P.W. Creighton's Blog, page 3

Spring Giveaway - Bad Reputation

As a gift for everyone the North Shore series', "Bad Reputation" is going to be available for FREE for a limited time to celebrate the release of Sunglasses At Night. So please bounce on over to Amazon and download your copy today and make sure to share with everyone.

Click Here To Get A Free Copy Between March 28th and March 29th On Amazon and please share with everyone.

Sunglasses will be available the following weekend.

 

Actions often hide the darkest secrets

The North Shore Sheriff's Department has a bit of a problem. Someone contacted the local radio station last night and left an alarming confession.

Logan and his friends may be gossiping about it but their only concern is getting through the last day of school before summer vacation. After all, tonight is the party of the year. No one wants to miss it.

But the weight of secrets will have a costly price…

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sequel to Bad Reputation, Sunglasses At Night, is Available Now!

After a holiday delay and a few other things that were vying for attention, the second part of the North Shore story has just been released. Sunglasses opens a couple of weeks after the close of Bad Reputation where the characters are reeling from the events and trying to make sense of it all. Things are never quite that simple as secrets come to light.

Always the Bad Guy To Someone Else...

North Shore Sheriff's department has failed again but this time they've come under fire for the recent tragedy. A Senator's daughter is dead after all.

Logan is trying his best to keep the secret and deal with the loss but his new dream girl is not one to leave things alone. As he'll soon find out, she's not exactly who she pretends to be either.

Everyone has secrets but who is willing to expose them?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What's It Really Like To Be A Juror? Is Jury Duty Like TV And The Movies?

There is nothing more dreadful than finding that envelope with red writing on it in your mail. You're a good person, you're just minding your own business when you find that pesky envelope that says Juror Summons on it. So what is it really like to be a juror? Is it everything the TV and movies portray?

Well, I found out things aren't quite what we think.

So, in December I found this annoying envelope in the mail it was simple it wasn't a summons, just a survey. I could fill out the paper, go online or submit via phone. I sucked it up, sat down and filled it out online. The survey was simple it was basically are you an illegal immigrant? Are you a decent person etc. There was a catch, there wasn't any kind of confirmation email upon completion or anything other than the final page of the survey that thanked my for filling it out and said I would receive a contact via email.

I expected the worst but after a few weeks of not hearing anything life went onward.

Until that envelope returned with "Juror Summons" in bright red ink.

It was simple instructions to call a specific phone number after 5 on a specific day. That was all. Just call in at the desginated time and wait. Aside from being anxious everyone was saying 90% of cases are concluded outside of the courtroom so I likely won't have to go. I've had more than a few Criminal Justice classes to know that is certainly the case.

The days pass anxiously with everyone saying not to worry.

On the assigned day and time I dial the number and listen to the recorded message from the county Jury Commisioner's Office saying that all selected members for the chosen term are to call back in another week at the designated time again. Wait what? 

Yes, all of the hype and build up to call in and it was just call back again. It seemed even less likely that I would have anything to do with being a Juror other than this whole process making me anxious. I mean there is no difinitive answer. You couldn't make plans you just had to go about life as usual with this lingering weight hanging over you. Would you? Wouldn't you?

Well, a week passes and I'm pretty much getting to the point that I don't care, it's not going to happen they're going to chuck the case and all of this was for nothing. Except it wasn't.

I heard the recorded message from the Jury Commisioner's Office say all jurors numbered between 1 and 180 are to report tomorrow morning at 9AM sharp while all jurors 181 through 320 are dismissed. So, yeah I had a 1 and 320 chance of being selected and I was selected. Yay?

I quickly message work and tell them I've been selected and fill out the work/jury information on the juror summons. I grumble about this screwing up my day and get ready to head to the county courthouse in the morning.

This should be quick right?

 

 

Day 1

So, 9 AM in the morning. I show up at like 8:45 to get there early, get throug the courthouse security feeling more than a little lost and follow the other jurors down to the Comissioner's Office. The polite lady there directs us into a large meeting room with several hundred seats all facing forward towards a large flat-panel TV. She hands everyone a clipboard with an additional survey along with any disqualifying reasons why you shouldn't be a juror.

After a ridiculous number of people who couldn't follow instructions to save their life, everyone handed in survey #1 and the county Jury Comissioner finally showed himself. It's now around 10:30. Most of the delays were because people couldn't follow instructions and the clerk had to help address each person individually. Seriously, these were just check boxes. How can you not figure it out? Well, he thanked everyone for showing up and praised everyone for participating. He then led the pledge of allegiance. He explained that we were in place for a civil trial and as such only 6 jurors were needed with an alternate. Where a criminal trial would require 12 plus alternates. And then he put on a video.

Yes, just like school there was an idiot's guide to the courtroom explanation video. This was something produced by the state and looked like it was a high school project for PBS. It was cheesy, complete with bad acting and terrible low budget music and it lasted way too long. It was well over 10 minutes of one guy explaining who are actually in the courtroom and what their jobs are. After suffering through this terrible video we had to hurry up and wait because the court wasn't ready for us yet.

The Commisioner then proceeded to explain that if we did serve then we would be exempt for 10 years from serving again. He also addressed the misconception, no if you are dismissed without serving you are not free. You have the potential to be called back at any point with a higher chance of being selected. So, yeah it doesn't count as serving unless you are actually sworn in at some point. It's nearing 11 now. And I overhear the final number of people to show up is 43. Now we could go up to the courtroom.

The clerk takes everyone to a locked down elevator and leads us up to the courtroom.

It's huge and empty and only a few people are milling about. A court clerk in a weird jacket and the two attorneys. The clerk took our second surveys with our information and put them in a glorified bingo ball cage and proceeded with the 'hunger games.' The odds were good right? Only need 6 out of the 43 remaining jurors, right?

Their first goal was to fill the 12 juror seats in the jury box. That's all they needed at the moment. Then the attorneys could "Voire Dire" the jurors to see if they were acceptable. I breathed a sigh of relief everytime a number/name was called that wasn't mine. And I almost made it. Until the 11th was drawn. Yup. My luck put me in the jury box. One more was added and then the attorneys tried their best impressions of being friendly while asking questions regarding the case. This dragged on even longer. A solid 30min of making smalll-talk with potential jurors. 

Then the two attorneys retreated with the judge to discuss who was worth keeping. They only needed 6 after all. It only took ten minutes of lounging in the weird recliner-like jury seats before they came back out and the clerk picked off the six undesirables and then announced that all others were dismissed as well.

Yeah, so my luck sucks. I had the chance of being one  of six, SIX, out of over 300 selected and I made the cut. Why can't I have those odds with anything else?

So, the judge informs us that this will be a quick trial and it should be over hopefully in the same day. (HA!) The clerk comes by and leads us back to the jury room where she explains the procedure and how we must line up in a particular fashion each time and what we are to do. (If the video wasn't enough of an idiot's guide). The Clerk then leads us back into the courtroom where now the judge, attorneys and their parties are seated.

The judge then proceeds to read a script. Yes, a script! Complete with the fill-in-the-blank portions that may or may not be asked of you etc. Word for word. Seriously, the judge may have well just played a video. She just read it all and once again explained what jurors do and what the people in the courtroom do and then turned around thanked us again for our service. Like we have a choice.

Well, the trial begins. It's almost 11:30 now and the two attorneys go through the motions of their opening statments. Neither of them are as smooth as you see in TV. They end up repeating themselves and rambling in circles about their clients for a good 20 min each. Yes, they repeat everything over and over again and while they try that whole 'relateable thing' to the jury they're a bit like that principal or manager that pretends to be your friend. Yeah, not working.

After opening statments the judge then says it's time for lunch. LUNCH! We listened to about 40 minutes of monologuing and now we needed a break? Every juror wanted to continue and complained excessively about it when we were back in the juror room. Even for the few jurors that left for lunch were back in twenty minutes. Everyone wanted this thing over with. Nope, lunch was a full hour. The clerk was first back and chatted with us for awhile telling us that the pay for jurors hasn't changed in like 40 years and it's been at least 20yrs since the court provided lunch.

At 1PM court resumed. It looked like we were on track to actually have this trial concluded in one day. We only had to listen to a testimony and then go over some records before making our decision.

So, the plaintiff took the stand to testify answering all of these benign questions that had nothing to do with the trial. It was easy to see that the whole point of this was to establish them as a relatable person and give the 'poor me' factor. The catch was that if this TV or even a book the writer of this seen would've been fired. The questions and behavior were so awkaward and clunky that it made Syfy movies of the week look Oscar worthy. Hell, even the judge looked like she was falling alseep. ***Side note*** I do know that these are people's lives and it's certainly not a Hollywood production but this was weak by mock-trial standards.

An hour later the first attorney finished and passed it over to the Defendant's attorney. She asked a couple of questions and when the witness gave the wrong answer she screamed out 'mis-trial' which resulted in all of us being sent in the back for another 20min as they sorted out what happened.

When we finally came back out we were instructed to ignore or believe the testimony and we were moving on. Of course it wasn't quite that simple. The judge had to monologue for another 10min just to say that. Then since "It was getting late..." according to the judge (it was barely 2:40PM by this point.) We still had closing statements and records to go over now. But since it was so late in the day we were just going to pick it up tomorrow at 10AM instead. I'll say that again since it was getting so late we were going to have to pick it up again tomorrow. WTH?

DAY 2

It's Day 2 of this 'quick' trial. I show up at 9:35 hoping things would be quicker today. Seriously, the first day was only 2 1/2 hours of court total and all of it was monologuing and had nothing to do the facts of the case. So, wandering up the the courtroom and back to the jury chambers I find almost every juror is already there but no attorneys, judges or even clerks.

Somewhere around 10:15 court actually begins. We're lead into the room in our usual kindergartener style and back to our assigned seats. The judge begins by thanking us again and telling us what the steps of the trial are for the day in another 10min monoglue from her script.

We finally pick up where we left off yesterday. Closing statments. Once again the two attorneys talk themselves in circles for a good 45min saying the same things over and over about their respective clients. It had about as much effect as the opening statements had mind you. After which the judge says everyone has been sitting for quite a while and we should go back to our chambers to stretch for 5min. 

Seriously! We sat for 45min and then had to take a break? 

The 5min was more like 15 before we were paraded back to our seats. At which point the judge was giving us instructions for reviewing the records and coming to a decision. This was a 20min monoluge from her script yet again. A script! We were all given verdict sheets that we could review and fill out and these were explained at great detail as well. This script was like reading leagaleaze with all of the footnotes plugged into the sentence. She then said the alternate was now available to be dismissed. 1 in 7 chance right? Once again, not me. At the end of this the judge dismissed everyone for lunch! AGAIN!

This time none of the jurors wanted to leave for lunch and since we were all present the clerk informed us that we could go over the records. Everyone with any experience were able to tear through the records to pin point dates and facts and easily come to a verdict but one of the jurors wanted a more specific definition for a single word on the verdict sheet so the jury foreperson wrote down the question and gave it to the clerk. A few minutes later we were all paraded out and the judge just re-read her script all over again! That was not an answer. But after we returned to our chambers we were told that we needed to be paraded back out again. This time the judge re-read her script but with the verdict sheet explanations in a different order to match what we had. 

10 min later we were back in our chambers and everyone came to a verdict and filled out the two yes or no questions on the sheet and signed their names. A few minutes later we were paraded back out to deliver the verdict.

The trial was concluded with a short monologue and the jurors were asked to remain in their chambers as the judge wanted to chat with us. 20min of sitting and the judge finally stuck her head in to once again thank us for our service and tell us a horror story about a grand jury that had to serve for 2 months dolling out indictments. She thanked us and sent us to the Jury Comissioner to receive our 'get our of work' passes.

 

That was it.

 

So what is it really like to be a county juror? Well, here in New York it's nothing like the movies or TV. It's not overly dramatic and it's certainly not entertaining. It's dull as dirt and long. Longer and more drawn out than it needed to be simply because of the very lax attitude of getting things done in a timely maner. Seriously, it was a grand total of 5 hours of court and 2 hours of actual court. 1 hour of testimony, an hour and a half of records review and the rest was nothing but monologuing that accomplished nothing. It was a far cry from the dramatic TV styled court. Even more entertaining was the shear volume of courtroom for dummies monologuing and rigid scripting. This is why entertainment, movies and TV are influenced by real-life and not actual life. 

The reality of being a juror? Your day job is the only thing affected and only because you're not there. You're still paid by work it's just you work at the courthouse until it's done then you can go back to your regular routine. 

Was it something to be anxious about? Nope. It was kind of interesting when digging through the records but everything else could've been decided in 10min in the courtroom or in the judges chambers. And with an hour for lunch everyday, 15min breaks every 45min and always leaving before 4PM it's very relaxed. I've had college classes that were more rigid.

 

Bad Reputation Holiday Gift

As a holiday gift for everyone the new release, "Bad Reputation" is going to be available for FREE for a limited time. So please bounce on over to Amazon and download your copy today and make sure to share with everyone.

Click Here To Get A Free Copy Between December 12th and December 14th On Amazon and please share with everyone.

 

Happy Holidays!

Actions often hide the darkest secrets

The North Shore Sheriff's Department has a bit of a problem. Someone contacted the local radio station last night and left an alarming confession.

Logan and his friends may be gossiping about it but their only concern is getting through the last day of school before summer vacation. After all, tonight is the party of the year. No one wants to miss it.

But the weight of secrets will have a costly price…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Urban Decay Photography From Rutger Park in Utica

Rutger Mansion #1

As anyone that knows me knows that I love Urban Decay photography but, I don't often have the chance to get out and spend time in the very atmospheric locales to just focus on photography. Often I'm caught between investigating the sites at night and spending all of the best lighting indoors writing.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Urban Decay photography, this style of photography focuses on abandoned and neglected sites scattered throught the world. The imagery often has a haunting feeling conveying a sadness as you see what becomes of forgotten spaces that were once integral. These are usually abandoned amusement parks, office buildings etc. Some were left in such a state that it looks like time just stopped.

Fortunately, a recent site right in Utica, afforded me the opportunity to indulge my habit. 

Rutger Park in Utica is a historic district in Utica that shows the prosperity of Utica between the years of 1830 and 1890. "The names of the original occupants are a roster of the important merchants and industrialists of a young America, and the homes they built along Rutger Street are fine examples of late nineteenth century villas executed in the Italianate style. It is one of the largest groupings of these structures in the Northeast, and its significance earned it a place on the National Register in 1973." [Landmark Society of Utica]

 Thanks to the Landmark Society I was able to explore Rutger Mansion #1 which is currently one of the most dramtic examples of Urban Decay Photography for Utica. The Landmark Society is routely asked by photographers to take pictures inside. 

A.J. Davis was more directly associated with the planning of number 1 Rutger Park (c. 1850), one of the finest examples of the Italianate villa in America. It was for many years known as “Munn’s Castle” after its original owner, the banker John Munn. Munn had made a fortune in Mississippi before returning to Utica with his southern wife, Mary Jane, who entertained lavishly “in true southern style”. 

Rutger Mansion #1 was converted into a nursing home in the 60's-70s and after a couple decades of use it was abandoned. While the Landmark Society is working to restore the 4 remaining mansions Rutger mansion #1 or "Munn's Mansion" is lost in time. It's a perfect chance for some amazing Urban Decay photography right here in Utica. Old fixtures hang from the walls, the paint is peeling off almost every surface, old matresses lay on rusted metal bed frames, shower curtains hang from forgotten hooks and even the old phones are intact.

Without further ado, here are some of the top Urban Decay photography shots from Rutger Park in Utica.

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Paranormal Perceptions ~ Post-Apocalyptic Rumspringa ~ Laura Bickle

The Paranormal Perceptions series was created to gather some of the most interesting authors that are using paranormal elements in their stories. Every author has their own perceptions and provides their own insight on all things paranormal, ranging from urban legends and paranormal research, to myths and inspirations. This week on the guest series is author of The Hallowed Ones Book 2: The Outside, author Laura Bickle.

 

Katie is on the verge of her Rumspringa, the time in Amish life when teenagers are free to experience non-Amish culture before officially joining the church for life. But before Rumspringa arrives, Katie’s safe world begins to crumble.

The world beyond Katie’s Amish settlement has been devastated by a plague of vampirism. She’s been exiled from her community for failing to adhere to the new rules of survival, for letting an injured young man into her barn – a violation of the Elders’ rules to keep contamination at bay. As the title to THE OUTSIDE suggests, Katie must confront the destruction in the world beyond her community.

In a way, Katie has received the dark side of what she wished for. She had hoped to visit a city, to see the skyline and the lights. When she and her outsider friends arrive at the nearest large city, they’re confronted with dark, smoking buildings. There are no signs of human habitation, and what remains has been looted. Katie and her friends investigate a convenience store, hoping to scavenge for supplies. There is little to be found but ransacked shelves, a payphone with no dial tone, and broken glass.

Katie has never driven a car, and she was curious to try. But the roads before her are empty. Any gasoline or workable vehicles have been siphoned or wrecked. She travels now as she always has: on foot and by horse.

Katie hoped to experiment with “English” dress on her Rumspringa, to perhaps try jeans and makeup. She finds herself wanting to cling to the Amish way of dress, as a reminder of home. But when the weather turns to winter, she’s forced to wear the clothing she can find. English dress feels like losing her identity.

Amish food is delicious and homemade. Katie misses this terribly, as she’s forced to search for food. She finds some foods to forage: nuts, late-season berries that the birds have missed, scraps of trash. It’s nothing like her mother’s mashed potatoes.

Most of all, Katie yearned to meet “English” people in the outside world. But Katie and her friends meet very few survivors on the empty road. Most of humanity has fallen to vampirism, and she must fight and flee the empty shells of bloodthirsty people she encounters after dark.

And yet through this darkness come the shining ones: luminescent men and women with the power to deflect vampires and survive the night. But can these new people be trusted, and are they even people at all?

Katie yearns for home, a home that may no longer exist. No matter what she finds on the road, this yearning remains. She may never be able to go home again, but she’s determined to carry with her the identity she formed there. And this may be her strongest weapon against the darkness. 

Excerpt:

The hard part about the end of the world is surviving it, surviving when no angels scoop you up to fly you away to heaven. God doesn’t speak. But I kept asking.

“Unser Vadder im Himmel . . .”

My breath was ragged in my throat, my voice blistering around the words of the Lord’s Prayer. I spoke in Deitsch, the way my people always did when we prayed. It didn’t matter if evil understood me, only God.

“. . . Dei Naame loss heilich sei . . .”

I opened my arms, my coat and dark skirts flapping around my legs and wrists. I stared out at a field, holding a sharpened pole in each fist. One had been a garden hoe in a previous life and the other a shovel. The metal had been stripped from them, but they were still tools. Weapons. A crumpled piece of paper was fastened to my chest with straight pins, the writing growing faint and illegible in the gathering darkness.

 Darkness with eyes.

 “Dei Reich loss komme . . .”

 I strained to see into the night. Shapes seethed. I knew that something terrible was out there. The bullfrogs had stopped chanting and the late-season crickets had gone silent. I heard crunching in leaves, saw something shining red.

 “Dei Wille loss gedu sei.”

 My knuckles whitened on the wood in my hands.

 “Bonnet, c’mon!”

My head snapped around, my bonnet string slapping my chin. I could see two familiar figures retreating behind me. A short, round woman scurried through the field. Her platinum hair was bright against the night, almost appearing as a moon bobbing along churning water. She reached a nervous white horse who was pawing at the earth, clambered clumsily onto its back. Between her and me, a lanky shadow in a dark jacket gestured at me with white hands. Alex.

Bonnet. That was Alex’s nickname for me. My real name is Katie.

Alex said that God did not rule the end of the world. Alex said the end of the world was ruled by sun and Darkness. By time. And time was one thing we had very little of. The light had drained out of the day, and we were vulnerable.

I saw Alex taking off his jacket, wading through the grass toward me. I swallowed. That meant that he sensed the same thing I did, that the hair also stood up on the back of his neck, that he was ready to fight.

He stripped off his shirt. My heart flip-flopped for a moment and my grip on the stakes slackened for a fraction of a second. His pale skin was covered by black sigils that seemed to blur in the twilight. It was cold, but for them to work well, the creatures pursuing us needed to see them —the same reason I’d pinned the petition to God to my chest.

I worked the prayer through my teeth, one eye on the horizon, at the roiling shadows in the east.

“ . . . Uff die Erd wie im Himmel.”

“Damn it, Bonnet.” He grabbed my elbow. He tore the white bonnet off my head, stuffed it into his pocket.

I snatched at the strings. “Don’t . . .”

“This thing makes you a target. I could see you from all the way back there.” He stabbed a thumb at Ginger’s retreating figure on horseback, melting into the grass. “It shines like a beacon.”

I lifted my chin. “Ja. Maybe it should.”

This was an argument we repeated often. Though the end of the world had come, I adhered to the old ways. I was born Amish, and I would die Amish.

But hopefully not tonight.

Alex’s eyes narrowed and he looked over my head. I could feel his hand grow cold through the sleeve of my dress.

“They’re here,” I breathed.

He swore.

Alex pulled me back, back into the tall grass disturbed by a breeze.

My breath hissed behind my teeth:

“Unser deeglich Brot gebb uns heit,

Un vergebb unser Schulde,

Wie mir die vergewwe wu uns schuldich sinn.”

I ran. I felt the grass slashing around my skirts as I plunged into the gathering night. The landscape slipped past, and I had the feeling of flying for a moment, of hurtling through that striped shadow in which no crickets sang.

But I knew that a more solid Darkness gathered behind me. I could feel it against my back, the way the air grew thick and cold, the way it felt above the earth right before first frost.

The last lines of the Lord’s Prayer slipped from my lips:

“Un fiehr uns net in die Versuchung,

Awwer hald uns vum ewile.

Fer dei is es Reich, die Graft,

Un die Hallichkeit in Ewichkeit . . .”

Evil hissed behind me, crackling like ice popping over a fire. I felt the thread of a spider web slip through the grass, breaking on my hands.

“Amen.”

I turned, swinging the hoe in an arc around me. It whipped through the grass with the sound of a card trapped in bicycle spokes. A pair of glowing eyes leapt back, but claws scrabbled around the makeshift stake. I lunged with the second weapon in my left hand. The point struck home into something solid, and that something shrieked. I fought back the urge to shudder.

Nothing human made a sound like that. It was a sound like a bobcat wailing at sunset, mourning the loss of the day. Only this shadow mourned the loss of flesh.

Alex, ever the anthropologist, had a theory about that sound. In the calmer daylight hours, he speculated that this shriek had been at the root of the banshee myth, in an earlier, more orderly age. Once upon a time, when there had been civilization. I’d never heard the myth before, but I knew that inhuman sound all too well now.

The stake broke off in my hand, and I stumbled back with only splinters in my fist. Something swept up from the grass and ripped at my sleeve with claws.

I howled, smelling my own blood. The scent would bring more of them.

I twisted in its grip. The letter pinned to the front of my dress rustled and the creature with the glowing eyes hissed. It loosened its hold, enough for me to jam the ruined stake into its face.

I was no longer a pacifist. I meant to kill...

 

Author Bio:

Laura Bickle has an MA in sociology-criminology (research interests: fear of crime and victimology) and a BA in criminology. She has worked in and around criminal justice since 1997. Although she does read Tarot cards, she's never used them in criminal profiling or to locate lost scientists. She recently took up astronomy, but for the most part her primary role in studying constellations and dark matter is to follow her amateur astronomer-husband around central Ohio toting the telescope tripod and various lenses.

Writing as Laura Bickle, she's the author of EMBERS and SPARKS for Pocket - Juno Books. Writing as Alayna Williams, she's the author of DARK ORACLE and ROGUE ORACLE.

More info on her urban fantasy and general nerdiness is here: http://www.salamanderstales.com/  

Laura/ Alayna’s blogs

http://www.salamanderstales.blogspot.com and http://delphisdaughters.blogspot.com  

She’s also at Facebook

 

Paranormal Perceptions ~ The Outside ~ Laura Bickle

The Paranormal Perceptions series was created to gather some of the most interesting authors that are using paranormal elements in their stories. Every author has their own perceptions and provides their own insight on all things paranormal, ranging from urban legends and paranormal research, to myths and inspirations. This week on the guest series is author of The Hallowed Ones Book 2: The Outside, author Laura Bickle.

 

Excerpt:

The hard part about the end of the world is surviving it, surviving when no angels scoop you up to fly you away to heaven. God doesn’t speak. But I kept asking.

 

“Unser Vadder im Himmel . . .”

 

My breath was ragged in my throat, my voice blistering around the words of the Lord’s Prayer. I spoke in Deitsch, the way my people always did when we prayed. It didn’t matter if evil understood me, only God.

 

“. . . Dei Naame loss heilich sei . . .”

 

I opened my arms, my coat and dark skirts flapping around my legs and wrists. I stared out at a field, holding a sharpened pole in each fist. One had been a garden hoe in a previous life and the other a shovel. The metal had been stripped from them, but they were still tools. Weapons. A crumpled piece of paper was fastened to my chest with straight pins, the writing growing faint and illegible in the gathering darkness.

 

Darkness with eyes.

 

“Dei Reich loss komme . . .”

 

I strained to see into the night. Shapes seethed. I knew that something terrible was out there. The bullfrogs had stopped chanting and the late-season crickets had gone silent. I heard crunching in leaves, saw something shining red.

 

“Dei Wille loss gedu sei.”

 

My knuckles whitened on the wood in my hands.

 

“Bonnet, c’mon!”

My head snapped around, my bonnet string slapping my chin. I could see two familiar figures retreating behind me. A short, round woman scurried through the field. Her platinum hair was bright against the night, almost appearing as a moon bobbing along churning water. She reached a nervous white horse who was pawing at the earth, clambered clumsily onto its back. Between her and me, a lanky shadow in a dark jacket gestured at me with white hands. Alex.

Bonnet. That was Alex’s nickname for me. My real name is Katie.

Alex said that God did not rule the end of the world. Alex said the end of the world was ruled by sun and Darkness. By time. And time was one thing we had very little of. The light had drained out of the day, and we were vulnerable.

I saw Alex taking off his jacket, wading through the grass toward me. I swallowed. That meant that he sensed the same thing I did, that the hair also stood up on the back of his neck, that he was ready to fight.

He stripped off his shirt. My heart flip-flopped for a moment and my grip on the stakes slackened for a fraction of a second. His pale skin was covered by black sigils that seemed to blur in the twilight. It was cold, but for them to work well, the creatures pursuing us needed to see them —the same reason I’d pinned the petition to God to my chest.

I worked the prayer through my teeth, one eye on the horizon, at the roiling shadows in the east.

“ . . . Uff die Erd wie im Himmel.”

“Damn it, Bonnet.” He grabbed my elbow. He tore the white bonnet off my head, stuffed it into his pocket.

I snatched at the strings. “Don’t . . .”

“This thing makes you a target. I could see you from all the way back there.” He stabbed a thumb at Ginger’s retreating figure on horseback, melting into the grass. “It shines like a beacon.”

I lifted my chin. “Ja. Maybe it should.”

This was an argument we repeated often. Though the end of the world had come, I adhered to the old ways. I was born Amish, and I would die Amish.

But hopefully not tonight.

Alex’s eyes narrowed and he looked over my head. I could feel his hand grow cold through the sleeve of my dress.

“They’re here,” I breathed.

He swore.

Alex pulled me back, back into the tall grass disturbed by a breeze.

My breath hissed behind my teeth:

“Unser deeglich Brot gebb uns heit,

Un vergebb unser Schulde,

Wie mir die vergewwe wu uns schuldich sinn.”

I ran. I felt the grass slashing around my skirts as I plunged into the gathering night. The landscape slipped past, and I had the feeling of flying for a moment, of hurtling through that striped shadow in which no crickets sang.

But I knew that a more solid Darkness gathered behind me. I could feel it against my back, the way the air grew thick and cold, the way it felt above the earth right before first frost.

The last lines of the Lord’s Prayer slipped from my lips:

“Un fiehr uns net in die Versuchung,

Awwer hald uns vum ewile.

Fer dei is es Reich, die Graft,

Un die Hallichkeit in Ewichkeit . . .”

Evil hissed behind me, crackling like ice popping over a fire. I felt the thread of a spider web slip through the grass, breaking on my hands.

“Amen.”

I turned, swinging the hoe in an arc around me. It whipped through the grass with the sound of a card trapped in bicycle spokes. A pair of glowing eyes leapt back, but claws scrabbled around the makeshift stake. I lunged with the second weapon in my left hand. The point struck home into something solid, and that something shrieked. I fought back the urge to shudder.

Nothing human made a sound like that. It was a sound like a bobcat wailing at sunset, mourning the loss of the day. Only this shadow mourned the loss of flesh.

Alex, ever the anthropologist, had a theory about that sound. In the calmer daylight hours, he speculated that this shriek had been at the root of the banshee myth, in an earlier, more orderly age. Once upon a time, when there had been civilization. I’d never heard the myth before, but I knew that inhuman sound all too well now.

The stake broke off in my hand, and I stumbled back with only splinters in my fist. Something swept up from the grass and ripped at my sleeve with claws.

I howled, smelling my own blood. The scent would bring more of them.

I twisted in its grip. The letter pinned to the front of my dress rustled and the creature with the glowing eyes hissed. It loosened its hold, enough for me to jam the ruined stake into its face.

I was no longer a pacifist. I meant to kill.

I was no stranger to death. We Amish lived close to the earth, under the watchful eye of God and all of his kingdom. I had helped with the butchering of pigs, mourned the loss of dogs at my kennel in whelping. I had stood at the bedsides of my grandparents when they died. I’d held my mother’s last child, a stillborn, and witnessed a neighbor die during child-birth. Those things had happened in normal life.

But when life stopped and God’s kingdom fell into shadow, I saw death in an entirely different fashion. I had dressed the bodies of women in my community for burial, only to be forced to cut their heads off before daylight’s fingers of sunshine had left them. I had seen children torn asunder, reduced to unrecognizable smears on a ceiling. I had slain men who were once like brothers to me, impaled them, and burned them.

I had seen too much. 

I had seen true Darkness.

My heart thudded against the fabric of my dress and the holy letter pinned there —small defense against the undead, but still a defense. I thrust down with all my might to jam the stick into the face of the creature twisting beneath me in the grass.

This was not murder, I had decided. This was doing the Lord’s dirty work. Putting the dead back in the earth.

“Bonnet!”

I glanced up to see a pale face with a gaping maw hurtling toward me. I saw fangs, red eyes, little else. I flung my right hand with my remaining stake up before me, but the creature slammed against it, buffeting me back to the sea of grass. I landed on my backside, my feet tangled in my skirt. Its cold shadow passed over me, blocking out the pinpricks of starlight in violet sky. It smelled like blood.

“Food,” it rasped. “Lovely food . . .” It reached toward my face, gently, reverently, almost as an intimate might. It was a very human gesture, rendered savage by the greed in the red eyes. By hunger for the blood that slipped down my arm and pooled in my palm.

“Get away from her!”

A black and white blur passed between me and death. Alex. From behind, I could see the familiar tattoos stretching across his skin: a Djed pillar, sacred to Osiris. And on his chest, an ankh made of scars, which he told me was the symbol of eternal life.

It was nothing like the carefully scripted letter pinned to my dress. It was called a Himmelsbrief, and had been made for me by my community’s Hexenmeister, a petition to God on my behalf. But any symbol of divine power behaved in the same way, the way that crucifixes and holy water did. God, in whatever guise he chose, did have some power over these creatures.

The vampire reached for Alex with an expression of longing.

“Food,” it whispered, with a nearly palpable sorrow.

But its hands were stilled just above the ankh burned on Alex’s chest. It was as if this was an invisible barrier it could not cross. The vampire froze in puzzlement, and I could almost imagine that some thoughts still rattled around its head as it had learned what was safe to eat and what was poisonous.

“Not food,” Alex responded. There was a subtle jerk at his elbow, and the flash of a silver knife plunged between the vampire’s ribs. The creature clawed, scratching at the edge of the ankh. I could hear the sizzle of his flesh, a sound like bacon frying. Black blood flowed over Alex’s wrist. He shoved the vampire down to the grass, and I could see his knife slashing, the black droplets of vampire blood clinging to the tips of the grass stalks like dew. I was still mystified by it, by its lack of redness, by its soft, inklike consistency. It smelled like iron, though, which was enough to tell what they had once been. Alex speculated that iron oxidized in their blood, darkening it.

That black blood was on my wrist. I smeared it against my skirt as Alex’s fingers wound around my hand. “We’ve got to go. There will be more.”

I nodded. This was no time to contemplate biology or humanity. This was time to act, to move. To survive.

We ran, hand in sticky hand, sliding through the grass like ghosts.

I could see the bright helmet of Ginger’s hair and the stark white figure of the horse far before us. We’d given them a head start, which was good —Alex and I had the only really effective weapons against the vampires. Alex had his tattoos and I had the Himmelsbrief. They were more of a deterrent, Alex said, like spraying mace at a perpetrator. The startlement they created sometimes gave us enough opening to run away. Or kill.

“Where are we going?” I asked, casting my gaze about the dark landscape. It was suicide to be out in the open like this. “We can’t fight until daylight.”

He shook his head, mouth pressed in a flat line. “I don’t know. The sign said that there was a church back there, but all we saw was burned timbers. Useless as shelter, if it was desecrated by the vamps.”

“We’ll have to find someplace else,” I decided, nodding sharply to myself.

“How do you feel about sleeping in trees?” His face split open in a lopsided grin, his teeth white in the darkness. There were some at the horizon we could possibly reach, but none in the field.

“I’m quite sure the vampires can climb trees.”

“Maybe not if we set fire at the roots . . . they don’t like fire.”

I made a face. “I don’t much fancy the idea of being roasted alive in a tree.”

“Reminds me of a movie, The Wicker Man . . .” he began.

I glanced at him blankly. I had never seen a movie.

“Never mind, then. I’ll tell you later.”

Ginger’s horse was climbing a slope ahead of us. This part of the meadow wasn’t cultivated, and the grass and weeds swelled over this rill in the earth, perhaps five feet tall, stretching east to west.

My skin prickled. In the far distance, I could see more glowing eyes gathering. They had heard us. They smelled blood. I pulled at Alex’s sleeve and pointed.

Ginger had reached the top of the hillock. She was panting, and her glasses slid down over her nose. She was dressed as an Amish woman, but she was not one of my people. She was an Englisher, like Alex. She was an old friend of my family who had lost everything: her husband, her children. And she was the only part of my old life I had left. I clung to her.

The horse stared to the south. His ears flattened, and his eyes dilated black as obsidian. His nostrils flared, and his tail swished back and forth. He pawed the earth, pacing nervously. I had found him back on Amish land with an empty saddle, smeared in blood and with his former rider’s boot still in the stirrup. We had discovered that the horse had a sixth sense about the vampires. Perhaps he could sense them the way dogs could sense earthquakes. Or perhaps he was merely a nervous horse and vampires were everywhere.

Alex had named him Horus, after an Egyptian god of the sky who defeated evil. Ginger and I just called him Horace.

“They’re out there,” Ginger said, staring out at the dark and patting Horace’s sides soothingly.

“Ja. They’re coming.” I climbed up the hill, gazing at the flattened trail of grasses we’d left.

Alex scrambled to the top of the hill. Ginger and I made to rush down the slope on the other side, but he said: “Wait.”

I looked up at him, my brows drawing together. “What do you mean?”

Alex shook his head. He squatted, and squinted to the beginning and the end of the strangely squiggling formation of land.

“Alex. We’ve got to go.” Now it was me urging him on.

He slipped on his jacket. “We wait here.”

Ginger’s head popped up above the grass line like a platinum gopher. “What are you talking about? We’ve gotta get moving.” She tugged at Horace’s reins, but he would not budge. He stood on the pinnacle of the hill as if he were a statue.

Alex shook his head, and he pressed his hands to the ground. He was smiling. “No. We wait here. On the hill.”

I bit my lip. Perhaps the stress of running from vampires for the last several weeks had caused Alex to finally lose touch with reality. Perhaps he had some desire to make a last stand. I confessed to myself that I felt like that often. I hadn’t been baptized, so I wouldn’t get to heaven, but it was sometimes peaceful to imagine not existing in this chaotic world any longer. I didn’t think I’d be sent to hell, but I just wasn’t sure.

In any event, I wasn’t quite ready to test theology.

“Alex,” I said. “We need to go if we’re to have any chance of—”

“Do you trust me?”

He crouched on the top of the hill, looking at me with an infuriatingly jovial smile. I felt myself frown, but I reached down for his hand. Behind me, Ginger sighed and scrambled up the grass bank.

We sat on the crest of the little hill, looking down, as dozens of glowing eyes converged upon us.

“We’re screwed,” Ginger said.

I didn’t disagree with the sentiment.

Those luminous eyes drew near. I counted more than two dozen pairs. My heart hammered, and my mouth felt sticky and dry. I fingered the rough edge of my makeshift weapon. I might be able to kill one vampire with it. Not dozens.

Jagged silhouettes of people pulled themselves from the grass, like spiders extricating from webs. I braced myself, clutching my puny staff. Their eyes swept up the hill. I expected them to rush to us like water in a trench after a rainstorm.

They reached up with pale fingers that smelled like metal. Their lips drew back, hissing, and I could see the thirst in their eyes. But they made no move to climb the hill.

I sidled closer to Alex. “What’s stopping them?”

“Holy ground,” he said, grinning.

My brows drew together. I didn’t understand. I saw no sign of any human habitation here. No church. No graveyard. Just this oddly shaped hill that rose up out of the field.

“How?”

Ginger started laughing behind me. She turned on her heel and surveyed the sad little hillock. “I see it now,” she said. She huddled in closer with us when a vampire snarled at her.

“See what?” 

“We’re on an Indian mound,” Alex said. “A holy site built by any one of a number of tribes in this area. They were used as burial mounds, ceremonial sites, astronomical measurements . . . some, we have no idea what for.”

“How did you know?” It looked like just a rill in the land to me. A bump.

“See how it’s sorta shaped like a snake?” He gestured to the west. “It’s hard to see underneath the tall grass, but notice how it undulates in the ground?” He swished his hand back and forth like a snake swimming, and I could see some of the suggestion of a reptile in it.

“I saw a mound one time that was shaped like a big serpent eating the moon.” He cocked his head and started to walk off down the snake’s back. “I wonder if this one is like that . . .”

Ginger snagged the back collar of his jacket. “No exploring in the dark with the monsters down below.”

“What do we do now?” I leaned on my staff. The hissing and bright eyes below were unnerving. Pale fingers combed through the grass.

Alex sat down. “We wait for morning.”

I sighed and knelt down to pray. I could feel the chill of the earth beneath my knees, dew gathering. My skin crawled at the thought of the creatures, only feet away. I shut my eyes, trying to prove that I trusted God. He had kept us safe so far. He would keep us safe as long as it suited his purposes.

That was part of what I believed —what the Amish believed. We believed in Gelassenheit — surrendering ourselves to God’s will. It was difficult, at times like this. I struggled to keep my eyes closed, seeing crescents of light beneath my lashes; I could not quite make myself trust the darkness.

“Unser Vadder im Himmel . . .

. . . dei Naame loss heilich sei . . .”

“Damn. I wish I had a harmonica,” Alex grumbled. 

Author Bio:

Laura Bickle has an MA in sociology-criminology (research interests: fear of crime and victimology) and a BA in criminology. She has worked in and around criminal justice since 1997. Although she does read Tarot cards, she's never used them in criminal profiling or to locate lost scientists. She recently took up astronomy, but for the most part her primary role in studying constellations and dark matter is to follow her amateur astronomer-husband around central Ohio toting the telescope tripod and various lenses.

Writing as Laura Bickle, she's the author of EMBERS and SPARKS for Pocket - Juno Books. Writing as Alayna Williams, she's the author of DARK ORACLE and ROGUE ORACLE.

More info on her urban fantasy and general nerdiness is here: http://www.salamanderstales.com/  

Laura/ Alayna’s blogs

http://www.salamanderstales.blogspot.com and http://delphisdaughters.blogspot.com  

She’s also at Facebook

 

Paranormal Perceptions ~ The Old Book On The Shelf

The Paranormal Perceptions series was created to gather some of the most interesting authors that are using paranormal elements in their stories. Every author has their own perceptions and provides their own insight on all things paranormal, ranging from urban legends and paranormal research, to myths and inspirations. This week on the guest series is author of Beneath the Veil, author William McNally(@WilliamMcNally).

 

I often wonder why we love to be scared. Could it be a long dormant part of our animal brains that still needs to feel like it did living outside, surrounded by constant danger? Imagine our primitive selves huddled around a fire fighting the cold night, listening for any sounds of death approaching.   

Maybe that part of us still needs to get some attention once in a while…maybe more than once in a while. As a child, two of my most memorable possessions were things I loved during the day and feared when the night came. The first item was a black plastic box with a green hand that would rise out and snatch a coin inside. During the day, it was a simple coin bank that required an occasional battery, but at night, it was something far worse and always stayed outside of my room. This innocuous toy inspired many sleepless nights waiting for a hand to rise up from under my bed, where to my child’s mind, the bad hands lived. 

The second and seemingly more conventional item was an Edgar Allan Poe book named Tales of Mystery and Imagination. The book was hidden in my father’s den to keep it out of my reach, but I always managed to locate it high on a dusty bookshelf. The book was printed in the 1920’s and was already torn and battered by the time it got into my hands. Its cover was grainy, with a torn binding. The pages inside were rough and yellowed and looked as if they were cut from sheets of parchment, or maybe something worse. To my young imagination, this book was like gasoline on a bonfire and repulsed and compelled me in equal measure.

[image error]Strangely, I cannot recall ever actually reading the book. I didn't need to. This particular book could read you…if you let it. Between its black and white chapters were ten printed illustrations mounted on gray board. The works were created by the Irish artist Harry Clarke and captured Poe’s stories with a ghastly perfection. The very first page contained a drawing of Mr. Poe himself, glaring up as if interrupted from deep thought. These forbidden illustrations were shocking and drew me back to that high shelf in the corner, over and over again.

As things do, the coin bank and book were lost during the ensuing decades, and I left my boyhood fears behind. Until a month ago, that is, when I received an unexpected visit from a ghost of my past. The Poe book was unearthed from its forty year slumber and returned to entice me once again. Instead of hiding the book on a high shelf or in a dusty basement, I framed ten of the illustrations and hung them on the walls of my writing room. Now Harry and Edgar can scare me a little while longer while I write things that might frighten you. If you can’t wait until nighttime, then download one my books Four Corners Dark, or Beneath the Veil and find a safe place to hide.

 

 

About the Author:

 

William McNally is a former executive, husband and animal advocate based in the mountains of Dahlonega, Georgia. Drawn to dark and thought provoking stories, he released his first book, Four Corners Dark in 2012 and recently followed it with his second, Beneath the Veil. Visit him online at williammcnallybooks.com for updates and events. Look for William's next release, The Knights of Moonshine, spring 2014.

Web – www.williammcnallybooks.com

Twitter - https://twitter.com/WilliamMcNally

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/WilliamMcNallyWriter

Goodreads - http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6477654.William_McNally

 

 

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Paranormal Perceptions ~ PARANORMAL LEGENDS, LOUISIANA TWIST

The Paranormal Perceptions series was created to gather some of the most interesting authors that are using paranormal elements in their stories. Every author has their own perceptions and provides their own insight on all things paranormal, ranging from urban legends and paranormal research, to myths and inspirations. This week on the guest series is author of Sentinels of New Orleans, author Suzanne Johnson(@Suzanne_Johnson).

One of the things that most appeals to me about urban fantasy, with or without the romantic elements, is the reality behind the paranormal. For the Sentinels of New Orleans series, I wanted to not only infuse as much of the real sense of the setting as I could, but also twist the paranormal tropes to reflect that setting.

So my characters go to real restaurants that you, too, could visit when in New Orleans. You could drive the same streets, find the exact corner where the characters live (although if you find the characters, let me know!), hear the odd Brooklyn-Meets-the-South accent of the locals, feel the swelter of the dense, moist heat of summer, hear the clang of the streetcars on St. Charles Avenue, or the ships’ horns wafting off the river, or the raucous accordion of a zydeco band.

New Orleans wasn’t a coincidental setting for me. The series kicks off with the approach of Hurricane Katrina, and at the time of Katrina, I had already lived in New Orleans for twelve years and considered it (and still do) my hometown. I went back for three years of rebuilding after the hurricane. So I know the city intimately, and much of the “research” comes from my own experiences. Although as the series progresses, I’m wandering farther afield, which requires trips back to NOLA for research that might take me into the swamps of bordering Plaquemines Parish, to the city’s archival museum to see the papers of the real pirate Jean Lafitte, or into a voodoo shop in the French Quarter. (Yeah, it’s a tough job, but I’m willing to make the sacrifice.)

Because New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana are such a crucial part of the series, I also wanted to make sure my paranormal characters reflect where they live—which before the hurricane was an alternative version of New Orleans and a vast metaphysical world known as the Beyond. When the hurricane destroys the borders between worlds, who should stroll into modern New Orleans but shifters, vampires, weres…all our favorite species—with a few twists. It’s up to the heroine, a wizard named DJ, to act as Sentinel (think “border guard”) and keep the other species in line and the humans unaware.

--Were-creatures and shapeshifters are different in this world. Shifters are born, not made, while weres are made much as in traditional werewolf and vampire lore. Among these are loup-garou, weregators, and merfolk.

--Loup-Garou is a particular type of werewolf that carries a demon’s curse. The Garou are thought to have come to Louisiana with the original Acadian settlers driven out of Canada by the British, who took refuge in the French colony of Louisiana. Loup-garou are bigger than your average werewolf, are rogue loners with poor self-control and anger issues, don’t respect or participate in the pack structure. They are Bad News.

--Merpeople live in clans and mainstream very well with humans. They are aquatic shapeshifters who can shift fully into big fish form or partially into classic mer form. My merpeople (mermen and mer-women, because they don’t like being called “maids” anymore) also are descended from the Acadians—now called “Cajuns”—and work in the Louisiana fishing industry, for the most part.

--The Historical Undead are corporeal ghosts—humans who lived or worked in New Orleans who are granted immortality in the Beyond by the magic of human memory. The more they’re remembered, the stronger they are and the longer they can hang out in the modern world looking (and feeling) as warm-blooded and solid as you or I. Series characters so far include the early 19th-century pirate Jean Lafitte, who has become a major player in the series; jazz great Louis Armstrong; the serial killer from the early 20th century known as the Axeman of New Orleans; and voodoo queen Marie Laveau.

--My Elves and Vampires and Fae rely more on the traditional lore. The vampires, who come from the Realm of Vampyre, are ruled by the Regents. The Regent of the New Orleans vamps is Etienne Boulard, who owned a sugar plantation west of New Orleans in the early 1800s when he was turned vampire. The vampires have thus far remained politically neutral and content to run their French Quarter bar, L’Amour Sauvage. The Elves have, until recently, stayed in their own portion of the Beyond known as Elfheim; they are beginning to notice things taking place in New Orleans, however. And one does not want to bring oneself to the attention of the Elves. They make powerful, if unreliable, allies and deadly enemies. The Fae have not thus far entered the picture, being off doing faerielike things, but you can bet they’ll show up soon.

*Finally, we have the largest population group, the Wizards, who are ruled by a Council of Elders and are divided into four congresses depending on the type of magic they can do. Our heroine DJ is a Green Congress wizard, kind of the geeks of the wizarding world who specialize in ritual magic. Effective but slow, especially when one is being pursued by an angry undead pirate or voodoo god. Until the borders fell during Katrina, the Wizards had iron control of who and what came into the human world.

 

Now? All bets are off.

 

About the Author:

Suzanne Johnson writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance from Auburn, Alabama, after a career in educational publishing that has spanned five states and  six universities.  She grew up halfway between the Bear Bryant Museum and Elvis' birthplace and lived in New Orleans for fifteen years, so she has a highly refined sense of the absurd and an ingrained love of SEC football and fried gator on a stick.

 

 

 

 

Website: www.suzanne-johnson.com

Blog: http://suzanne-johnson.blogspot.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Suzanne_Johnson

FB: http://www.facebook.com/Suzanne.Johnson.author

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5046525.Suzanne_Johnson

Publisher Page: http://us.macmillan.com/author/suzannejohnson

 

Hysteria Released

The sequel to Nightfall has just launched today. Hysteria is avaiable now! 

 Sometimes High School Memories Do More Than Haunt You...

Three years after a fanatical cult attempted to murder everyone important to him, Connor Maitland is still attempting to put his life back together. Accompanied by his business partner Alison and their new recruit, he is making a living as a jack-of-all-trades running a security company, sailing charters, and even photographing weddings; whatever it takes to get by.  Connor’s world was finally coming back together until the cult resurfaced in an effort to finish what they started.

After a violent attack, Connor finally has a lead on the founders of the cult and their motivations. The investigation is hindered when they are forced into taking a case to protect a family from a disturbing neighbor. As reports of residents disappearing begin to surface, Connor is caught between his desire to learn the truth about the cult and the need to save the family.

Connor is learning that sometimes high school memories do more than haunt you…