I. It is Summer and Cecelia dreams of Magpies. Omens flock to her at midnight -- another night, another nightmare -- dark wings crowd her and she is increasingly claustrophobic. The winged visions never let her sleep for long. Cecelia wakes with a start, heart hammering against the walls of her chest. She still hears their croaking calls. Buzzing about her brain is a relic from her childhood, learned and abandoned on the playground, the words emerging from the depths of time like cicadas refusing to be silenced: The Magpie Divination Rhyme. One for sorrow, Two for joy, Three for a girl, Four for a boy, Five for silver, Six for gold, Seven for a secret, Never to be told. She looks over at her husband, and longs to wake him, to give his shoulders a shake, but pulls her hand back. What would she say that she hasn’t said already? What could she say aloud that she can’t say to herself, that only her dreams can articulate?
The night comes to life in rich inches, the slow roll of dark dropping down the sky in a wash of velvet ink. A smattering of stars, tiny fire flies, wink and close their eyes to the world, blazing with the last kiss of scarlet against the backdrop of a city lost in its own dreams. I can feel the metallic hum of life pulse through my bones, jolting me into an almost too keen awareness of every breath drawn around me. A million hearts surge with the electricity of unslaked need and want tonight, leaving me pinioned by their weight..breathless with desire.
You are the chosen one this evening, beautiful boy, watched and followed for too many nig
A song murmured up from the valley below. An old woman’s voice, frail and dry. The dialect strange. With the setting sun and the evening fog, the melody felt ghostly. From another world entirely possibly.
The graveyard below was not haunted however; there were no bodies in this place of death. Only stones and figurines to remember those who were never found, and those who never came home. There were tombs as well, built with old bricks from the nearby crumbling castle wall--but these empty tombs seemed worse corpseless than if they had really contained the bodies of the dead. The little structures were built for the very things they di
Devil in the Dark
The monster in the corner of the jail cell wasn’t moving. It’s eyes were two emotionless silver flecks in a blanket of shadow. Scary and silent. Hollowed and haunted. Ancient beyond words. The rest was hard to make out in the darkness. The creature was definitely large and twisted. It appeared to have wings which were scaled. It’s face seeming animalistic, but strangely human.
Anna Isabel Asau had been down here for days. Possibly weeks. Possibly longer. It was all a blur now. She wasn’t sure how much more she could take before she completely lost control of reality. Before what was left of her sani
From the Storm
It was early morning, but Magdalene Ka Atasha had not slept. Dared not close her eyes. Continued to push forward at a relentless pace.
She rode a black horse. The oversized beast was fast–its breath deep and heavy, its eyes wild like midnight storms. The sound of its hooves against the ground was like a giant’s heartbeat. Strong and steady.
Behind her, the wind blew in haggardly from the prairies, moaning and howling like a tortured prisoner, and smelling of mud and dead grass. Ahead, in the far distance, fog lingered like ghostly whispers, haunting their surroundings in an uncanny stillness, hiding the dark mys
The van Helsing Legacy: We Shall Not Sleep - 2 by QuiEstInLiteris, literature
Literature
The van Helsing Legacy: We Shall Not Sleep - 2
December, 1919
The jangle of the telephone woke me at about four o’clock. I peeled my face reluctantly out of the fold of the book that had become my pillow and waited to see whether or not it would ring again. It did.
The lights in the hall clicked on, and Chessie’s puffy face appeared at the door of the study. During daylight hours, she was the very picture of feminine perfection, as though she’d been painstakingly snipped out of a fashion paper and magicked to life. In a few hours, her skin would be creamy smooth, cheeks naturally blushing, dark hair flawlessly arrayed in a dangerously modern bob, not a wrinkle to be di
The van Helsing Legacy: We Shall Not Sleep - 1 by QuiEstInLiteris, literature
Literature
The van Helsing Legacy: We Shall Not Sleep - 1
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
-Lieutenant Colonel John McRae
3 May, 1915
One year earlier
Sir Hannibal eyed the boy on the table. Young man, he corrected himself. Peacefull
Uruz. The Slave and the Trolls by HelevornArt, literature
Literature
Uruz. The Slave and the Trolls
“Sit down, slave! You struggle in vain,” says Asvald, cleansing his hands in a small water basin. Dried blood is washed away, reddening the water. “The rope that binds you is woven from hair of jotun and tail of nokken, so not even Fenrir the Wolf could escape from its grasp!” he laughs with heart. “You might think that there is nothing sweeter than freedom, but freedom comes with its own burdens. So, sit still, slave! and listen – I have a most interesting story to tell you, a story that may change your mind!”
With these words, the young man lets himself fall lazily in an armchair. A clay oil-lamp c