Mystic Island

Where Everyone Has a Story

Archives for January 2014

The Old Stone Church: Part 1—The Church

Written by The Keeper Leave a Comment

The Stone ChurchThe Old Stone Church sits in its sprawling yard, seemingly watching the sea. Some of the island’s residents say this watching is not figurative. The church has two windows about halfway up on its steep, gabled roof. The windows, which are flat on the bottom and rounded on the top, gives them the very distinct impression of eyes. The bottom half of the church is constructed of smoothed stones. The top half, constructed of shingles, is dominated by two stained glass windows set in the A-framed walls. The stained glass doesn’t depict anything specific, prompting many to claim the patterns in the glass can change from day to day. On one corner of the church is a tall bell tower. The clock reads eleven, and the bell begins to ring the hour. Eleven slow, melodic gongs.

To Be Continued…

The Skeleton: Part 1 — A Stringless Marionette

Written by The Keeper Leave a Comment

The Skeleton in the ClosetVincent Stone crouched beside the car. He coughed twice, holding down his dinner, and closed his eyes. He was frozen, alone, scared, his heart pounding through his body. “Oh God,” he whispered. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever felt this way. Vincent Stone was always calm. Vincent Stone was always collected. But now, cool and calm Vincent Stone was crouched next to his car, about to puke up a $300 dinner and piss on his Armani shoes.

He stood up, rocking a little like a man who’d spent the night with Jack Daniels. But Vincent Stone was sober. And unfortunately, he was awake. This was no dream. He tried to take a step, his legs not responding. A marionette with no strings. C’mon. Left, then right, left, right…. He almost threw-up again, bending over, panting white puffs of breath. He took a deep gulp of cold air that bit at his lungs. That’s it. Slow, deep breaths.He shut his eyes, and his face slowly reassembled.

As he walked away from the car, the headlights stretched his shadow ahead of him in a long, dark path, and his senses and thoughts began to return. He stepped onto the old pier that jutted, suspended over the Ocean, and he leaned his forearms on the wooden rail, watching the black water. He liked the ocean. Even in the dark it was reliable. It would always be wet. Always taste salty. And even if it decided to show off by pounding the coast with a storm, one could trust it to be calm again. It was definite. It followed rules. Unlike life. Who’d have guessed that when he woke up this morning, he’d run into this kind of a problem?

His hand buried into the pocket of his long, black overcoat, happening upon his lighter and cigarettes. He pulled them out, hands shaking, following the usual routine of extracting a cigarette and igniting it with the gold lighter. He welcomed the smoke into his lungs and watched snowflakes descend and disappear into the ocean. He blew a stream of smoke into the air and turned to look at his Porsche, the engine purring. Snow fell in the headlights and collected on the dirt road. Occasionally, the intermittent wipers would sweep across the dark windshield, snuffing another generation of snowflakes that had gathered.

To Be Continued

 

Auras: Part 1 — Mother Night

Written by The Keeper Leave a Comment

Mother Night 2David Collins sat at an old, beat up, metal desk. The desk was very similar to the one at which his old boss sat. David always thought that the desk Mr. Finney sat at was like a teacher’s desk. Now, David was a teacher. A substitute teacher, at least. He was not known as Mr. Collins. He was known as Mr. Grimes, although he was not quite sure why. This day, David was filling in for Phil Abbott, an English teacher. David liked subbing for English teachers. English teachers usually left some kind of silent reading for their sub plans, so David didn’t really have to teach anything. He could just sit at the old, metal, Mr. Finney-type desk and draw. He would find classroom markers and a sheet of computer paper, and he would turn the blank sheet into a swirling array of colorful flowing images. Then, at the end of the day, he would find some random place—a classroom, a bulletin board, a kid’s locker—and fasten the picture to it. No one, other than David, knew who was leaving these drawings. Most people thought the mysterious pictures were done by Jacob Grist, but the pictures were not remotely as realistic or detailed as Jacob’s work. (Just so you know, David would be at the middle school when Jacob pulled his little stunt, but David was the only person that didn’t think anything was out of place that day. He noticed a lot of fearful red auras running around him, but the stuff he saw wasn’t any more fantastical than other things he’d seen.)

David had not intended to be a substitute teacher. He came upon the job by accident. He was supposed to be a patient of Ward 6, the mental health division of Mystic Mercy Hospital, but somewhere along his transfer, the attendants lost track of him. David wandered into the island’s middle school, hoping maybe to find a job with the custodial staff. But fate had other ideas for him. When David walked into the school’s office and asked the secretary about a job, the secretary thought he was a man named Bart Grimes, who was scheduled for a job interview at that exact moment. Bart Grimes, meanwhile, had just been killed in a car accident off-island. (You may have seen it on Nick Bishop’s television show, but more on that another time.) David sat in front of Principal Cooper, and Principal Cooper sat with Bart Grimes’s very impressive resume in his hand, thinking it was David that had taught all those other students at all those other middle schools. David was hired on the spot, never asking why they kept calling him Mr. Grimes.

When the final bell rang, and all the students flowed from the room—looking to David like a sea of multi-colored lava—David stood from his seat, setting aside his drawing. He wrote a quick note to Mr. Abbott about how he thought one of the students was possessed by evil spirits. When Mr. Abbott read the note, he would think David was making a hyperbolic joke. David wasn’t making a joke, however, he was quite serious. The student he was talking about was Tommy Rogers. Tommy Rogers wasn’t possessed, he was just an asshole. It would be coincidence that, as David was leaving the building, he affixed his new artwork to Tommy Rogers’s locker. David had titled the drawing, “Mother Night.” It was a picture of two figures, a mother and child. In the drawing, night was falling, and scary things were descending upon them, but the child was comforted by his mother. In David’s own life, when the scary things really did descend upon him, David had no one to comfort him, he just learned to accept it. I’ll let David tell you more about that, and what happened with his former boss, Mr. Finney.

To Be Continued

Death Tours: Part 1 — Welcome to Death Watch

Written by The Keeper Leave a Comment

032

Paula Reese, sharply dressed, thirty-four year old businesswoman is striding through the crowded New York sidewalk, returning to her office after an important business lunch. Paula just made a big deal, and the spring in her step makes her forget about the uncomfortable high heel shoes she is wearing. Paula is walking with her held high, shoulders back, her stride with purpose. Seemingly nothing can break-a her stride. That is, until a buzz swarms through the sea of pedestrians around her. There seems to be some sort of commotion up ahead, and the crowd, like a flock of sparrows, all move forward in unison.

Paula turns to a young man with shaggy brown hair and a corduroy sports jacket, and she asks him, “What is it? What’s going on?”

The guy with the shaggy hair shrugs and continues, lock-step with the crowd. Car horns begin beeping in the distance, and the crowd slows, the people forming a large semicircle on the sidewalk. People muttering and buzzing with excitement.

Paula uses her new confidence to cut through the crowd to the front edge, as if belonging there. After all, that’s what her boss, John Thompson told her: When in doubt, just act like you belong there. Paula looks up at the surrounding high-rise buildings, spotting countless people peering from their offices, their faces pressed to the glass windows.

Paula is now beside a young man with sunglasses, a backward hat, and earbuds cranking a deep buzzing base rift. “What is this?” Paula asks him.

“Huh?” the man says, yanking the buds from his ears, his base rift now a clear thudding.

“What’s going on?” Paula says.

The young man nods his head, gesturing across the street.

Paula spots the camera crew. The spotlights. The sound booms. Then she spots him. The most recognizable face on television. Nick Bishop. He is good looking, the gray around his temples only now starting to spread further into his dark hair. But today he looks more tired than usual.

The beeping horns intensify as cars crawl by, drivers rubbernecking.

Paula turns to the young man with the earbuds, “Uh-oh, who’s the unlucky person?”

Across the street, Nick is saying something to a man wearing a headset and the man in the headset scrambles about, talking quickly into the mouthpiece. The cameras turn toward the crowd, and a panicked murmur breaks out amongst the crowd, each person looking at the people around him and her, some craning their necks as if looking for someone in particular.

Paula says, “Who’s the—?”

The buzz runs through the crowd like a wave at a stadium, people turning their heads in one direction. Their heads turn toward Paula, and then the crowd, as one, steps away from her.

Paula has a sudden realization, and she begins to plead with the crowd, “What are…? No, wait… It’s not me.”

But the people continue to move away from her, looks of sympathy and thrilled anticipation upon their faces.

“It’s not me. Please. It’s not me.” Paul says. She darts toward another woman in a business suit. The woman flinches. Paula saying to the woman, “Please. It’s not me.”

The woman in the business suit says, “But he’s never wrong.”

Paula reels around at the crowd, begging them for assurance, but none can offer it. She begins backing away from them as they back away from her, Paula almost falling off the sidewalk as she steps into the street. She turns toward Nick and calls to him, “You got it wrong. You got it all wrong.”

Nick lowers his eyes, saying something to the man wearing the headset again.

Paula rants and strides in circles, raving at the passing cars. “It’s not me.”

At this moment, a man named Toby Strunk is driving his car by the ruckus, craning his neck to watch the camera crews. He doesn’t notice Paula ranting. And as Paula reels around, screaming and pleading, she trips in front of Toby’s car. The crowd cringes, gasping, some looking away as Toby’s tires drive over Paula, crushing her body.

Toby stops the car. The crowd is silent. Toby gasps, looking around, noticing Nick Bishop walking slowly from across the street toward his car. Toby says, “Oh, shit.” He then leaps from his car and darts to the front of his vehicle as Nick steps before him. Toby looks down at Paula’s broken body, then up at Nick. Toby saying, “I didn’t even see her.”

Nick tells him, “It’s not your fault.” He turns and looks at the crowd. They cheer.

Generally, he’d throw his arms up with showman exuberance, but now, he looks at the crowd as if seeing a crowd like this for the first time. He looks at Toby. Toby still staring down at Paula— her eyes open, blood trickling from her open mouth. The camera crew is suddenly blocking his view as they get a good close-up of the woman for the television audience.

Nick looks across the street at the man in the headset, his producer Brent Parker. Brent gives him a thumbs-up as the crowd of onlookers begin to disperse and continue on with their lives.

The camera turns from the woman and onto Nick. He says into the camera,“ Welcome to Death Watch.”

To Be Continued