Loren Rhoads's Blog, page 7

Manor of Frights interview with Emerian Rich

Emerian Rich is the creator of HorrorAddicts.net — a podcast, blog, and publishing house — catering to horror enthusiasts. She served as editor or co-editor for five books under that imprint. She’s also the author of the vampire book series, Night’s Knights, has been published in 40+ fiction anthologies, works for two magazines, is a voice actress, and graphic artist.

She also works at a cemetery.

I wanted to ask her some questions about her latest book, Manor of Frights, which just came out last month.

 

Manor of Frights

Imagine a Victorian house where every room is cursed with a frightful existence. Are monsters in the halls? Ghosts left to fester in the library? Or are the rooms themselves enchanted with malevolent energy? What was summoned long ago and what doorways were left open? Manor of Frights is a collection of tales all set in different rooms of the same house.

With authors: Loren Rhoads, Judith Pancoast, Daphne Strasert, Mark Orr, Michael Fassbender, R.L. Merrill, Sumiko Saulson, Ollie Fox, Barend Nieuwstraten III, Rosetta Yorke, Amanda Leslie, Lesley Warren, BF Vega, DW Milton, D.J. Pitsiladis, Jason Fischer, and Emerian Rich.
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Here’s an interview with Emerian Rich, editor of Manor of Frights:

Have you ever seen a ghost?

Yes, I have. It’s weird… Every time I have seen a ghost, I’ve thought it was a real person I was talking to. My clearest vision of one happened when I was a little girl. A girl in a yellow dress — I thought she was part of my sunbeam troop — beckoned me to follow her. I did, then she was gone. When I asked where the girl went, the other people there didn’t know who I was talking about. I also saw some little kid ghosts in the same church. It was a creepy place.

What is it like to work in a cemetery?

Nothing like I thought it would be. Much more customer service and people-related than spooky. People who are grieving are all different and handle it differently. Sometimes I console them, sometimes I am their therapist, and other times they’d rather just sign papers and get out of there without many words spoken. I try to read the situation and give them what level of human understanding they require at the time.

Has anything spooky ever happened at the cemetery when you were there alone?

Not really. I’ve gotten scared by noises out there, but it’s always ended up being a deer or squirrel. I’ve had people (ashes) in my office for a while and nothing has happened. I thought maybe when we have had to disinter the ashes because the family wants to move them, they might get mad and be a restless spirit, but so far… nope. The creepiest thing for me was when we had the recent storms and a huge tree fell over, bringing headstones up out of the ground with it! Those gaping holes near the roots kinda reminded me of a hellhole, but it was just dirt. Ha!

What’s your favorite haunted house?

Probably the one in The Woman in Black. It’s so cool to watch. I mean, I’d get someone to go in and remove the blasted cymbal-clanging monkeys, but after that, I’d be right at home. Haha.

Where did the idea for the Manor of Frights anthology originate?

I have always loved haunted house stories or stories where something is going on in a house and the residents don’t know what it is or what it wants. I’ve lived in so many different houses in my life, I love to see how people live differently. I thought opening up a fictitious house for people to fill would be a great way to see lots of different rooms through the eyes of some imaginative writers. I was right. I got so many stories I enjoyed this year, I had to turn half of the ones I wanted away. It was a great problem to have.

What can you tell us about the variety of stories/monsters in Manor of Frights?

I was really surprised by the variety of stories I got this time. I mean, I would never have thought of some of these tales. We’ve got smexy sea monsters, demons, ghosts, murderous toys, flower-devouring mistresses, mistress-devouring flowers, and a study that is filled with inhuman monstrous objects. It’s lucky any of us got out of there alive!

In the book, your story about zombies is really funny. Was there something that specifically inspired it?

Thank you! To tell you the truth, I wrote it for another anthology that a friend of mine was running. At the time, I was really into watching those documentaries where they recreate the upstairs/downstairs lives of those big houses like 1940s House. My friend’s anthology goal was to make sure that at least one person survived a horror happening in the story. When he fell ill and could no longer complete the anthology, I stuck the story away and didn’t look at it for a while. Re-reading it brought back good memories of him and his vision for his book. I adapted it to go into Manor of Frights because I felt it brought a good balance into the anthology. It brings a little humor into the book and plays nicely against some of the more serious pieces.

To read Emerian’s comic zombie story and so much more, treat yourself to a copy of Manor of Frights!

My Manor of Frights story

Years ago, I saw a call for submissions for an anthology. I wrote what I thought was the perfect story for it, but competition was fierce and mine didn’t make it into the book. I workshopped the story for a while, including submitting it to my classmates at the Clarion Workshop, but after a while I stopped sending it out. I don’t even remember why. It sat in a drawer, just waiting.

Last year at BayCon, I picked up another call for submissions. The book was an ambitious anthology that combined something like a vertical wine tasting with the mansion in Clue: each story would take place in a different room of the mansion and each one progressed decade by decade into the present day.

My story took place solely in a boy’s room. I sent it off, hoping they wouldn’t have anything else like it. The book came out earlier this month!

HorrorAddicts.net Presents:Manor of Frights

Imagine a Victorian house where every room is cursed with a frightful existence. Are monsters in the halls? Ghosts left to fester in the library? Or are the rooms themselves enchanted with malevolent energy? What was summoned long ago and what doorways were left open? Manor of Frights is a collection of tales all set in different rooms of the same house.

With authors: Loren Rhoads, Judith Pancoast, Daphne Strasert, Mark Orr, Michael Fassbender, R.L. Merrill, Sumiko Saulson, Ollie Fox, Barend Nieuwstraten III, Rosetta Yorke, Amanda Leslie, Lesley Warren, BF Vega, DW Milton, D.J. Pitsiladis, Jason Fischer, and Emerian Rich.
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Here’s an excerpt from my story in Manor of Frights:

Nightbears
by Loren Rhoads
The Boy’s Room, 1965

Pooh cocked an ear. “You hear something?”

“Nothing.” Ted puffed on his cigarette, black eyes shining in the dark bedroom.
Then something scraped against the bedframe below them.

“Hell.” Ted flicked his cigarette off the bed into the darkened bedroom. It vanished in midair. He drew his gun. “Let’s take a look, Pooh.”

Bellies down, the two teddy bears crawled across the bedclothes and peered over the edge of the bed. A scaly arm quested out from below. As Ted watched it, sweat beaded under his police cap.

A second arm joined the first in its search.

“Now?” Pooh whispered as the third arm probed out.

Ted shushed him.

A scaly head followed the arms, poking out from beneath a spill of blankets. Its bat ears swiveled upward at the bears. Its muzzle twitched.

“Banzai!” Pooh shouted as he leapt off the bed. He landed on the thing’s scrawny neck and pinned it to the floor. It reached around, trying to dislodge him. One of its flailing arms knocked the slingshot from Pooh’s grasp. The weapon skittered out of reach.

“Move!” Ted ordered from his position at the edge of the bed. “I can’t get a clear shot!”

“Throw me your gun!”

The monster snarled, baring needle-sharp teeth, and struggled to sweep Pooh from its back. The pudgy bear grabbed the furry tufts under the creature’s ears and held on. The creature bucked and kicked, pinwheeling its scaly arms as it spun in a circle.

Ted watched in horror, certain his companion was doomed. He desperately tossed the pistol and hoped Pooh could spare a hand to catch it.

With uncanny luck, the squirt gun bounced into Pooh’s lap. He fired point-blank into the back of the horror’s head. The monster squealed as water trickled down its nose. Somersaulting to the floor, Pooh fired another shot right between the monster’s reptilian eyes. Hissing like a teapot about to go on the boil, the creature slunk back under the bed, dripping and defeated.

“Get outta here, ya bug-eyed creep!” From his crouch, Pooh stared into its burning eyes and brandished the water pistol, ready to fire again.

Grumbling, the monster retreated into the darkness under the bed and faded from sight.

After blowing imaginary smoke from its barrel, Pooh tossed the squirt gun back up to Ted.

“I got this playing hero, you know.” Ted scowled down at him and lifted his cap, displaying a tattered ear.

“But…” Chastened, Pooh climbed hand over hand back up the bedclothes.

“Just think and be careful.” Ted grabbed the collar of Pooh’s shirt and hauled him up over the edge of the bed.

They both sat on the comforter for a moment—legs stretched in front of them—and caught their breaths. Pooh replayed the fight in his mind and tried to figure out how he could have done things differently. The outcome was exactly what he wanted to happen, so it was hard to see how he could have done things better.

Eventually, Ted asked, “Want a beer?”

“I sure could use one.” Pooh grinned as he tugged the too-small red T-shirt back down over his round belly. Already opened beer bottles appeared in Ted’s paws. He handed one to Pooh.

“Thanks.” Pooh lounged against the sleeping boy’s pillow. His gaze roamed past the Arthurian adventure books on the shelf to the abandoned cardboard castle in the corner, over a jumble of Hot Wheels cars to the karate uniform. Jimmy was growing up quickly and they wouldn’t be able to protect him for much longer. The thought made Pooh terribly sad.

To read the rest, treat yourself to a copy of Manor of Frights.

The Morbid Curiosity zine

July is International Zine Month, which I think is cool. Back before the internet was much of a thing, in the days before Google…jeez, before LiveJournal and Myspace, I made a zine called Morbid Curiosity. I published the first issue in 1997. I can’t believe it’s been 26 years.

Morbid Curiosity collected true confessional stories from authors around the world. Some of them were professionals. Others I published for the first time. Topics ranged from bad medical experiences to brushes with serial killers, from what we’d call Dark Tourism to, let’s say, experiments in altering one’s own chemistry.

I loved putting the zine together each year. It introduced me to people I still consider friends, all these years later. Through it, I met artists like Chris Bale, M. Parfitt, Erik Quarry, Kimberlee Traub, and Mike Hunter, who made amazing illustrations for each issue. I was the first reader for adventures that I was thrilled people would admit to in public. I could not have been prouder of what we achieved.

Morbid Curiosity #9 was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Nonfiction. By then, I’d already decided to close things down. Blogging had taken off and it was harder to find unpublished stories when anyone could tell their story on LiveJournal. Distribution had always been a pyramid scheme, but once Tower Records and Borders went out of business, I lost my biggest venues for reaching new readers. (Facebook didn’t start to explode until 2008.)

Still, I was really proud of Morbid Curiosity #10, the final issue, which came out in 2006. It contained confessional nonfiction by horror authors Alan M. Clark, John Everson, Seth Lindberg, and Simon Wood. That issue’s topics included drinking human blood, serving as a public defender for a hammer murderer, surviving temporal lobe seizures, planning a home funeral, watching UFOs, living through complications in childbirth, and much more.

Every year when a new issue of the zine came out, I hosted a huge reading for local contributors and anyone else who could make it to San Francisco. In 2006, I called the event a wake. It was held in what would become Borderlands Cafe on Valencia Street, although at that time the space was huge and barely lit, the walls torn open to the studs.

Me, giving the eulogy for Morbid Curiosity.

The Washington Post published a great piece about the magazine called “The Morbid the Merrier? Alas, No More” that was picked up by newspapers across the country. I took the Morbid Curiosity show on the road, to Alameda and Sacramento. We raised money for breast cancer research. I hosted the last Morbid Curiosity Open Mic at the World Horror Convention that year.

Morbid Curiosity #10 is the only issue of the zine still in print. Get a copy for $10 postpaid in the US and satisfy your curiosity. Order it direct from me here.

New Short Stories

I’ve had a handful of brand-new short stories (very short stories!) go up on the internet lately. You can check them out for free!

The most recent is a little piece about a mother, her son, and the sea that appeared as part of the Ladies of Horror Flash Project. Alondra has settled in to watch the sunset on her vacation in Cinque Terre when a man asks for her help. It’s called “Far from Home.” You can read it here.

Need a break from real-life horrors? I’ve got you. “Dumb Supper” is the little Mardi Gras horror story I read for Strong Women, Strange Worlds. Jambalaya fixes everything. You can watch it on Youtube: https://youtu.be/js0NK_NUvGk 

Elaine Pascale read my “Petrichor Gothic” for another Ladies of Horror Challenge. Sometimes all you want is to get out of the rain in a cozy little ghost story. I’ll embed it below, or you can listen to it on Youtube.

All three of these stories are about Alondra DeCourval, the heroine of my series of chapbooks on Amazon. You can learn more about her stories here.

My Schedule at BayCon 2023

I’m dipping my toe into in-person programming this weekend at BayCon, the San Francisco Bay Area’s major science fiction/fantasy/horror/gaming/costuming convention.

Here’s my schedule:

Saturday, July 1, 2023 at 1:00 PM
HorrorAddicts.net hosts Manor of Frights

Come geek out with us horror-style! We will be chatting about horror and spooky houses. Hauntings, possessions, strange portals in the closet. What is your favorite frightening house trope and what’s new in this world of house horror? Readings by authors and horror-chat-palooza! Spooky fun to be had by all! Come pick up a horror wristband that will get you goodies all weekend long!

Moderated by Emerian Rich, with Laurel Anne Hill, J. Malcolm Stewart, S.A. Bradley, and Loren Rhoads

Saturday, July 1, 2023 from 3-6 PM
Sunday, July 2, from 10-11 AM

I’ll be in the Dealers Room at the Liminal Fiction table. I’ll have Tales of Nightmares, Unsafe Words, and my space opera trilogy for sale. I’ll be giving away goodies, too. Come say hi!

BayCon takes place July 1st – July 4th, 2023 at the Santa Clara Marriott (2700 Mission College Boulevard, Santa Clara, California). Check out the rest of the programming here.

Strong Women, Strange Worlds

I am very excited to do my first reading of the year online on June 15. I’ll be joining Hadeer Elsbai (The Alamaxa duology), Kaaron Warren (Into Bones like Oil), Kristi McManus (Our Vengeful Souls), Branwen OShea (The Calling), and Tori Eldridge (Dance Among the Flames and The Ninja’s Daughter). This is a dream lineup!

I’ll be reading a complete Alondra story, so it’s going to be spooky.

The reading is free via zoom, but you do need to sign up in advance at https://bit.ly/3G9X5xz

Grief sneaks up

When I wrote last, I was cranking on research for the updates to the new edition of 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die. I’d survived my dad’s death and planning his funeral, trying to sort out his bills, and lining up people to watch over my newly widowed mom. I’d come back home to San Francisco and was trying to settle in to my real life again, the life where I wrote every morning and tried to unpack every afternoon. I had my work cut out for me.

Real life lasted until April 19. I called my mom that afternoon, but she didn’t make any sense. She could only get two or three words out before she couldn’t think of the next one. It was as if she couldn’t remember any nouns. She’d gone for a walk, but she couldn’t tell me where. When I guessed destinations, it only made her frustrated.

Finally, I asked if she thought she’d had another stroke. (Backstory: she had one during the first year of the pandemic, but it hadn’t really seemed to have affected her much. In retrospect, I think that was because she knew immediately that something was wrong and called an ambulance right away.)

Mom said she was happy. She meant she was fine, but couldn’t remember that word. She told me to call back in an hour and she would be better. Instead, I called the neighbor across the road, who is a volunteer firefighter, and asked her to check on Mom. The neighbor called a paramedic friend, who insisted Mom go to the hospital.

I took my mom out for lunch. Despite the smiles, we were celebrating my dad’s birthday for the first time without him.

Long story short: Mom had had another stroke. But since no one could tell when it had happened — she might have been talking strangely at church on Sunday or it might have caused or come about after she walked a mile and a half to a cousin’s house on Wednesday — the hospital wouldn’t treat her for it. It took five days to get a MRI. When they didn’t see any new damage, they released her suddenly to me, on the condition that I get her into assisted living.

So I spent the first half of May packing up the house I grew up in and moving my mom to an apartment where her meals are provided and someone makes sure she takes her meds three times a day.

My mother-in-law sent the perfect mug exactly when I needed it.

Then I came home to polish up and assemble the new entries for 222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die. Even though it was hard as hell, I made the extension on my deadline.

Last week, I tried to relax for the first time in months. I cleaned out my email inbox. I unpacked more of the office I moved into in November. I took long walks with my husband and tried to not feel guilty about my life in San Francisco. Every night, every single night, I had a nightmare about something I needed to do for my mom.

On Saturday, the De Young Museum hosted a movie called “Homegoings” about one of the last African American mortuary owners in Harlem. After the movie, Professor Angela Hennessy and Minister Marvin K. White were going to lead a discussion informed by the Kehinde Wiley exhibit at the museum.

I really wanted to see the movie. I’ve been fascinated by Angela Hennessy’s work since I heard her speak at the Death Salon in Seattle the fall before 199 Cemeteries first came out. My family came with me to the museum, but they went to see the Wiley exhibit while I went to the movie.

When the audience came into the space, two greeters spritzed my cupped hands: one with salt water for sorrow, the other with rose water for sweetness. There was a guest book with black pages — and a black pen — in which I wrote my name. There were bouquets of white flowers and a spread of snacks.

I found a chair, settled in, and wondered why I felt so anxious.

The event opened with the audience being invited to call out the names of those they’d lost, so the ancestors could be welcomed into the room with us. I didn’t want to add my father, even though he’d just died in February. Let him rest in peace, wherever he was now. I was fascinated by the names and relationships other audience members called out. Hennessy said something beautiful about meeting people and seeing all their ghosts arrayed behind them. I don’t think my dad would ever be standing behind me, since he never chose to in life.

The movie was lovely. It hadn’t occurred to me that there would be scenes of the mortician talking with a woman about how she wanted her hair colored if she died before she was able to get her hair done. He was so gentle as he applied lipstick to a corpse or dropped rose petals into a grave. So many scenes of funerals and families, grief and joy.

Grass is growing over my father’s grave. Next time I go back, I hope his headstone will have been installed.

What broke me was when one of the funeral singers sang “I’ll Fly Away,” one of the songs from my dad’s funeral.

I couldn’t allow myself to cry. This event wasn’t about me or my grief. I was wearing a mask, as I always do in public, and I didn’t want it to get wet. Any other time, I would have loved this event and the sense of community that it created, but three months after losing my dad, it was too much.

I made it to the end of the movie but fled before the discussion started. It felt disrespectful, but I couldn’t hold myself together.

Angela Hennessy is going to lead two more events at the De Young in the upcoming months. The August and September workshops will consist of “writing, reflection, conversation, and looking at specific works of art in relationship to death and grief.” I would like to think that I am strong enough to go, but I’m not sure.

Where I’ve Been

[image error] [image error]I feel like I’ve been out of touch for months. My father fell last August and broke his pelvis. Because he was so medically fragile, he stayed in the hospital for nine weeks while the bone healed without surgery. He was released in October, while I was sending the Death’s Garden Revisited books out to the Kickstarter backers. As soon as I finished that project, I jumped on a plane.

I came back to San Francisco the week before Thanksgiving in order to move into a new (century-old) house. My new home is near the ocean, walking distance to the Sutro Bath ruins and close to the Legion of Honor Museum, which is built atop the unexhumed remains of San Francisco’s old public cemeteries. I love to listen to the foghorns at night. On a good foggy night, I can hear three of them.

I went back to Michigan for most of December, but my dad refused to go into hospice and my mom refused to believe he was dying. None of his doctors — and there were many of them, in addition to all the trips to the ER — would tell my folks straight out that heart disease, kidney failure, and diabetes were finally taking their toll. Dad decided to stop taking his insulin because he didn’t like getting a shot every morning. I offered to stay through the holidays, but my folks sent me back to San Francisco to spend Christmas with my kid.

After two weeks, I had to go back to Michigan a third time. Dad kept falling. Mom couldn’t manage his meds. The home health doctor I’d set up in December stopped coming for no apparent reason. The first few days I was back, Dad seemed fine: he came to the table to eat, was actually hungry, and was clear and conversational. Then he may have had a stroke, although no one knew for sure. We kept him home while I begged the home nurse to come visit. That nurse took one look at him and called for an ambulance to take Dad back to the hospital. It was a huge relief.

The following day, the cardiology nurse caught me in the hallway to ask if I knew what “failure to thrive” meant. I’d heard it applied to newborns before, but never to adults. The next night, the hospital called to ask for permission to install a catheter for dialysis: one treatment that Dad had absolutely not wanted. It was up to me to explain to my mom what it meant if we chose not to allow the procedure.

Even without the catheter, Dad improved the next morning. The hospital discharged him to a nursing home. Hospice was finally engaged and he started feeling much better, once he got the care he’d been needing. I came back to San Francisco to start on the book I’d contracted for in December.

Two weeks later, the hospice nurse called to say I should make plans to come back to Michigan. The next morning, she called again to tell me to come home right away. I got on the first flight I could.  As the plane was landing, the nursing home called. I knew what that meant: I’d missed seeing him one last time.

My dad and I weren’t close. When I was a kid, he worked two full-time jobs — accounting for Buick and farming — not because he needed to, but because he loved the land and the animals more than spending time with his kids. He never forgave me for moving away from Michigan. He was infuriated when I came to see him in the hospital after his first catastrophic heart attack in 1992. I thought that keeping his name when I married or giving his grandchild that name might placate him, but it didn’t really matter. The last conversation we had, before I left in February, was when I told him that I loved him. His answer? Only “Yes.” It had been his last opportunity to tell me what I wanted to hear and he chose not to.

Grief is so complicated and strange.

At this point, I am working hard to meet my deadline on this new book project. I’m updating 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die, correcting the text and adding some new cemeteries. I am loving the work and can’t wait to share it.

Horror Addicts loves Tales of Nightmares

Horror Addicts gave Tales of Nightmares, which I edited for the Wily Writers collective, a great review, singling out stories by Angel Leigh McCoy, Jennifer Brozek, and Bill Bodden.

My favorite part: “Tales of Nightmares consists of a handful of horror tales, each wildly different from the other. Some modern, some period, they’ve got yokai, killers, werewolves, monsters, and haunted houses in here. Although not all the stories were my cup of tea, there is sure to be something you’ll enjoy in this anthology. There are some real gems here.”

Check out the whole review here.

A little lagniappe for your Mardi Gras

This is a little Alondra story I wrote a couple of years ago. It’s set on the last night of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It was originally written for and published by the Ladies of Horror project at Spreading the Writer’s Word.

Dumb Supper
by Loren Rhoads

Alondra hadn’t left her cottage in the better part of two weeks. Pearl had tried a couple of times to lure her out to Mardi Gras parties, but Alondra wasn’t a fan of parties at the best of times and the chaos of Mardi Gras season seemed overwhelming. Besides, she preferred to do her drinking at home.

That didn’t mean that the celebrations didn’t reach her. Even in the Garden District there were parties: loud voices, shrill laughter, jazz quartets on the verandas. Alondra set her books aside when the noise became too much for her to concentrate and retreated into the kitchen.

Her landlady loaned her some family recipes that Alondra had dutifully copied over. She’d never tasted authentic jambalaya until Marie brought her a pot of it. Now she was struggling to recreate that experience. Marie’s note to add two or three spoons of pepper sauce added mystery to the process. Alondra’s first batch had been too hot to eat. Now, finally, she thought she was getting the hang of it.

The evening was unseasonably warm for February, so Alondra had propped the front door open with her copy of de Grillot’s Witchcraft, Magic, and Alchemy to let in some air. She returned to the kitchen to check the rice.

She was daydreaming over the pot and didn’t notice as the temperature in the kitchen dropped. Something heavy clonked down on her kitchen table behind her. A chill wrapped the nape of her neck. Alondra turned, the dripping spoon held across her body like a weapon.

At the table sat a white woman with her hair pulled up into a disheveled pile. Rather than a Mardi Gras mask, her face had been charcoaled with two black diamonds that stretched from hairline to jaw. She wore a spaghetti strap Harlequin dress that left her shoulders bare, but Alondra was certain the chunky necklace she wore held real diamonds.

On Alondra’s table she’d dropped a skull splashed with crimson paint. The chill emanated from the skull.

“You need to help me.” It wasn’t a request.

She needed to renew the protections around her cottage, Alondra thought, and probably give the table a salt wash. She wasn’t inclined to be kind to strangers who marched into her home without so much as a by your leave. “Whose skull is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I bought it in a box of vintage Mardi Gras decorations.”

When Alondra didn’t respond, the woman continued in a rush. “We just moved to New Orleans in December. Charles insisted we go to his boss’s Three Kings Party, and then we had to eat that nasty almond cake, and he found the baby in his piece…and they said that meant we had to host the Mardi Gras party…” The longer the woman talked, the lower the temperature dropped. White puffs of breath accompanied her words.

Despite the warmth of the pot bubbling at her back, Alondra shivered. She interrupted the torrent of complaints. “What would you like me to do?”

“I’ve tried to get rid of it ever since we threw our party a week ago. In the middle of the evening, the house got so cold that the pipes started to burst. I put it in the garbage, but I found it in the breakfast nook the next day. I made Charles take the garbage out that day, but it turned up under the bathroom sink. I ran it out when the garbagemen came on Tuesday, but it was on my pillow that night when I came to bed. Since then, I’ve tried throwing it out of the car, mailing it away, and dumping it into the river. It keeps coming back.”

“Okay.” Alondra held up her hand to stem the flood of words. “I want you to donate a thousand dollars to Save Our Cemeteries. Then I want you to take a bath with a charm I give you. Wash your face, wash your hair. Gather up all the Mardi Gras decorations you bought and take them to St. Vincent de Paul’s.”

“Oh, I’ve done that already,” the woman assured.

“All right. Wait here a moment.”

Alondra crossed through the bathroom into the bedroom of her cottage. She found a handkerchief and pulled down her jars of herbs, mixing lavender and rose with a chunk of dragon’s blood and a piece of galangal. She wrapped the packet closed with a piece of yellow ribbon. Then she returned to the woman sitting in her kitchen and dropped it in her hand.

“What do I owe you?”

“Pay me what you think my help is worth.”

“If this thing stops showing up at my house, that would be worth a lot.” She took a roll of bills from her purse and set them on the table. “But if it shows up tomorrow morning…”

Alondra smiled. “I know you aren’t threatening me,” she said calmly.

The woman swallowed audibly.

“You can go now. I’ll handle things from here.”

As soon as the woman crossed her threshold, Alondra moved four pillar candles to surround the skull. She lit a stick of spaghetti from the stove and used it to light the candles and a disk of charcoal. Once the coal was smoldering nicely, she added three pearls of frankincense. As the smoke filled the kitchen, Alondra dished up a bowl of jambalaya for the skull and another for herself.

The temperature in the kitchen had returned to normal by the time she sat down across from the skull. Outside the cottage, the sounds of Mardi Gras continued, but it was almost midnight. Once the streets had cleared, Alondra would ask Jackson, her landlady’s husband, if he could give her a ride out to Holt Cemetery so she could give the poor skull a decent burial and some peace at last.

This time, the jambalaya tasted just right.

If you’d like to check out more of Alondra’s stories, click on the image above to be taken to my author page on Amazon. Plenty of shivers to be found!