A (post) Christmas Haunting

Back when I was single, I had a haunting. We'll call it the "Ghost of Christmas Past," because it took place in Summer, but was most definitely a Christmas themed haunting. Of course Marley didn't visit me, but I do suspect evidence of some particularly mischievous elf ghosts. Elves aren't all cute and cuddly and live in trees and make cookies, you know. (Which come to think of it...isn't that pretty horrifying to know that elves who make cookies live in the trees amongst us?)

 I live in an old house, originally a farm house back in the day, apparently the first in the neighborhood. The architecture is somewhat unusual. The master bedroom is ginormous and takes up most of the second floor, except for an attached half-bath and a spacious (at the time) unfinished attic. Now, true, I used to abuse the poor attic. Basically, it became my storage (i.e., lobbing unused or undesired crap into) area. Everything went flying into there from new, emptied boxes of junk just bought (this was before recycling) to yesteryear's unwanted lamps to broken down furniture to discarded clothing. Boom. Wipe my hands of dust and shut the door. Out of sight, out of mind.

(Until years later when I met my wife. Because I didn't want her to see the impressive pile of junk I'd accumulated, I told her that the attic was where I hid the bodies of my victims. Honestly, I think she would've been less shocked by bodies than what she eventually uncovered. But I digress...)

So, lo, it came to pass that many, many moons ago, I was resting fitfully upstairs in my bedroom. A hot summer's night, I had kicked off my blankets and turned the fan on. I lay back in bed. Just as the Sandman came and sprinkled sand into my eyes ("Aieeeeee! My eyesssss!"), right as I began to sail the sleepy shores of slumber ("Pass the Dramamine!"), I heard a quiet, rhythmic tinkling. Or so I thought. Just a single little bell.

I tossed and turned, not wanting to pay heed to my imagination. Yet, the quiet tinkling continued. I had absolutely zero desire to contemplate the existence of supernatural hi-jinx in my house, so I enfolded the pillow around my head like a burrito. Just like the attic: out of sight, out of mind.

Then I gave it some thought. You know how sometimes ambient sounds in the night, particularly when you're hanging onto that half-waking, half-dozing precipice before tumbling over into sleep, can sometimes sort of gestate into a familiar ear-worm of a song? How sounds of the night can form a melody of their own? No? Is it just me? Well, that's what I decided to chalk it up to. Or maybe it was just my imagination running amok. It'd been a long day at work.

I decided to come up from cover. Gain peace of mind by proving, without a doubt, I'd heard nothing.

But then it started again. A slow melodic tinkling. And as I listened very closely, it began to form a song. A very familiar song. One without lyrics, but unmistakably one big, honkin' helluva earworm song.

"You better watch out, you better not cry..."

Gasping, I sat up in bed. Tried to orientate myself, get my bearings. Like a dog will sometimes tilt its head to better lock in on a troubling sound, I did the same thing.

"...you better not shout, I'm telling you why..."

Nooooooo! The song was definitely there. Quiet as a bug's whisper, but very much present. At once coming from all around me, yet nowhere at all, from somewhere dark and mysterious and otherworldly and better off not being thought about.

I got up. Emptied my bladder, first things first. I tiptoed through the room, trying to find the source without rousting the ire of some angry ghost. I honed my hearing. Closed my eyes. Focused. The closer I came to the shut attic door, the more certain I was that whatever caused the otherworldly sound emanated from within.

With a shaking hand on the knob, I twisted and...

The tinkling stopped.

Maybe it'd been nothing. A trick of the mind. Something from far away. Perhaps one of the weird neighbors playing out-of-season Christmas music at 3 in the morning.

I decided I didn't want to know. Some things are better off buried.

I ran back to bed, settled in, did some deep breathing, and...

"Santa Claus is coming to towwwwwn. He sees you when you're sleeping..."

Noooooooooooooo! The gentle tinkling had started to tinkle tinklously again.

This time when I wrapped the pillow around my head, I held on tight, riding out the long wait until dawn broke.

At some point I must've drifted off. I awoke to blessed sunlight streaming in through the window, a nice, toasty Summer sunlight far, far removed from creepy, fat bearded men in red watching me when I sleep.

In the cold, most assuredly unsupernatural light of day, I went into the attic. Looked around. Found nothing off, nothing askew, no signs of nocturnal visitors, human, animal or ghostly.

And went to work.

Then around midnight that very night, the music fired up again.

This time I prepared myself to face my supernatural tormentors. I flung open the attic door and...the tinkling stopped. I flipped on the light. Nothing.

When I got back in bed, damn Santa Claus started stalking me again with his horrific music box.

While I wanted to tell people at work about it, I knew they'd think I was crazy. Hell, even I began to think along those lines. I didn't know what terrified me more: being crazy or having an active ghost next to my bedroom.

The hauntings continued throughout the week. Finally, Saturday afternoon rolled around and I was determined to get to the bottom of it. I tore apart my mountain of rubble, my empire of past indulgences. I opened box after box. Like a madman, I ripped apart everything, exorcising my old teddy bear, my warped Frampton Comes Alive album, my designer jeans, everything I thought could be touched of otherworldly influence, until...

"He sees you when you're sleeping..."

Of course! The Christmas junk box! I opened it, dug through it...

"He knows when you're awake..."

And there was the culprit! A stupid, damn Christmas ornament. A battery operated globe enclosing a little train circling around a miniature North Pole. I'd forgotten to turn it off. Or...HAD I?

Why would the music have been intermittent? Why did it just now start in the dog days of Summer and lay dormant over the hard, brutal Winter? Why did it stop every time I came toward the attic?

Naturally, the only logical reason was that my house was built on top of an elf burial ground. 

While on the topic of hauntings, check out my historical ghost novel, The Ghosts of Gannaway. While it's not nearly as frightening as my post-Christmas haunting, the entire small mining town of Gannaway, Kansas is under siege by evil spirits, ghosts, bad men with fat wallets, and the "yellow-eyed fever." For more info, scoot on over here right now!

Cowering Beneath the Tree of Doom

My wife and I are living in a war-zone! Except we're under fire from our trees, not people! They've turned on us, declaring war, and determined to destroy us! Just like a crappy nature attacks film from the '70's! I halfway expect to see Ray Milland tooling around in our yard in a wheelchair, ranting and railing against "those damn trees!"

Whew.

So. Not too long ago, I told you about our neighbors' tree toppling into our yard and taking out the fence. You guys remember that, right? Hang on a minute...I've got it around here somewhere. Here!

We considered that a precautionary tale. For some time, a huge lumbering beast of a silver maple tree has hovered over our neighborhood, dropping heavy-ass limbs left and right in our backyard with wild abandon. One of the biggest trees in the 'hood, it looms over our house in an extremely threatening way.

My wife decided to call in an "arborist." What is an "arborist," I hear some of you asking? It's an extremely overpaid "tree expert" who tells you if the tree is sick or dying, that's what an arborist is. (Actually this is the second arborist to come out and investigate the tree; several years back we hired another arborist {taking out a second mortgage to do so} to look at the tree. Through intense{and costly! There went my daughter's college fund}scientific analysis, he said {with a very smug arborist's smirk} "the tree might be slowly dying, but it won't happen in your lifetime." I suppose he must've thought I was at death's door or whatever, but let's get back to the here and now, shall we?).

So our new arborist says, "Hmmmm. Looks like you've got some fallen limbs." (See what I mean? Science!)

"What do you recommend, Mr. Arborist?" I ask.

"Well...I think it's got some dead limbs up high, but the whole tree is still kicking. Let me get my guys out here to trim it up."

ZZZZZZZZ. THUD! KRAK! KABOOM! BUZZZZZZZ! "AIEEEEEEEE!"

On and on it went, with sawing and swearing and climbing and things breaking on our deck until they collected their big fat pay-check.

A couple of weeks later, we hear a big thud. Another giant branch had taken the plunge, mercifully sparing the lives of us and our dogs.

The arborist comes back out (my wife has him on speed-dial, I think), always very stealthy in the backyard, never bothering to let us know beforehand.

He writes, "Well...huh. That tree is deteriorating a whole lot faster than I suspected."

Annnnnnddddddd, that's why we pay him the big bucks.

So he looks at his guys' schedule and says he'll let us know when they can come back out.

A couple of Sundays ago, my wife and I hear a huge crash. The Tree of Doom split off yet another huge-ass branch, this one destroying our fence and landing in the other neighbors' yard, barely missing their carport.

Huh. 

So, we sorta stress the urgency of the sitch with the arborist. "For God's sake, hurry man, we're gonna die!"

Again, the wrecking crew come back and take down a third of the tree. Leaving behind the largest, tallest portion: the bulk of the tree that's going to topple onto us, and squish us into pancakes while we sleep. I'm almost afraid to sleep upstairs. Those trees have it in for us.

It's not like we've done anything to them. I mean, they really should be raging against global warming and the ensuing, crazy wind-storms. Or maybe the creeping disease that took out our neighbors' tree. How about the extremely wealthy arborist who's making a career out of taking our tree down?

Just don't kill us!

What have we learned here? 1) Trees can be extremely ruthless, merciless and revenge-minded; 2) Move to a neighborhood where the trees are but saplings and leave your grandkids to worry about it; 3) If you have a child, steer them into arboristry. You'll be set for life.

Speaking of nature run amok, there's a whole bunch of it on the loose in my horror short story collection, Twisted Tales from Tornado Alley. Let's see...we've got killer giant spiders, sentient plants with murder on the mind, a lovelorn Bigfoot, an entire underground community of mutated monsters, and lots more. Take a look at it here. But for God's sake, don't tell the trees!

Back in the Lap of Godland

You guys ever visit little Godland, Kansas? Well, don't! Trust me... It's a small, ironically Godforsaken little rural armpit of a town stashed away in Western Kansas populated by...well, I don't want to give it away.

Maybe in my excitement, I got ahead of myself here...

You see it's fine to read about Godland. Just don't visit there. In fact, I would urge you to read my book, Godland, and then you'll certainly want to stay away from the Hades hole.

Godland means a lot to me. It was the first out and out horror novel I'd written and was initially published in 2016. Alas, that publisher went under this year, but thanks to the great guys at Grinning Skull Press, they've resurrected my very first horror novel and given me a chance to spiff it up (and correct a LOT of troublesome timeline issues). Ta-dahhhhhhh!

The novel introduces a lot of themes that came to trouble my sleep and dominate my books: dysfunctional families, evil people (sometimes worse than the supernatural kind), lots and lots of plot twists and surprises, multiple characters' point-of-views, a so-dark-and-nasty-you-gotta-really-dig-deeper-in-the-grave gallows sense of humor, and (I hope) an impending sense of dread and mounting suspense. All of this set in my stomping grounds of the sometimes creepy, at times terrifying, more often than not pious red state of Kansas.

Call if farm noir.

Wait...here's the big tease:

An embittered farmer.
A New York corporate raider.
Two teenage high school girls.
A failed small business owner.

Past and present collide, secrets are revealed.
These disparate people gather at a desolate Kansas farm
for a hellish night not everyone will survive.
Godland is a dark psychological suspense horror thriller.

A Midwestern nightmare.
Farm noir.

There you have it. Oh! I almost forgot... Some of the incidents in this book are based on real events. One particularly nasty scene (I'm not telling which) sprang from something that happened to my dad. Another incident occurred to a friend of mine. I'll leave it to you guys to suss out the reality from the fiction.

And if you guys are really, really nice and buy the crap outta this book, I'll toss you a bonus and drop my original, dunder-headed, so bad it's hilarious, "happy" ending in a future post. Thank Godland, I came to my senses!

Okay, folks, that's Godland, published by the great Grinning Skull Press (best horror editor in the biz!) and available through the omnipotent, unavoidable, faceless leaders of the world, Amazon. Kindle version or spiffy trade paperback. Tell 'em "Edwin" sent you. Go on...do it. And then wait for funny hi-jinx to ensue.

 

Sociopathic Childhood Pals

We've all had 'em. I'm not talking about bullies. I've enjoyed those, too, mostly because I was an overweight kid. (Fun fact: bullies hate fat. It's like being overweight personally affronts their otherwise good-natured, fun-loving, huggable temperaments). No, I'm talking about the kids we befriended as children who turned out to be Jeffrey Dahmers.

I was contemplating this the other night during a particularly nasty bout of insomnia and discovered that I've had quite a few in my upbringing (Hey, counting psychotic children is much more lucrative than wasting time counting those endless, infernal bleating sheep jump over a fence.) 

I'll start with my first because you never forget your first. We'll call him Dickie Hutchinson. I first befriended Dickie in the sixth grade where I found out that he had a collection of ultra-rare forties comic-books in his attic. Pleading with him to see these rarities, he continued making excuses about how he can't reach them or they fell into a crevice that would destroy the house trying to get at them. So, we found other things to waste time with (because that's what kids do; waste time. We can't drive, don't want to rely on parents, haven't quite discovered the opposite sex outside of nice smiles or cool attitudes, and haven't yet found a way to get beer). One day, Dickie and I were out walking past a suburban neighborhood privacy fence. Beyond the fence, a huge menacing dog growled, scrabbled at the wood, barked, and basically wanted to tear our throats out. A few minutes later, a collared cat wanders up to us. Dickie picks it up and pitches it over the fence. Then runs. I'm stunned, shocked. Felt horrible, but ran away as horrific yowls and meows ensued.

When I caught up to Dickie, I read him the riot act. "Why in the hell did you do that, you dick? (Sixth grade was when I discovered the fun of naughty words; still couldn't bring myself to drop any "f-bombs," though.)"

Dickie just shrugs, tries to turn it around on me. "Whatever. Don't be a pussy."

I storm off with these parting words, "You're a dick! And a liar 'cause your comic books don't exist!"

That was the end of that friendship. I had no idea he derived pleasure in torturing animals and I spent many a worried night about that cat.

See what I mean? That's how Jeffrey Dahmer got started.

But as I grew older, the sociopathic slant of my childhood friends changed as well. Animal torture was out. But turning on your so-called friends was the "new cool!"

Meet Barry Burgenstock. I did in eighth grade. He was new to school and even though a lowly "sevvy (seventh grader)," I soon discovered he shared an offbeat sense of humor with me. I just had to befriend him. For a while, everything was cool. We snuck into some R-rated films, had some laughs, cruised the mean streets of suburban Kansas at night and lived to tell about it.

Until one afternoon, I brought Barry home with me. My parents were at work, so we went outside to hang in the backyard. My friendly, retired neighbor was out. I hollered hello, introduced Barry. 

The neighbor said, "Hi Barry, how are you?"

Barry, with a stupid innocent grin, says, "Eat shit."

Crickets. Sooooooo many crickets.

Again, I was gobsmacked. As was the neighbor who blinked, turned snow white, than fire engine red, furrowed up that brow, and stormed inside. Once again, I yelled at my "friend" for doing this. He just grinned and said, "What's the problem? You're being a pussy." (Amongst boys, that word's the ultimate insult. I haven't used that derogatory term since high school, haven't even heard it until our ex-orange-president made it vogue again.)

Later on, I had to apologize to the neighbor one-on-one for my buddy's behavior. But stupidly, I gave Barry a second chance.

A couple nights later we were walking down the street. He'd found a metal pipe and started swinging it around. Suddenly he swung it at me a few times like a ninja with involuntary spasms.

"What're you doing?" My false smile trembled.

"I'm going to kick your ass." He swung it a few more times in front of my face. Then he threw it down. "I don't need that to beat your ass."

Through it all, I attempted to maintain my unsteady grin, thinking that surely he was pulling my leg. He wasn't. 

I walked away as he continued to hurl insults after me. 

I went through a LOT of "friendships" in my youth.

Finally, I'm reminded of Steve Brynner. Now, Steve was actually my brother's best friend (both one grade below me), and we'd started hanging out together a couple times over the summer after I graduated. All of us eighteen at the time, we discovered the joy of beer!

After one night in a bar, we walked back to the car, and Steve starts telling us how he could kick both our asses. Inwardly, I sigh. I've been down this path before, but can't lose face because I'm a year older. My brother just watches and Steve grabs me, throws me to the ground and starts wrestling with me as a huge crowd of teens gather to watch. No punches were hurled, but it was highly embarrassing, not to mention unnecessary. I didn't get it.

Later, my brother said he was a psycho and that he always turned on a dime.

Figures. A trait the West boys shared: really cool friends.

Cut to a year later, when I ran into Steve in Westport, the local summer College bar hang-out area. Outside of a bar he wanted to talk. I just sorta laughed him off, shook my head derisively, said, "whatever," and walked off with my friends.

Steve wasn't having it. In the crowded street, he starts screaming nonsense, howling like a madman as I sped up to get out of there. Seriously deranged, yelling weird things like, "You used to be my best friends brotherrrrrrr! And now I want to killllllllll youuuuuuuuu!" It went on and on, echoing throughout the buildings until his voice started choking with sobs and rage-filled tears.

Thankfully, that was the last either of us ever saw of him (even though he didn't live too far from us). Probably ended up taking his rage overseas. Or to prison.

There were several others, but these guys were the highlights. And I wouldn't be surprised if one or more didn't go the route of Jeffrey Dahmer. Maybe they did and just haven't been caught.

Maybe I need to be more careful in who I befriend. I don't want to ride out my golden years as a serial killer magnet.

While we're on the topic of serial killers, have you guys read my serial killer thriller trilogy, Killers Incorporated? There're more serial killers than you can shake a stick at in these pages. Watch as they stalk, betray, befriend, and annoy one another. Heads are chopped, dropped, and swapped! In other words, good wholesome fun for the entire family. (And I'm pretty sure I'm friends with at least four of these guys). Check out the first book in the series, Secret Society, right here!