped from under her as she stepped forward and she skidded into a painful fall.
âMa!â
Babs and Rachel tried to help her up, but lost their own footing on the drenched ground.
Biddy joined the heap.
âGroundâs too wet!â Winnie cried. âWhole hillsideâs a bog!â
âOh God!â Nell shoved her lantern at Elsie as the moon appeared through a break in the clouds. âStan! Alfie!â She ran towards the farmhouse, falling to her knees more than once, but concern for her husbandâs young brothers pushed her on.
A rectangle of light appeared in the front wall of Wolf Farm as another crash of thunder accompanied a blaze of lightning.
Stan reached down, his hobnailed boots helping him keep his footing, and pulled Nell back up to her feet.
She gesticulated, her words incomprehensible in the wind, but a flash of understanding hit Ma as she realised the young farmerâs wife was pointing uphill.
âGet back, get back, itâs a trap!â she shouted at the other women. âThat beast wasnât stalking us, it was herding us! Get back to road before the moor slides!â
Nell, flanked by Stan on one side, and his younger brother Alfie on the other, joined them, Nellâs words echoing Maâs.
The mud-covered, straggly group struggled back to the boundary wall, and heaved themselves over as the ground they had been standing on slipped.
Stan hurled himself forward, his feet carried away. Rachel and Nell caught his sleeves as he fell.
Alfie looked up from his position on the wall, anguish clear in his eyes before clouds darkened the moon once more. He could do nothing to help his brother â his hands were full of Elsie Grange as he heaved her up and over the wall, Winnie hot on her heels.
Elsie screamed, and Alfie rose up, a capstone held in both hands which he flung with a strength borne as much from terror as from years of hurling bales of hay and contending with maddened ewes about the farm.
An inhuman screech followed and Alfie held his arms up in triumph. The women did not need to hear his declaration of triumph to know he had hit the wolf-dog.
A louder rumble than even the thunder which roared overhead deafened the group, and they turned as one to see a river of peat and heather hit the back wall of Wolf Farm. It found at least one means of entry as seconds later a dark, muddy mess spewed from the front door on its journey downhill.
The nine bedraggled villagers stared in disbelief.
âThat settles it.â Nellâs voice was audible between gusts of wind and furious clangs of the church bell. âYou two boys are coming home with me. Billy could do with your help on the farm, and thereâs plenty of room for you in the house. Youâre not spending another minute here.âÂ
Karen Perkins is the author of eight fiction titles: the Yorkshire Ghost Stories and the Valkyrie Series of historical nautical fiction. All of her fiction has appeared at the top of bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic, including the top 21 in the UK Kindle Store in 2018. Her first Yorkshire Ghost Story - THE HAUNTING OF THORES-CROSS - won the Silver Medal for European Fiction in the prestigious 2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards in New York, whilst her Valkyrie novel, DEAD RECKONING, was long-listed in the 2011 MSLEXIA novel competition. Originally a financial advisor, a sailing injury left Karen with a chronic pain condition which she has been battling for over twenty five years (although she did take the European ladies title despite the injury!). Writing has given her a new lease of - and purpose to - life, and she is currently working on a sequel to Parliament of Rooks: Haunting BrontĂŤ Country. When not writing, she helps other authors prepare their books for publishing and has edited over 150 titles, including the 2017 Kindle UK Storyteller Award winner, The Relic Hunters by David Leadbeater, and has also published a series of publishing guides to help aspiring authors realise their dreams. Karen Perkins is a member of the Society of Authors and the Horror Writers Association
Website * Facebook * Facebook Group * Twitter * Instagram * Amazon * Goodreads Â
Author Links
Website: www.karenperkinsauthor.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Yorkshireghosts
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/yorkshireghosts
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LionheartG
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yorkshireghosts
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Karen-Perkins/e/B009BLBUTY
Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7135531.Karen_PerkinsÂ
Giveaway
$50 Amazon
Follow the tour HERE for exclusive excerpts, guest posts and a giveaway!Â
https://www.silverdaggertours.com/sdsxx-tours/ghosts-of-thores-cross-book-tour-and-giveawayÂ
0 notes
Text
Half As Much- Ch. 1-Â The Handsome Shadow
******************************Â
 A/N: If you are enjoying this story, please share! I used to be on here under the name CozyCorrah, but I had to close my account for⌠reasons. Mainly, I just wasnât having fun anymore. Well, Iâm back! Iâm having a blast putting up my old stories, and adding some new ones. ;) I am having trouble connecting with some of the people that I used to be friends with on here, so PLEASE share away! I canât wait to get back into the community! <3 C
 *******************************
"If that phone rings one more time today..." I huffed as I ran behind the counter, chasing that damned ringing telephone. It had been a very long day at the shop, and I was completely exhausted. I made it through three guitar lessons, two banjo lessons, and a fiddle lesson that afternoon, and my fingers felt like they were about to bleed... plus, my head was pounding like a drum.
"Blanchet's Vintage Music. Adley speaking."
"Hi, Adley. It's Rodney Crowell."
Shit . "Oh, hello Mr. Crowell! What can I do for you today?" I grimaced, knowing that I sounded a little too bitchy when I answered the phone. Mr. Crowell was one of our very best, and nicest, customers.
"Adley, I have a favor to ask."
"Sure, name it!"
"I have been working with an actor for that movie they are making about Hank Williams. He begins filming there in Shreveport in a month. I was wondering... do you think it would be possible for him to come early? Maybe see if you can teach him a thing or two?"
"Oh... um... Mr. Crowell, I am flattered, but I'm not sure I could teach him anything you haven't already."
"I think you can! You know more about Hank Williams' music and life, than anyone else I know. I think it would be good for him to hang around someone closer to his age, instead of just us old fogeys." He laughed. "There are still a few small improvements that I think he needs to make, and you could help him. He won't be a bother, just let him shadow you... and teach him when you have a few spare moments."
Great. He didn't understand that those spare moments at the shop didn't come very often. I really couldn't tell him no... Mr. Crowell had given the store so much business, so begrudgingly, I agreed.
"I'll do what I can for him. When should I expect him?"
"I'm not sure. He will have to see when he can get away. Expect him one day next week... He'll be flying in from London."
"Okay, great."
"Thanks for doing this for me, Adley! I will owe you one."
"No, you don't owe me anything! You're very welcome, Mr. Crowell."
After putting the phone back onto it's cradle a little harder than necessary, I propped my elbows on the counter and put my face into my hands. Damn. I was going to have to babysit this actor, who's probably too cocky for his own good... I couldn't wait. I dipped my fingers underneath the plastic of the 'open' sign, quickly flipping it to 'closed' and locked the door.
"Who was that?" A male voice came from behind me, making me jump. It was Bridger, the man that did most of the repair work on the instruments. He was around my age and very attractive, with his deep blonde hair and chocolate brown eyes... but we spent so much time together here in the store, that we were more like siblings than anything else.
"That was Rodney Crowell... he's asked me to let some actor shadow me for a month or so. He's playing Hank Williams in a movie, and Rodney thinks I can help him out."
"Oh... Well, that ought to make you feel good. An actor, huh? Is he famous?"
"I have no idea, Bridger. I forgot to even ask who I should be looking for, and he didn't tell me. He'll be here next week, anyway, and then I guess we'll see."
He chuckled. "How do you always seem to get yourself into these situations?"
I sighed as she shook her head. "I don't know. That's my luck."
We took some time getting things ready to close... I did the books, while Bridger swept and cleaned up the store. I was thankful to see that the books balanced perfectly, and locked the cash bag in the safe.
"Bridger! I'm finished. I'll let you out." I smiled at him as he followed me to the door, crossing the threshold as I opened it for him. "I'll see you in the morning."
"Alright, Adley. Have a good night."
Nodding, I closed the door behind him and turned both locks before retreating back into the beautiful abyss of stringed instruments. There was a very nice loft apartment above the store, that Mr. Blanchet let me live in for dirt cheap, so that I could be around the shop all the time... a blessing and a curse, if you asked me. The stairs to access the apartment were in the back, in Bridger's workroom, and I trudged up them slowly in my boots... cringing as my feet ached with every step I took.
The door stuck sometimes, so I had to do a weird little jiggle to push it open, finally closing it behind me and collapsing onto my fluffy couch. I loved my little apartment. It was completely open, except for the bathroom and closet. The walls were distressed, exposed red brick, the floor was white-washed wood, and the dark wood ceilings were tall with bronze fans hanging from the ceiling beam. My living room, and small dining table were to the left side of the loft, beside the enormous windows, my kitchen was in the middle of the room, and my bed was set up to the far right near the bathroom. It was perfect for a single woman... especially one that didn't spend much time at home. The hot, inviting shower relieved the kinks in my muscles, and I crept into my antique wrought iron bed, surrounding myself with pillows, and drifting off to sleep quickly.
***
The next few days went by in a blur, and were as busy as all of the others. The deal I had made with Mr. Crowell was the furthest thing from my mind as I went on with my business. I had a fiddle lesson in ten minutes with a thirteen year old girl, and I was trying to make those ten minutes stretch. She arrived a little early, so I asked Bridger to come to the front so that I could go into the teaching room and start her lesson. Her name was Cait and she was one of my advanced students, with perfect form and a natural talent. We were a third of the way through a song called 'The Lighthouse's Tale' when her face went pale, as though she had seen a ghost. She stopped playing, and turned as still as a statue, as she looked through the window into the shop.
"Cait? Are you okay?"
"Umm... Adley... I think that is Tom Hiddleston."
"Who?"
I turned around and looked through the pane of glass, noticing a handsome, very tall man looking at us.
"Oh my God, it is." She said as she sunk down in her chair, trying to disappear into it.
"Cait, who is Tom Hiddleston? And why is he making you squirm around like that?"
"Loki? The Avengers? Thor? War Horse? Hello? He's freaking famous, and he's in your shop!" She began to tear up, her little bottom lip trembling.
"Ohh..." It finally dawned on me. He was my new shadow. "Okay, calm down, Cait. I'll be right back."
I put my fiddle down in my seat, and wiped my sweaty hands down my ripped jeans. How can this man make a thirteen year old girl so giddy? She was being ridiculous! I chuckled as I opened the door and entered the shop. My eyes started at his worn brown boots and moved up... and up... and up those long legs clad flawlessly in dark denim. He was wearing a casual, blue Henley style shirt, with the buttons unbuttoned, showing a small smattering of chest hair. He was lean, but muscular, and stood with a very dominating stance... legs spread wide, with his hands thrust deeply into his pockets. His pants were so tight, I found myself wondering how he had wedged them in there.
"Hi, can I help you?"
"Oh, uh... yes. My name is Tom... Tom Hiddleston. I am looking for Adley."
This man was gorgeous. Damn it.
"I'm Adley."
"Nice to meet you, Adley. Thank you for having me, I hope I'm not too big of a bother."
I was shocked when he opened his arms and drew me into a tight hug. Normally, I wasn't a very 'touchy' person. I liked my space... but, this felt too good to shy away from. His scent flooded my nose, and I breathed him in deeply, pulling him into my lungs... fresh, green, and mouth-watering.
He pulled away from me, and grinned as he looked around the shop. "Nice place you've got here."
"Oh, thanks. Um... I am in the middle of a fiddle lesson." I nodded my head toward the window, and noticed that Cait was peering through the window, but disappeared quickly as soon as she noticed us looking at her. I couldn't help but giggle at her. "My student is apparently a fan of yours, she's a bit nervous. I still have a few minutes left with her. Would you like to sit in on the rest of the lesson? I can show you around the shop after that."
"I would love that. As long as you don't think I will scare the poor girl."
"I think she'll be okay. I'm sure she would love to meet you... Plus, she'll have something to brag about to her friends." I smiled at Tom, and he reciprocated my smile. He was gorgeous. His dark blonde hair was haphazardly styled, making me wonder if he had just woken up, and his light blue eyes pierced my deep hazel ones. I cleared my throat, after realizing that I was staring at this man. Lord, please help me keep my wits about me.
"Let's go, I'll introduce you." As we stepped into the room, Cait's eyes went as wide as dinner plates. "Cait, you were right. This is Mr. Tom Hiddleston."
"I know! OHMIGOSH, I am so happy to meet you! You were the best Loki, and I seriously cry every time I watch that scene in War Horse..."
He laughed. "Thank you, Cait. I am honored that you like my work."
She nodded her head enthusiastically.
"Ok, Cait, we still have to finish your lesson. We have fifteen minutes left. Mr. Hiddleston, you can grab that chair to the side over there if you'd like."
"Thanks... and please, call me Tom."
I gave him a quick nod, as I turned my attention back to Cait. "Okay, let's start 'A Lighthouse's Tale' again. Get back into form." She lifted her fiddle to her chin, and with a sweep of our horse hair bows across the strings, we were playing again in unison. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Tom propping his elbow onto the arm of the chair and resting his chin in his hand. He was smiling that beautiful smile, and I prayed silently that I could continue to play with him looking at me like that. I was finally able to block him from my mind, and luckily, finish the lesson.
"Okay Cait, that's it for today. I am going to get a new bow for you to try out next time. I think it's time you upgraded."
She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Adley... I think it's time you upgraded too." She tilted her head toward Tom and wiggled her eyebrows at me.
My face immediately turned red. "Cait! I think I can handle my own business, thank you very much. Now go! I'll see you next Tuesday."
"It was nice to meet you, Mr. Hiddleston." She nervously smiled at Tom, as he stood and approached us.
"It was nice to meet you too, Cait! I'm sure I will see you next Tuesday." He opened his arms and pulled her into a hug, making her giggle giddily. This man must really be a hugger. He released her, and she ran from the room.
"You're very good." He said, after the door closed behind her.
"Excuse me?"
"You play the violin very well. I'm amazed, actually. You are very graceful."
"Oh wow... well, thank you." I hoped that I didn't look nearly as flushed as I felt. "You are in the South, Tom... down here it's a fiddle."
"Ah, yes... I'm sorry."
I grinned at him. "Don't apologize. Come on, the shop looks mostly empty. I'll show you around." I led him through the door, and back into the center of the shop. "The first room we'll go to is the guitar room... both acoustic and electric are in here. You'll like it. You're welcome to any of the instruments here, Tom. We'll work a bit on your fingering as we get further into it."
Oh, God... yes, I just told Tom Hiddleston that we would work on his fingering. He didn't seem to be phased by the phrase, even though I wanted to sink into the floor. I said that daily, but it felt a bit different saying it to him... almost dirty. I gathered my thoughts as he looked through the guitars, and after a moment, I noticed that my thoughts had drifted somewhere they shouldn't be. Tall men were one of my weaknesses, and Tom was certainly no exception to that rule.
"Adley, what kind of guitar is this?" He asked, as he pulled a lovely vintage selection from the wall.
I grinned, he had picked out my favorite. "That is a Paramount Style L from 1940, and extremely rare. It's got a Brazilian Rosewood back, with a solid spruce top, the neck is mahogany, and it's got the original bar frets. The tuners are vintage, and the strings play very clearly. I just tuned it last week. It's absolutely lovely." I watched as he ran his long, slender fingers over the curved shape of the guitar. I certainly never thought I would want to be an instrument... until that very moment.
"It certainly is lovely. Do you mind if I play it?" He asked hopefully.
"Not at all. Take your time. Here's a pick." I pulled a black pick out of my pocket, and handed it to him. He smiled, accepted it gratefully, and took a seat in one of the chairs, cradling the guitar underneath his arm. He pressed his fingers against the strings on the neck, and began to strum lightly. I recognized the song immediately... 'Half As Much' by Hank Williams. Tom was much better on the guitar than I expected, but when he opened his mouth to sing, I was blown away. I watched his thin lips move as the lyrics flowed from his mouth.
âIf you loved me half as much as I love you
You wouldn't worry me half as much as you do
You're nice to me when there's no one else around
You only build me up to let me downââ¨Â
An involuntary smile crept to my mouth as he sang to me... beautiful words, coming from an equally beautiful man. What the hell is wrong with me? He finished and laughed bashfully.
"I'm sorry, I got a little carried away."
"No, it's okay, I enjoyed it. I can tell you have worked very hard so far. You really remind me of a modern-day Hank. It's uncanny, really."
He looked at me for a moment, and it seemed as if time stood still. I had only known this man for an hour, and already, I felt blissful and content around him. He cleared his throat and stood up, and I wondered if he was feeling the electricity too.
"Well, I love this guitar, Adley. Mind if I keep it and play it awhile? I will be happy to pay you for it."
"Oh, no, Tom. Consider it yours. I think it was meant to be yours. She's a beauty."
"Yes, she certainly is." He smirked as he looked down on me, and I knew he could see the pink spread across my cheeks at his compliment.
"I think I am going to like it here, Adley..."
"Oh? Why is that?"
"Just a hunch..."
#tom hiddleston#tom Hiddleston fan fiction#tom hiddleston fanfiction#half as much#hank williams#hank#istl#i saw the light#cozycorrah#corrah#lovecorrah#shreveport#louisiana
15 notes
¡
View notes
Text
REALLY  LONG  CHARACTER  SURVEY. RULES. repost ,  donât  reblog !   tag 10 ! good  luck !    TAGGED. @judgmentcastâ, holy SHIT.    TAGGING. literally ANYONE whoâs up for a bit of a challenge.
BASICS. Â FULL Â NAME : Â Harmon Mallory James. Â NICKNAME : Â James, Mr. James, Senior Advisor Harmon James. Â AGE : Forty-two. Â BIRTHDAY : Â October 17th, 1998. Â ETHNIC Â GROUP : Caucasian. Â NATIONALITY : Â American. Â LANGUAGE / S : English. Â SEXUAL Â ORIENTATION : Â Homosexual. Â Â Â Â Â Â ROMANTIC Â ORIENTATION : Â Homoromantic. Â RELATIONSHIP Â STATUS : Â In a secret, long-term relationship with Minister Edwidge Owens. Â CLASS : Upper class. Â HOME Â TOWN / AREA : Â He was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Â CURRENT Â HOME : Washington, DC. Â PROFESSION : Senior Advisor to the Leader of the New Founding Fathers.
PHYSICAL. Â HAIR : Red. Much lighter when he was younger. Wavy. Â EYES : Bright blue, sunken. Â NOSE : Long with a slight downward hook. Â FACE : Â Defined smile lines, and other various lines and freckles. Â LIPS : Â Thin, small, and chapped. Â COMPLEXION : Â Pale, sickly, with light freckles peppered along his face. Â BLEMISHES : Â Nothing noticeable. Â SCARS : A few on his face, a couple from various other incidents. Burn scars on his hands. Â TATTOOS : None. Â HEIGHT : 6'6". Â WEIGHT : 185 lbs. Â BUILD : Â Â Slender, defined muscles in his arms, chest and legs. Sharp shoulders. Â FEATURES : Â Wide, sunken eyes. Large, gentle hands, folded at his chest. Painted fingernails. Intimidating stature. Â ALLERGIES : Â N/A. Â USUAL Â HAIR Â STYLE : Â Straightens his waves and slicks the whole thing back, parting it to the left. Â USUAL Â FACE Â LOOK : Â Expressionless. Ivory makeup still shows the freckles on his face. Though expressionless, he always tends to look alert, on his guard. Â USUAL Â CLOTHING : A suit, including a vest, ironed to crispness the day before. Suitable colours are grey, black, or beige. Ties, usually blue or red. A silver cross around his neck. Edwidge's promise ring on his middle left finger. Nails painted usually nude shades. Black or brown shoes shined until you can see your face in them.
PSYCHOLOGY.
 FEAR / S :  Fear of imperfection. A slight fear of disappointment. Fear of being outed.  ASPIRATION / S : To purge and purify: to rid the country of those that depend on them, them being the NFFA, the government, the healthcare system, housing, welfare. To make his superiors see that he can one day be as good as any of them. To lead the New Founding Fathers of America.  POSITIVE  TRAITS : Loyal, peaceful, spiritual, efficent, disciplined, aware, calm, intelligent, self-confident.  NEGATIVE  TRAITS :  Hypocritical, overzealous, judgemental, blindly obidient, sadistic, insensitive, remorseless, blunt, withdrawn.  MBTI : ISTJ, the Logistician.  ZODIAC :  Libra.  TEMPERAMENT :  Melancholic.  SOUL  TYPE / S :  Thinker.  ANIMALS :  A wide-eyed owl, constantly observing.  VICE  HABIT / S :  Vanity, a bit more concern about his appearance than most men his age. Overly critical of those in a lower position than him, even though he was once one of them.   FAITH : What the NFFA deems to be Christian.  GHOSTS ? : Yes.  AFTERLIFE ? : Absolutely. He needs to go home sometime.  REINCARNATION ? :  Possibly.  ALIENS ? : No.  POLITICAL  ALIGNMENT :  Right-wing.  ECONOMIC  PREFERENCE :  He has more than he knows what to do with.  SOCIOPOLITICAL  POSITION : One of the 1%.  EDUCATION  LEVEL : University.
FAMILY. Â FATHER : Â Richard Allen James, the chief communications officer of ARCON and the first press secretary of the New Founding Fathers. Deceased. Â MOTHER : Â Caroline Ann James, a talented pianist and violinist, with dreams of playing with a famous orchestra. Still living. Â SIBLINGS : Seven. Sarah, Mary, Caleb, Lucas, Joanna, Michael & Hannah. Harmon is sixth. Â EXTENDED Â FAMILY : Aunts, uncles, several cousins, and a total of twenty-seven nieces & nephews. Â NAME Â MEANING / S : Harmon, "man of the army." Mallory, "ill fated." Â HISTORICAL Â CONNECTION ? : Â Unknown. There is a place named Harmon mentioned in the Bible, but this place name is debatable. It's been thought of that Harmon James is a pun on "harming James," James being a leader of the early Church.
FAVOURITES. Â BOOK : Â Other than the Bible, specifically the Old Testament, he enjoys a good true crime novel now and again. Also, political biographies. Â MOVIE : Dramas, documentaries and psychological thrillers. Â 5 Â SONGS : Â (these remind me of him, not his own favourites.) The Sisters of Mercy - Driven Like The Snow. Frank Tovey - New Jerusalem. Cloudeater - Hollow. Fad Gadget - Under The Flag II. Nathan Whitehead - The Sacrifice. Â DEITY : Â A God who encourages a yearly slaughter of His creation. Â HOLIDAY : Â Â That blessed night, the one night the country does their bidding. Â MONTH : Â March. Â SEASON : Â Winter. Â PLACE : Â His home, Our Lady of Sorrows, or the NFFA's headquarters. Â WEATHER : Â Cloudy, foggy; a brisk morning that beckons snowfall. Â SOUND : The echo of footsteps walking across a marble floor. A choir of unintelligeble words. Wind whistling through telephone wires. Silence. The scream of a man, strapped down, a knife plunging into his heart. A siren. Â SCENT / S : Â The smoke from an extinguished flame. Stale. Eau de cologne. Hair gel. Â TASTE / S : Â Blood. Luxurious foods. Tea. Ice. Â Â FEEL / S : Â A shiver running down your spine. The touch of a hand when no one's around. The feeling someone's watching you when you're alone. Blood on your lips. A cold wind. Emptiness. Â ANIMAL / S : An owl seems to be the only thing I think of. Maybe an eagle. Harmon seems like a bird. Â NUMBER : Six. He's the sixth in his family, he stands at six feet and six inches tall... Â COLOUR : Blue, to show his loyalty to the NFFA. Red, the colour staining his hands. White, for the supposed purity of his soul.
EXTRA. Â TALENTS : Â His intelligence. His written communication skills. Most of his oral communication skills, his stutter stands in his way. Good with weapons. His knowledge of the human anatomy. He's fairly good at ice skating. Singing. Â BAD Â AT : Having a social life. Drawing. Being an enjoyable person. Smiling. Â TURN Â ONS : Â Men in positions of power. Voices that draw you in. Strong hands. Blood. Twisting a knife inside of a martyr. Â TURN Â OFFS : Â Anyone lower than his class. Â HOBBIES : Â Â Choir. Anything that involves assisting the NFFA. Â TROPES : Â Badass Long Robe. Dissonant Serenity. Giggling Villain. Â AESTHETIC Â TAGS : Â Blurry images. Graveyards. Blood covering hands, covering the Cross. Knives. Pale, trembling hands. Waves of blue. Â GPOY Â QUOTES : Â "You are never here. You are always almost there."
FC INFO. Â MAIN Â FC / S : Â Christopher James Baker. Â ALT Â FC / S : Mark Strickson (possibly.) Â OLDER Â FC / S : Â Not sure, but Robert Redford currently is a possibility. Â YOUNGER Â FC / S : Freddie Fox. Â VOICE Â CLAIM / S : CJB in "True Detective." Â GENDERBENT Â FC / S : Â Lisa Pelikan.
MUN QUESTIONS.  Q1 :  if  you  could  write  your  character  your  way  in  their  own  movie ,  what  would  it  be  called ,  what  style  would  it  be  filmed  in ,  and  what  would  it  be  about ?       A1 : He has a movie, but he's not the focal point. He has his big moments though! I'd like to see more of Harmon in The Purge 4, since that will be more focused around the NFFA. The story of how a man becomes the way he is today, desensitised to death, wanting destruction, yearning for violence. What made him be this way? What would it be called? No idea.  Q2 :  what  would  their  soundtrack / score  sound  like ?       A2 :  Ambient. Echoes where none of the words can be understood. A soft organ playing in the background. Suddenly, the music becomes a bit more intense...  Q3 :  why  did  you  start  writing  this  character ?       A3 :  I watched The Purge: Election Year, and immediately fell in love with him. I knew I had to do something, and this is what I chose to do.  Q4 :  what  first  attracted  you  to  this  character ?       A4: June 30th, 2016. Around 9:00pm. I'm sitting front and centre watching the newest Purge film, a sequel in a franchise I've loved for three years. Charlie Roan is delivered to Our Lady of Sorrows. All of a sudden, this tall, thin, creepy fucker in a long blue robe makes his debut. Just the kind of character I love. I walked home that night, wrote "Harmon James can own my ass, what the fuck" into my phone, and knew this was the beginning of something beautiful.  Q5 :  describe  the  biggest  thing  you  dislike  about  your  muse.       A5 : He's everything I hate in a person. He dislikes everyone who isn't like him. He's almost every -phobic or -ist in the damn book.  Q6 :  what  do  you  have  in  common  with  your  muse ?       A6 : We have blue eyes, and we laugh similarly. That's it.  Q7 :  how  does  your  muse  feel  about  you ?       A7 : Harmon James would want me sacrificed.  Q8 :  what  characters  does  your  muse  have  interesting  interactions  with ?   A8 :  Edwidge Owens. Thomas Roseland. Caleb Warrens. Harlan Coy. Claude Frollo. Richard Miller. Curtis Stafford. Leo Barnes. Charlie Roan. Ambrosia Reynolds. If I could ever actually get to plotting with other people, them as well.  Q9 :  what  gives  you  inspiration  to  write  your  muse ?      A9 :  Watching Harmon's scenes! Listening to songs that remind me of him, like the Election Year soundtrack. Scrolling through the archive on his aesthetic blog. Being outside in the cold.  Q10 :  how  long  did  this  take  you  to  complete ?       A10 : I forgot about this for a good month. So a long time. Thanks, Ocelot. xo
9 notes
¡
View notes
Link
The Recent Ploy to Break Encryption Is An Old Idea Proven Wrong Security expert Jon Callas breaks down the fatal flaws of a recent proposal to add a secret user â the government â to our encrypted conversations.
This is the fourth and final in a series of essays about a proposal by officials at Britainâs GCHQ about requiring encrypted communications platforms to be designed to secretly add an extra participant â the government â to a conversation. In the previous essay, I explained why network design and cryptography mean that the GCHQ proposal cannot listen from afar as their metaphor of crocodile clips implies. They must be on the participantsâ devices, and yet must be secret, as listening in when everyone knows thereâs a listener is comically silly. In this essay, I explain how criminals and terrorists would take advantage of that technological fact to evade the so-called âghost user.â
Whenever you build a system, you have to test it in two ways. Quality assurance teams make sure that the system can be used correctly and produces the correct results when its users do the things you expect them (and instruct them) to do. In my career as a software engineer and security specialist, I led a team that did adversarial testing, also known as Red Teaming. Red Teams do unexpected, incorrect, devious, willfully obtuse, and downright malicious things to a system to see how it responds. Both of these kinds of testing are necessary before any system is deployed. Tools must both work when given the correct commands and respond well when given incorrect ones. We design technology to resist people who try to trick it into the wrong behavior.
In the early 1990s, the U.S. government had another proposal that would purportedly preserve secure communications for the âgood guys,â and provide âwiretappabilityâ for the âbadâ ones. This proposal was the notorious Clipper Chip, and it was finally abandoned because a flaw in its access system ensured that criminals could get around it. In brief, Clipper Chip telephone handsets would encrypt calls, but held 40 bits of the 80-bit encryption key in government hands. This gave the US government an easy 40-bit break of the encryption, while making everyone else have to do an 80-bit key search, which is daunting but not impossible today. That a phone was correctly escrowing half the key was signaled through a metadata a hint called the Law Enforcement Access Field, or LEAF. To the outside world, the handsets had rather strong encryption, but to US agents, the LEAF would make breaking the encryption much easier, only taking a few hours or days. At least, that was the idea.
In fact, Matt Blaze (currently the McDevitt Chair of Computer Science and Law at Georgetown University) did Red Team testing of the Clipper Chip and defeated its security. His analysis showed that one could forge a LEAF, and thus create a phone that would work alongside Clipper phones, and yet not give exceptional access to the government. If, for example, you had one of these forged phones and I had a Clipper phone, law enforcement would be able to decrypt my half of the conversation, but not yours. If we both have forged phones, we have opted out of Clipperâs access system altogether. This discovery lead to the Clipper proposal fading away â because it just didnât work. Potential customers didnât want one of these forged phones (how do you trust such a thing), and the government didnât want a system where someone could opt-out by simply using a forged phone. If the proposal had been implemented it would have created two populations of users: the âsmartâ ones evading surveillance by using forged equipment, and the âdumbâ users who are using the conventional system.
The same thing would happen under the ghost user proposal. While law enforcement typically replies to such issues with the comment that most criminals are dumb, I believe that a system that permits intelligent criminals to operate with impunity, while everyday people can be spied upon, is an affront to nearly every principle of civil liberties, and certainly to the principles that the GCHQ authors use to justify their proposal, particularly those of fairness, proportionality, transparency, and trust.
Build Our Own Canary for This Coal Mine
Nate Cardozo and Seth Schoen of the EFF wrote an article in which they show how the âghost userâ in the GCHQ proposal can be detected with some sophisticated cryptographic techniques. Their article is clever and worth a read. I take a different approach to defeat the ghost user system, one that is directly analogous to the defeat of Clipper. I can write an alternate app that runs alongside the official installation of Whatsapp or other software and performs the same function as the official app yet tells the user all the other parties in the conversation. There is no way to prevent such an app because, for the reasons I explained in previous essays, the conversation keys have to be on the device in order for the conversation to be end-to-end encrypted. The âclientâ software that operates on the computer or smartphone can always tell a user about all the participants and can report any user, ghost or not, entering or leaving the conversation. This app might do nothing more than tell me who the participants are, or alert on the addition or deletion of new devices. In security, we call this a âcanary app,â after the proverbial canary in the coal mine. The way this canary app would work is, if suddenly it looks like Carol has just gotten a tablet, Alice might say, âCongratulations on the new tablet, Carol.â Carol replies, âWhat new tablet?â and then the jig is up. They know that someone or something is pretending to be Carolâs new tablet.
A more sophisticated canary could simply reject the exceptional access request by refusing to negotiate the âghostâ encryption key exchange or sending it bogus keys. A very clever app could send different messages to the ghost than to the real people using a chatbot. Clever people will think of other ways to troll the spies on the line, starting with sending them malware.
Canary apps canât be prevented. They can be created from existing open-source apps or created from whole cloth by reverse-engineering the network communications. People will write, publish, and provide these apps so that people vulnerable to attacks by their government could protect themselves. Some criminals would install it, and there is no mechanism to prevent that.
Actual Bugs and Threats
There will be other security flaws in implementing a âghost userâ architecture beyond those Iâve identified. All software has bugs. Building a multi-user chat system is complex and there are many things to get wrong. For example, Appleâs multi-user FaceTime had an interesting bug in which someone could turn on another userâs microphone before they answered. Apple had to shut down multi-user functionality across the globe while the company fixed the problem.
In another example, the French government created a secure messenger called Tchap intended for trusted government actors to use instead of messengers like WhatsApp and Telegram, which the government did not entirely trust. A security researcher found a way to create accounts on Tchap without being a member of the French government, thereby defeating the purpose of the app.
Software is hard to do correctly. Itâs impossible to get it right the first time. Software that has a security goal that is in opposition to itself â be secure, but let certain parties break it â is even harder. It will be under attack from honest people who donât want to be spied on. It will be under attack by criminals. It will be under attack by other governments who want to subvert the rules of exceptional access. For example, if the Chinese government learns to spy on UK citizens by pretending to be GCHQ, they will, and they arenât going to tell anyone that they can.
If it Doesnât Work, It Doesnât Work
The government abandoned the Clipper Chip proposal because a researcher found that an adversary who wanted encrypted calls that could not be decrypted could cheat and do so. It wasnât worth incurring the security problems and expense of the Clipper Chip when it couldnât reliably give the government the access it needed. The same is true with the GCHQ proposal: some programmers will make canary apps that detect or thwart the spying. The more high-profile the target, the more justified the exceptional access, the more resources and incentives the target will have to fight back against a secret government user.
The GCHQ proposal could be called âClipper 2.â As with that discarded, flawed proposal, both citizens and government lose all while bad actors do as they wish with impunity. The GCHQ proposal introduces serious cybersecurity and public safety dangers without assuring government agents get the data they want. It creates an international surveillance free-for-all where smart criminals can decide to opt-out of government eyes while leaving the law-abiding without security. It permits and encourages brazen governments to move their international information security battles into the phones of every honest person everywhere in the world. Like Clipper, the Ghost User proposal must be put aside.
Further Reading
Here is some further reading on the issues in this essay.
 The French Government âTchapâ app
Romain Dillet,"Security flaw in French government messaging app exposed confidential conversations"
Elliot Alderson, "Tchap: The super (not) secure app of the French government"
Spyware, Malware, Stalkerware
Andy Greenberg, "Hacker Eva Galperin Has A Plan to Eradicate Stalkerware"
Michael M. Grynbaum, "Crime Is Up and Bloomberg Blames iPhone Thieves"
EFFâs Ghost Detector
Nate Cardozo and Seth Schoen, "Detecting Ghosts By Reverse Engineering: Who Ya Gonna Call?"
Published July 16, 2019 at 08:30PM via ACLU https://ift.tt/2GlcDSn
0 notes
Text
The Recent Ploy to Break Encryption Is An Old Idea Proven Wrong
Security expert Jon Callas breaks down the fatal flaws of a recent proposal to add a secret user â the government â to our encrypted conversations.
This is the fourth and final in a series of essays about a proposal by officials at Britainâs GCHQ about requiring encrypted communications platforms to be designed to secretly add an extra participant â the government â to a conversation. In the previous essay, I explained why network design and cryptography mean that the GCHQ proposal cannot listen from afar as their metaphor of crocodile clips implies. They must be on the participantsâ devices, and yet must be secret, as listening in when everyone knows thereâs a listener is comically silly. In this essay, I explain how criminals and terrorists would take advantage of that technological fact to evade the so-called âghost user.â
Whenever you build a system, you have to test it in two ways. Quality assurance teams make sure that the system can be used correctly and produces the correct results when its users do the things you expect them (and instruct them) to do. In my career as a software engineer and security specialist, I led a team that did adversarial testing, also known as Red Teaming. Red Teams do unexpected, incorrect, devious, willfully obtuse, and downright malicious things to a system to see how it responds. Both of these kinds of testing are necessary before any system is deployed. Tools must both work when given the correct commands and respond well when given incorrect ones. We design technology to resist people who try to trick it into the wrong behavior.
In the early 1990s, the U.S. government had another proposal that would purportedly preserve secure communications for the âgood guys,â and provide âwiretappabilityâ for the âbadâ ones. This proposal was the notorious Clipper Chip, and it was finally abandoned because a flaw in its access system ensured that criminals could get around it. In brief, Clipper Chip telephone handsets would encrypt calls, but held 40 bits of the 80-bit encryption key in government hands. This gave the US government an easy 40-bit break of the encryption, while making everyone else have to do an 80-bit key search, which is daunting but not impossible today. That a phone was correctly escrowing half the key was signaled through a metadata a hint called the Law Enforcement Access Field, or LEAF. To the outside world, the handsets had rather strong encryption, but to US agents, the LEAF would make breaking the encryption much easier, only taking a few hours or days. At least, that was the idea.
In fact, Matt Blaze (currently the McDevitt Chair of Computer Science and Law at Georgetown University) did Red Team testing of the Clipper Chip and defeated its security. His analysis showed that one could forge a LEAF, and thus create a phone that would work alongside Clipper phones, and yet not give exceptional access to the government. If, for example, you had one of these forged phones and I had a Clipper phone, law enforcement would be able to decrypt my half of the conversation, but not yours. If we both have forged phones, we have opted out of Clipperâs access system altogether. This discovery lead to the Clipper proposal fading away â because it just didnât work. Potential customers didnât want one of these forged phones (how do you trust such a thing), and the government didnât want a system where someone could opt-out by simply using a forged phone. If the proposal had been implemented it would have created two populations of users: the âsmartâ ones evading surveillance by using forged equipment, and the âdumbâ users who are using the conventional system.
The same thing would happen under the ghost user proposal. While law enforcement typically replies to such issues with the comment that most criminals are dumb, I believe that a system that permits intelligent criminals to operate with impunity, while everyday people can be spied upon, is an affront to nearly every principle of civil liberties, and certainly to the principles that the GCHQ authors use to justify their proposal, particularly those of fairness, proportionality, transparency, and trust.
Build Our Own Canary for This Coal Mine
Nate Cardozo and Seth Schoen of the EFF wrote an article in which they show how the âghost userâ in the GCHQ proposal can be detected with some sophisticated cryptographic techniques. Their article is clever and worth a read. I take a different approach to defeat the ghost user system, one that is directly analogous to the defeat of Clipper. I can write an alternate app that runs alongside the official installation of Whatsapp or other software and performs the same function as the official app yet tells the user all the other parties in the conversation. There is no way to prevent such an app because, for the reasons I explained in previous essays, the conversation keys have to be on the device in order for the conversation to be end-to-end encrypted. The âclientâ software that operates on the computer or smartphone can always tell a user about all the participants and can report any user, ghost or not, entering or leaving the conversation. This app might do nothing more than tell me who the participants are, or alert on the addition or deletion of new devices. In security, we call this a âcanary app,â after the proverbial canary in the coal mine. The way this canary app would work is, if suddenly it looks like Carol has just gotten a tablet, Alice might say, âCongratulations on the new tablet, Carol.â Carol replies, âWhat new tablet?â and then the jig is up. They know that someone or something is pretending to be Carolâs new tablet.
A more sophisticated canary could simply reject the exceptional access request by refusing to negotiate the âghostâ encryption key exchange or sending it bogus keys. A very clever app could send different messages to the ghost than to the real people using a chatbot. Clever people will think of other ways to troll the spies on the line, starting with sending them malware.
Canary apps canât be prevented. They can be created from existing open-source apps or created from whole cloth by reverse-engineering the network communications. People will write, publish, and provide these apps so that people vulnerable to attacks by their government could protect themselves. Some criminals would install it, and there is no mechanism to prevent that.
Actual Bugs and Threats
There will be other security flaws in implementing a âghost userâ architecture beyond those Iâve identified. All software has bugs. Building a multi-user chat system is complex and there are many things to get wrong. For example, Appleâs multi-user FaceTime had an interesting bug in which someone could turn on another userâs microphone before they answered. Apple had to shut down multi-user functionality across the globe while the company fixed the problem.
In another example, the French government created a secure messenger called Tchap intended for trusted government actors to use instead of messengers like WhatsApp and Telegram, which the government did not entirely trust. A security researcher found a way to create accounts on Tchap without being a member of the French government, thereby defeating the purpose of the app.
Software is hard to do correctly. Itâs impossible to get it right the first time. Software that has a security goal that is in opposition to itself â be secure, but let certain parties break it â is even harder. It will be under attack from honest people who donât want to be spied on. It will be under attack by criminals. It will be under attack by other governments who want to subvert the rules of exceptional access. For example, if the Chinese government learns to spy on UK citizens by pretending to be GCHQ, they will, and they arenât going to tell anyone that they can.
If it Doesnât Work, It Doesnât Work
The government abandoned the Clipper Chip proposal because a researcher found that an adversary who wanted encrypted calls that could not be decrypted could cheat and do so. It wasnât worth incurring the security problems and expense of the Clipper Chip when it couldnât reliably give the government the access it needed. The same is true with the GCHQ proposal: some programmers will make canary apps that detect or thwart the spying. The more high-profile the target, the more justified the exceptional access, the more resources and incentives the target will have to fight back against a secret government user.
The GCHQ proposal could be called âClipper 2.â As with that discarded, flawed proposal, both citizens and government lose all while bad actors do as they wish with impunity. The GCHQ proposal introduces serious cybersecurity and public safety dangers without assuring government agents get the data they want. It creates an international surveillance free-for-all where smart criminals can decide to opt-out of government eyes while leaving the law-abiding without security. It permits and encourages brazen governments to move their international information security battles into the phones of every honest person everywhere in the world. Like Clipper, the Ghost User proposal must be put aside.
Further Reading
Here is some further reading on the issues in this essay.
 The French Government âTchapâ app
Romain Dillet,"Security flaw in French government messaging app exposed confidential conversations"
Elliot Alderson, "Tchap: The super (not) secure app of the French government"
Spyware, Malware, Stalkerware
Andy Greenberg, "Hacker Eva Galperin Has A Plan to Eradicate Stalkerware"
Michael M. Grynbaum, "Crime Is Up and Bloomberg Blames iPhone Thieves"
EFFâs Ghost Detector
Nate Cardozo and Seth Schoen, "Detecting Ghosts By Reverse Engineering: Who Ya Gonna Call?"
from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247012 https://www.aclu.org/blog/recent-ploy-break-encryption-old-idea-proven-wrong via http://www.rssmix.com/
0 notes
Text
October Post 6
Rat-a-tat-a-tat!
The rain pounded hard against the windows of the ancient house. Â Mariel stared outside at the downpour, lost in her own thoughts, as her brother and sister watched the movie on TV. Â The 12-year-old stifled a sigh; she missed her friends and hated this town. A scream pulled her from her thoughts as thunder crashed just outside the cozy den. Â
âOh Abby, itâs alright.â Mariel tried to comfort her little sister. Â âItâs just a little noise; it canât hurt us.â Â Despite the calming words, the 5-year-old began to cry as the sky lit up once more, followed almost instantly by a loud boom. Â The lights flickered and the terrified child launched herself into Marielâs arms. Â Declan glanced at his sisters curiously, but quickly turned his attention back to the movie. The lights flickered once more before plunging the children into darkness.
      âI want Mommy and Daddy!â Abigail wailed, clutching onto her sister tightly. Â
âI know, Abby,â Mariel cooed. âItâs going to be ok. Â Me and Declan are here.â Â She addressed her younger brother. âStay here with Abby while I find us some candles.â
Declan wrapped his arms around his little sister and pulled her into his lap. Â Abigail gave a squeal of protest that went ignored as Mariel stumbled through the dark, unfamiliar room to find the kitchen. Â
As she rummaged blindly through the cabinets, Mariel couldnât help but wonder for the millionth time that week why they had to move.  They were perfectly happy before their father gave up his old job.  She didnât care if his new job paid better; theyâd been in this new house for less than a week and, for once, she and Declan could agree on something: they wanted their old lives back.  And now, her parents were out at a stupid gala during the worst storm of the yearâŚ
Her hand closed around a flashlight. Â Mariel sighed with relief and flicked it on. Â The thin beam of light illuminated the kitchen, making it much easier to find the candles. Â She grabbed the box of matches and a few of the scented candles her mom kept around and brought them back to the den. Â She could hear Declan talking to Abigail as she walked into the dark room.
âAnd he still haunts this house today,â the 9-year-oldâs voice was his best imitation of low and scary.
      âDeclan!  Stop scaring her!  Youâre supposed to be making her feel better.â
      Declan rolled his eyes and looked at Abbyâs tear-streaked face.  âHeâs a very nice ghost,â the boy conceded, satisfying his older sister.
The flames danced on the candles, filling the room with unsteady light. Â The children were quiet for a moment, listening to the rain beating on the glass. Â The piercing shriek of the telephone ringing made them all jump.
âItâs probably mom and dad,â Declan stuttered, the first one to recover. Â âIâll get it.â He bounded off the couch and grabbed the flashlight heading into the kitchen for the phone. Â He opted for the portable so that he could bring it into the den, and answered it on his way back. Â âHello?â Silence greeted him. Â He stopped walking and tried again. Â âPodifi residence. Â Who is this?â Â Still no answer. Â He heard a sigh on the other end, then a click. Â Whoever it was had hung up.
He walked back into the den and put the phone on the table. Â âWhy didnât mommy and daddy want to talk to me?â Abby whined when she saw him.
The boy shrugged. Â âIt wasnât them. Â Wrong number, I guess.â Â He tried to sound nonchalant, but in reality, the call had scared him a little. Â Mariel noticed, but said nothing.
The phone rang again, and this time Mariel snatched up the phone. Â âHello?â Â When silence greeted her, she became aggressive. Â âWho is this? Donât call here again or Iâll call the police!â Â The same sigh on the other end of the phone, then a click.
By now the three siblings were huddling against each other staring outside at the storm. Â âIs â Is that a person?â Â Declan squeaked, pointing out the window toward the garden.
âOf course not,â Mariel assured him, although she wasnât too sure herself. Â âItâs just our imaginations acting up.â Â Still they stared as the figure began moving closer. He was just about at the window when a bolt of lightning illuminated the garden. Â At the sight of the marred and bloody face, all three children screamed.
The room was plunged into darkness again as the flash of lighting disappeared. In the sudden darkness they couldnât tell if the person was still there.
They waited huddled together on the floor. Mariel gripped Declanâs hand tightly, glad for once of the presence of her annoying little brother. She could feel Abby crying in her arms.
A loud roll of thunder shook the house.
âWas⌠was that someone knocking?â Declan asked nervously.
âOf course not.â Mariel said, with much more confidence than she felt. The thunder had sounded an awful lot like someone knocking loudly at the door.
Lightning flashed. Instinctively all three pairs of eyes looked up at the window.
There was no one there. The garden was empty.
Just then, the thunder rang through the house. Except this time, it sounded as though it was someone knocking on the walls of the den.
Abby jumped out of Marielâs arms. âMare thereâs someone there! Are mommy and daddy home? I want mommy!â
âAbby donât!â Mariel yelled, jumping up to grab her sister as Abby bolted to the front door.
Abby was faster. She reached the door first and grabbed the handle. âMommy! Mommy!â the little girl cried. âMommy come in!â
Mariel reached the door at the same time as Declan and they collided in a tangle of limbs to the floor. âNo!â They both screamed at once as Abby began to turn the door knob.
Nothing happened.
The door was, thankfully, locked.
Mariel felt Declan heave a huge sigh of relief as they picked themselves off of the floor. She grabbed Abby and pulled her away from the door saying, âAbby, mommy and daddy will let themselves in when they get home. Why donât we go up to your room and listen for their car?â Anything would be better than waiting by the window. The site of the manâs burned face filled her mind.
She and Declan exchanged looks. âThatâs a good idea.â He chimed in. âIâll join you!â
Abby sniffled. âOkay.â
âIâll get the candles and flashlight!â Declan yelled over his shoulder as he ran back towards the den.
Mariel and Abby stood in the den for what felt like a hour. They could hear the ticking of the ancient grandfather clock in that hallway.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.
Father refused to throw it out. It âadded to the old charmâ he said. Even mother didnât like it. It was too loud she complained. She couldnât sleep with it ticking away moments of her life.
Mariel wished profusely that she hadnât overheard her mother say that. All she could think of was that manâs face and the old clock ticking away the remaining seconds of her life. What would happen if the clock stopped? Would they die? Would the man get them?
âNo!â She told herself angrily. âThat wouldnât happen. Thatâs ridiculous.â
âWhatâs a ridiculous?â Abby asked.
Mariel swallowed. She hadnât realized that she had spoken out loud. âRidiculous means funny.â She explained.
âWhatâs funny? Did you think of a joke?â Her sister asked with the ever present distraction of a 5 year old.
âUmm⌠yes.â Mariel said.
âTell me! Tell me!â Abby demanded.
âOkay⌠umm⌠knock knock!â
Just then Declan burst back into the room, waving the flashlight wildly. âMare all the candles are⌠oh!â He stopped, remembering that Abby was there. Even he knew better than to scare her more when they were alone in a new house and mom and dad were late. He was already going to get in trouble for telling her ghost stories. âI didnât mean to interrupt.â He gave Mariel a hard look, trying desperately to communicate something with her.
She shook her head. She could speak silently with her best-friend but she didnât understand 9 year-old boy speak.
âMaaareee tell me!â Abby whined.
âKnock knockâ
âWhoâs there!â
Mariel paused trying hard to think of one that Abby hadnât heard yet. âOlive!â
Abby frowned. âNo fun Mare. I already know that one.â
Mariel sighed. She should have known better⌠Abby knew all of their familyâs knock-knock jokes.
âLet me try!â Declan interrupted his younger sisterâs whining. âKnock knock!â
There was a loud booming at the door.
Thud. Thud.
Abby squealed with delight, âWhoâs there, whoâs there?!â
Declan was frozen, staring at the door with his mouth open.
âDEEEE. Whoâs there?â
âUmm. Cowâs go.â
âCowâs go? Cowâs go who!â
âNo silly! Cowâs go moo!â Declan whooped with laughter at his own joke turning to tickle Abby, but Mariel could still see fear in his eyes. Neither of them could bring themselves to look away from the door.
Now she knew that someone really had been knocking. The timing was eerie⌠it was almost as if they could hear them. Mariel felt her eyes drift away from the door towards the den. What was it that Declan wanted to say about the candles?
âIâll⌠Iâll be right back.â She said softly. She wasnât sure that they would hear her over the sounds of Abby shrieking with laughter and trying to escape from Declanâs ruthless tickle fight.
Not waiting to find out she took a big step forward. She was halfway into the den when she realized that she should have taken the flashlight from Declan.
The den was pitch black. All of the streetlamps were out. She couldnât even see 5 feet into the garden. Mariel couldnât decide if that was a good thing or not. She definitely didnât want to see that man again, but what if he was still out there and they couldnât see him anymore? What if he was the one knocking?
Mariel stumbled further into the den. Why couldnât she see anything? Why were the candles out?
Why were the candles out?
She realized suddenly that this is what Declan was trying to tell her. She laughed nervously, it wasnât a big deal that the candles went out. Old houses were supposed to be drafty, right?
Lightning flashed and there was a sharp knock on the window. At the same time she heard the sudden slam of a fist on wood at the front hall.
THUDTHUDTHUDTHUD.
Mariel jumped at the noise, whipping around to look at the window.
There, illuminated for one brief second by the lighting, stood the man. His face was horribly burned, his skin torn and red. There was blood oozing from the place where his eye socket used to be. In several places the skin was burned away so that bone shown through, a starling contrast to the red. He lifted a hand and she saw that the burns covered his entire body. The tattered clothing hung off of his arm as he extended one long finger towards her.
The lighting strike ended and the garden was plunged into darkness again.
But, it wasnât entirely dark this time.
A dim glow filled the room from behind her. Startled and confused, she turned around to see that all of the candles had relit themselves. As she stared the flames spun higher and higher, far exceeding what should have been possible for such small scented candles.
Mariel screamed.
THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD.
There was a loud creaking noise and all of a sudden Declan and Abby were screaming too.
She ran towards them, only to crash head first into Declan for the second time in under an hour. They sat on the floor stuttering half words to each other trying to make sense of what had just happened.
âDoorâ âCandlesâ âHandâ âClockâ âCandlesâ âLightningâ
The words flew fast between them, garbled and out of order. Abby sat crying in the middle of them, trapped underneath their legs.
It wasnât until later that Mariel realized what she was saying.
The room behind her was pleasantly warm, which was surprising considering that the power was still off and therefore so was the heat. It wasnât until Declan joined in Abbyâs one word chant of horror that she realized what was happening behind her.
âFire⌠fire⌠fire Mare fire!â
The candles, now feeding a flame more than 10 times their size, had been whipped into a frenzy. The fire danced back and forth on an invisible wind, stretching for the surrounding room. Another flash of lighting stuck, thunder shattering the air around them, followed by the THUDTHUDTHUD on the door, and another view of the man, grinning widely. He saw them in the light of the fire and once again lifted his hand and pointed towards Mariel.
The fire stretched again, and this time, caught.
Fatherâs favorite chair burst into the flames. The smell of burning leather filled the room quickly as the fire spread far faster than normal.
âQuick!â Mariel gasped, lifting her arm to cover her nose. They crawling along the floor out of the den.
Abby was now sobbing inarticulately.
âNo!â Declan screamed, âWe canât go to the front door!â
But it was too late. The flames had already spread throughout much of the den. There was no place else for them to go but through the front hallway.
âItâs okay. Itâs okay. Weâll get outside, and weâll run. Weâll run over to the Jabloskiâs!â Mariel tried to soothe her younger brother, knowing that it was useless. They wouldnât make it to the Jabloskiâs. The Jabloskiâs lived only one house down but at the rate that the fire was burning and the man outside the house who seemed to be able to control it, there was no way that they would make it down their driveway let alone next door.
They crawled into the hallway towards the front door.
Mariel could barely hear the clock over the hungry roar of the flames, but there it was, taunting her.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD.
Crying, Mariel reached for the door handle, knowing what waited for her outside. She could see the manâs horribly disfigured, grinning face waiting for her as the door swung open. The handle was hot to the touch, the fire closing in around them. She gripped it firmly anyway feeling the flesh on her hand burn as it connected. She turned.
It was locked.
THUD.
She scrambled desperately at the knob, hoping that it was only the handle that was locked. It clicked.
The flesh on her hands was raw by now. Abby was screaming in her ear. Mariel was sure that she was going to go deaf.
She tried the door again.
Locked.
Of course. Mother and father always locked to dead bolt. Door handles were to easy to break they always said. She wished that for once they had forgotten.
Declan pulled on her shirt.
Mariel let go of the door knob, whimpering in pain as some of her skin pulled off and stuck to the burning hot metal.
Declan yanked at her shirt harder.
Mariel slumped against the door, turning her head to see what he was so anxious about when the immediate problem clearly was right before her.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
The man stood before him, holding Abby in one flaming hand. He held the key to the door in the other.
He opened his mouth and his voice was everything that she dreaded it would be. Rough and scratchy, his voice floated through the air. âKnock knock.â
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. TickâŚ
0 notes
Link
Celebrities should learn to keep their private life âPrivateâ-Shaffy Bello  Â
Her unique voice reminds us of her role in the melodious track, Love Me Jeje, Love Me Tender. Have spent some times in the United State of America, Shaffy Bello Akinrimisi is fully back to Nigeria and has featured in quite a number of movies one which was her role as Adesua in the unique Telenovelas series â Taste of Loveâ .Â
Shaffy is equally a wife and mother of two teenagers (22 &20 respectively) who are based in the USA; despite been over 40, the quintessential lady of the screen still wax stronger each day. In this chat with MUTIAT ALLI, she talks transmission from being a musician to an actor, her role in soon to be released movie â Lara and the beatâ, secret to her youthful look, style amongst others. Enjoy:Â
What character are you playing in the coming movie âLara and the Beat? Well I play the character of Jideâs mother who happened to be Nigeriaâs celebrated Disc Jockey âDJ Xclusiveâ. My character in the movie loves Jideâs girlfriend but she is particular if there are wealth, if the girlfriend is worthy of her son and in all she is a woman who is particular about material things.Â
Known for playing loveable motherly roles, how easy or tough was it for you to pull this off? When I was called on board, we didnât know what shape the character will take but when I got on set I felt like I should play a very razz woman with a little bit of Lagosian kind of feature and at the end of the day we were able to achieve it.Â
One fantastic thing about this particular role is the fact that it is one of the different kinds of feel I want to play. Although I have played such character before but Mama Jide just excites me. Did your expectation meets with acting alongside Xclusive knowing that itâs his first time on a movie set? Well I must commend his zeal on the job, he was willing to go beyond his comfort zone; he is indeed a sweetheart.
 He was a gentleman on set. I did not have many scenes in the movie but we had one day together and in that one day we made magic. He is not actor we all know because he came in feeling nervous but at the end he was amazing.Â
What do think attracted you to the script? The Biola Alabi Media (BAM) name attracted me to the movie, they are known to do good work; they did Banana Island Ghost. When you see people doing great work and they have a good reputation in the industry, when they call you, you drop everything and oblige.Â
So when they sent me script and I knew only had two scenes, I didnât mind because I still wanted to do it. For me it not about how many scenes you have in a movie but the impact you can have even with just a scene because your one scene could actually what makes the film.Â
The movie touched several themes; which amongst it do you love the most? The movie made conscious effort to touch themes that includes fashion, friendship, accountability amongst others and I must say I find all appropriate and dear to me. There is virtually everything you want to train your children on that the movie did not make reference to.Â
It talks about relationship with people, when you fall and how do you handle it. The bottom line of this movie is that fact it touches the fact that a lot of times things donât go the way we project it to be. I think itâs a film for everyone to see, you would love the quality of work and the people behind it.Â
Was there any emotional moment for you on set of the movie? Honestly not at all because I was just on set for day while they have been shooting for over a month. 1997 a lot of people fell in love with your personality when you featured in the song âLove me Jejeâ, how much of does moment is available to be shared? Well I still have lots of love to give out; but the fact still remains that I am still who I am, I have grown as person personally, professionally as actor, as a singer and I only wish that as I grow older; I am still very much wiser. 1997 still date, a different person might have involve but the through idea of the kind of person I am has not still changed. Are there still plans for you to go back into music? Music is still very much part of me because it will never depart from me; is a now a matter of finding the right time now.
 I still get nudge in the heart to do something cozy like an MTV unplugged kind of thing You have explored music and movie; is there is any other talent of yours that is yet to see? Keep watching!! One of the things in a humanâs life is growth and also I think for everyone we must learn that even when I tell you I am not doing music anymore; in a year I might decide that I want to do it. For now I am trying to be a better person in this chosen field (Acting), studying to be a director, producer and doing bigger things in Nollywood.
 However when I feel like I want to take a break in all that and go back to music, I will do that. If you have the opportunity to meet your younger self, what advice would you give? I will tell her not to be so hard on herself; there is so much more, make those mistakes. I have a 22 years old daughter; sometime when I look at her, she has lots of ideas and she be like, Mum I feel I should have grown pass this stage doing better things and I will go back to tell myself just like I am telling her now. Itâs ok to make mistake now, calm down!! Itâs coming and it will happen.
 If your autobiography is to be commissioned today, what will the title be and why? The title will definitely be âThe woman who lives by grace and grace did not leaveâ Despite your busy schedules, how do maintain the home front? Itâs not been easy but what works for me is the fact that I set my priorities and one of it is that I want to be there for my children and they equally respect me for what I do but the beautiful thing is that I have grown up children; you canât compare me with actors that little children. I am at the stage where in a month we might not see but we communicate via telephone call because technology has made easier because my children are not here.
 You are over 40 and still look ravishing, what is the secret to your youthful look? The secret is just take care of yourself, I tell a lot of people when you take care of yourself; your body will thank you. I think the biggest thing also is to feel good, forget the outer layer, the inner layer is the most important I must because when a woman is truly happy and she feels she is driven by her purpose, people will see that and that is the beauty. There is no reason every woman out there should not look good, Ankara fabric out there is as cheap as a thousand naira, give it a tailor, pack your hair and look good. Always make good first impression not necessarily expensive. How do you un-wine? I listen to music, I read a lot and I love to travel.Â
If we are do a search of your library what kind of books is stocked there? Seriously!! A range of suspense, drama, and romance; and also the most important books to me are books that change your life thinking, books that challenge you to think differently.
 I am opera fan. Knowing that you acted in countless movies; which role did you find more challenging for you as a person? I think Oviâs voice was one challenge for me, it was fun because I loved playing the character; most challenged for me will was then I had to play a 60/70 year grandmother and they made me up but the challenging aspect of it was the fact that I needed to sound older but I dare to challenge our writers to write more challenging roles for us; donât stigmatize actors because a character usually plays the role of mother in a movie does not mean she canât do well in other character. We are really not challenging yet our industry. Do you have dream roles? Well let me just state here that I am still pregnant as an actor and I want to give birth to good characters.
 One significant thing life has taught you being an actor? Life has taught me that fame does not bring happiness; unfortunately on social media you out the good day for the best day, one of things I would love to do is to approach younger girls and let them know your self-confidence matters a lot. We all have good days and bad days; donât ever feel that the pictures you see are who we are. Being an actor has made me realize that people want to place me on peddle stone and they want to see you as hero but meanwhile we are not heroes but actors.Â
The heroes out there are the mothers, teacher teaching in public school, the single fathers and mothers; those are the heroes. What is your advice to celebrities who bring up their personal issues on social media? For me as a person, I have chosen to keep my private life private but my work life is what my social media account is all about which you will always see but whatever happens in my home is my private life. My candid advice is take your family issues off social media and put out more of your work for the world to see.Â
What does style means to you? Do you what makes you comfortable; everybody has what suits them. Whatever makes you happy and comfy is your style.Â
As a celeb, do you patronize made in Nigeria products? Yes!!! 100% because I am an Ankara kind of person, I patronize lots of stores online ranging from 5k to 10k which does not mean I canât afford luxury things. How do you manage your finances as an actor? Well I have two children and one is out of college; so if you have kids in college and you have to send them the dollars, you will manage the account to the last dollar.Â
I think when we were younger we made the mistake of just trying to look good at all time; if I knew what I knew now, I would have made wiser choice but I believe when you know better, you do better.Â
Spend your money right and invest but you if you donât know what to invest in buy properties, land because it will never go out style. For me now, I do lots of investment and most importantly I invest in my children because they are the future.
Share Your Views With NewsSplashyÂ
This Post First Appeared On Newssplashy- Latest Nigerian News Today
via Latest Nigerian News Online-Nigerian News,World Newspaper
0 notes
Text
Hyperallergic: Required Reading
Snøhetta has revealed designs for a new underwater restaurant called Under that will be at the southernmost tip of Norway. It looks like a sinking ship, no? More impressive renderings here. (via Archpaper)
The political lives of medieval manuscripts:
Lomuto went online and found a forum, on the white-nationalist Web site Stormfront, where someone had asked for counsel concerning tattoos. A respondent suggested that the poster seek out the work of the tattoo artist who had spoken at the conference, and also pointed out âthat Celtic crosses work better for tattoos because they are not as obvious as a swastika.â Lomuto, in her blog post, notes that the role of Celtic iconography role in white-nationalist organizations âwas never explicitly referencedâ during the speakerâs talk. (She also mentions that the conference took place the same weekend as âBecome Who We Are,â a conference in Washington, D.C., hosted by the National Policy Institute, a white-supremacist âthink tankâ led by Richard Spencer.)
Is there a better symbol of the new gilded age?
Bloomberg's new London office cost a billion pounds to build & includes a relocated ancient Roman temple https://t.co/RRa9qPVL7q http://pic.twitter.com/GNrYYy0FUL
â Tom Gara (@tomgara) October 23, 2017
An article on the need to claim (physical) QTBIPoC spaces is published on Contemptorary (which is an art journal you should read):
Claiming QTBIPoC spaces means thinking of us not as romanticized extreme subaltern subjects, but rather as imperfect subjects-in-process (Alarcon), both alienated and in revolt, as both internalizing our oppression and as agents who enact, create, construct other and more critically subalternative ways of life than would exist in the world were we not here
A Picasso mural in Oslo has an uncertain future:
The Picasso Administration, which oversees the painterâs legacy, has also criticized the decision to remove the murals from Y-Block. In 2013, the organizationâs head of legal affairs, Claudia Andrieu, told Norwegian radio that the art should not be moved, but after a meeting with Norwegian authorities in 2014, the organization took a more conciliatory tone, saying in a statement that it would monitor the process step by step.
Male writers still dominate book reviews and critic jobs:
Once again, the London Review of Books âhas the worst gender disparityâ, with women representing only 18% of reviewers and 26% of authors reviewed. The LRBâs figures have remained more or less consistent since the first Vida count in 2010, despite the publication telling the author Kathryn Heyman in 2013: â⌠thereâs no question that despite the distress it causes us that the proportion of women in the paper remains so stubbornly low, the efforts weâve made to change the situation have been hopelessly unsuccessful. Weâll continue to try â the issue is on our minds constantly.â
The 2011 earthquake and tsunami that killed thousands in Japan also left behind people who were haunted by the dead, and some were even apparently possessed by them:
I met a priest in northern Japan who exorcised the spirits of people who had drowned in the tsunami. The ghosts did not appear in large numbers until autumn of that year, but Reverend Kanetaâs first case of possession came to him after less than a fortnight. He was the chief priest at a Zen temple in the inland town of Kurihara. The earthquake on March 11 was the most violent that he or anyone he knew had ever experienced. The great wooden beams of the templeâs halls had flexed and groaned with the strain. Power, water, and telephone lines were fractured for days; deprived of electricity, people in Kurihara, thirty miles from the coast, had a dimmer idea of what was going on there than television viewers on the other side of the world. But it became clear enough when first a handful of families, and then a mass of them, began arriving at Reverend Kanetaâs temple with corpses to bury.
The American Museum of Natural History is renovating their halls but take a last peak at the 1970s decor that will be no more:
The Mineral Hall in 1976 (via Gothamist, image courtesy AMNH)
Thereâs a real peculiar thing that happens with what appears on TVs in rerun television shows. Hereâs an explanation:
Turns out that 20th Television â the studio distributor behind Mother â has been selling promotional spots in syndicated episodes to wring even more money out of the sitcomâs already rich syndication deals. Specifically, the feat is accomplished by a partnership with a company, SeamBI, which stands for Seamless Brand Integration and is responsible for digitally altering old episodes with new products and brands.
The companyâs CEO Roy Baharav calls SeamBI an âadvertising technology innovatorâ and says that what they do â in essence, monetizing aging television shows by adding new brands and product placement into old episodes â is the future. âWhat we do is we insert, very efficiently, brands into content in a natural way and in a way that is valuable to advertisers,â Baharav says. âSo we find the balance between not compromising the integrity of the content and, on the other end, bring a lot of value to the advertiser.â
A beautifully reflective piece by Chloe Bass which is subtitled âCouples Counseling for Artists and Institutionsâ:
I was sitting on the floor of Powellâs, reading Roxane Gayâs Hunger and beating myself up for not choosing a more interesting book while surrounded by so many rare things, when I was struck by a sudden sneezing attack. Once, then twice, and on and on. No one near me said anything. My eyes began to swell. The sneezes continued. I believed I was cursed: to keep up these exhausting explosions until someone acknowledged me with bless you.
A trove of recently released documents confirms that the US had a role in Indonesiaâs 1965 massacre:
It should not be entirely surprising that Washington would tolerate the deaths of so many civilians to further its Cold War goals. In Vietnam, the U.S. military may have killed up to 2 million civilians. But Indonesia was different: the PKI was a legal, unarmed party, operating openly in Indonesiaâs political system. It had gained influence through elections and community outreach, but was nevertheless treated like an insurgency.
Harold Pinter was quite a character:
My spirit animal is Harold Pinter http://pic.twitter.com/FCfDPvFbF8
â Agnes (@agnesfrim) October 27, 2017
Required Reading is published every Sunday morning ET, and is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.
The post Required Reading appeared first on Hyperallergic.
from Hyperallergic http://ift.tt/2z0hYeS via IFTTT
0 notes