Here is the audio version from The Tale of Obadiah Watts, available for your entertainment.
for written transcript see post here The Tale of Obadiah Watts
Tag: John Riley
Still Waters
by John Riley
Stand tall these giants upon four squared cornerstones, dizzying to stare upon their heads in the clouds. For noise funnels across glass in this percussive urban cityscape.
All is a riot of noise, as above so below, where duck egg coloured cabs and bleating horns vie and neon billboards alive with a message to those not wakened.
A battalion bearing down is footfall traffic, a tsunami descending the sidewalks.
Drowning, in its tide that I should meet upon chaos.
For then a time of peace this early morn. That I find myself walking this canal bank on a day the colour of grey, muting all in its flatness and dullness. Linger does a wet mist that it holds and spreads from seeing what lies beyond.
The yellowing and straw coloured grasses, left wild and clumped around nutty brown dampen branch are all without vivid vitality. For a heavy, gloomy and dismal day, to find one alone and walking this towpath trodden hard by a beast of burden. For this place not a familiar pathway.
Out towards the edge ragged pale shot reeds climb, as tattered pipes whistling a mournful lament and still deep and dark are these grey waters upon rolls a wispy haze.
To my surprise, for cutting around a corner the path stopped. Before me, a wooden jetty. A square deck of bleached bone-coloured wood. A platform solid underfoot, constructed well with rounded post and thick rope barriers. Also, moored, a raft with rope cables, set to draw it across by turning the winch, that one might reach the other side and be out of sight behind a thick foggy veil.
I begin my crossing, to the clunking sound of turning wood and taut ropes taking the strain. Gentle is lapping water against the raft edge. Slowly with gentle movement, I glide the surface and enter a cloud of damp vapour that I might disappear from an unseen presence upon the bank.
For then, there came a sudden jolt, that it pushed me off balance. Enveloped in the mist and by reckoning lost as to whether near the other bank or nearer the jetty. Marooned, neither one place nor the other.
There I wait, alone and lost amidst the cold of a damp and forlorn place.
For breaking the silence, another jolt, unsteadying and causing me to stagger as the raft drawn back pulled by some unseen hand returning me back.
For what creature did look from a place hidden. That it should watch and see as we might have seen a raft returning back to the jetty and empty without its passenger.
Then I, emerging into a world of noise, lights and frantic action of chaos. For a voice and then with others urgently calling amongst where I’d fallen with others.
“Here quick! He’s alive!”
-end-
Jenny Greenteeth
Willoughby Bedford Journal investigating folklore and superstitions
I thought of spending a spell of time around witch country, that of Pendle in North West Lancashire. Certainly long before Lancashire became identified with the cotton industry it was famous for its witches. I fancy something a bit more fairy tale and woodland, so have taken, not quite the yellow brick road, but the A59 to Clitheroe to park up by the river Ribble.
I’m here to meet Ted Hustwick at Brungerley. Standing with shepherd’s crook in hand, flat cap set straight and a body warmer, I spotted Ted easily, not from that description, but his description of himself. Look for someone resembling a hot water cylinder with a jacket tied around it!
We walked to a spot along the river bank where Ted said an evil spirit haunts. It’s claimed one life in every seven years, by dragging an unwary traveller to a watery grave. I stopped walking and moved away from the edge of the bank. Ted chuckled, he sounded like an old Landrover struggling to turnover.
Suddenly he caught sight of something and surprised me breaking into a run. There, he said, c’mon. Look! The water witch. I was intrigued. C’mon Willoughby, its Jenny Greenteeth! Ted crouched down on the bank side and in doing so I thought he might roll into the river.
I caught up and crouched down beside him. See, Jenny Greenteeth.
What we were looking at was just another name for the green water plants such as duckweed, which I suspect can ensnare bathers by wrapping its fronds around their limbs and dragging the poor souls down beneath the surface.
Ted turned his ruddy face and smiled revealing an unbelievable blinding white set of dentures. Fancy a pie!
-end-
Myrtle Brown
by John Riley
Myrtle Brown is a pale faced, flabby type biting her lip through constant worry. She’d her own teeth, clearly evident, that if she’d been biting with dentures, the way she was going at those thin lips, her top set would had have slipped out by now. The dentist advice from the other day still haunting her thoughts. Gum disease setting in, Myrtle you’ll need them all out.
She wandered in the old hall, nodded a greeting to the woman behind the desk, she was new, hadn’t seen her before. Smiling wide showing off how nice her teeth looked. Myrtle smiled again only this time kept her lips sealed tight shut holding a forced grin.
She took the stairs clocking she was early for the presentation. She didn’t really know why she decided to attend; it wasn’t as if she gets involved with groups. This one recommended through a friend, said it’ll do her good to get back mixing with folk. All are welcome for the open days. Myrtle admits to a fondness of the supernatural and folklore. Anyway, she’d try it.
In the room there was the pick of seats. Myrtle sat at the back and waited.
A steady trickle of people began to emerge, dressed in what she’d had said was hippy like. New age, yes, new age types. Pleasant enough folk she thought but not the sort of thing she’d expect to see women of a certain age wearing.
Myrtle acknowledging the stooped man, not sure where he had emerged from, he worked his way through to sit next to her. He smiled at her, seated himself best he could to get comfortable and waited just like the rest. He was dressed in an old crumpled jacket, reminded of her old dad’s gardening one.
It was no fault of the speaker but Myrtle put it down to the state of her mind. She found herself in and out of concentration, picking up only on parts that resonated but in the main she felt lost with the talk. A lot of it about folklore and a great deal of its history. A little heavy going for her. But they’d been some interesting bits about covens, familiars and faeries, and how some of them have to pay back their due to the nether worlds.
At the end of the talk, fair to say Myrtle was mesmerised, hung onto every word from an out-of-towner. Different from the speaker, this guy had arrived a little late to the presentation but had drawn a small crowd at the end of the talk. A new source of inspiration was this stranger, saying words that, sort of made sense and she could well believe. She’d rather him been speaking to the group.
He had attracted five, mainly women of differing heights and widths. Also the stooped man, clutching close to his chest a glass of wine.
“Well, my take on this would be I reckon we are splinters, from a source.”
Myrtle was all ears, attentive, but still with an anxious look in her eyes and thinking who is he?
The stranger, who hadn’t given his name, continued. The others leaned in. He’d touched on something, each, in their way, relating and identifying something in thought.
“See what I mean,” continued the stranger. “I reckon we exist in multiple realities as it were. Like, right now, at this moment, we are living other lives in other realities.”
The man with the stoop, lifting his head back, he remained buckled back, looked like he could fall over.
“So what if in some bizarre way, you know, like these talented gifted people, who somehow amaze us with an expression of talent, that appears to be far beyond their years in terms of what they create, and are able to demonstrate.
“Think about it. If somehow they channel that other part of themselves that exists in another reality. Y’know, where these things are possible and can somehow be used in this reality. Would it not seem magical, beyond the bounds of what makes up this reality?
“Imagine this, that out there, whatever is out there is a splinter of us. That maybe there are many splinters spread around time and space. Existing and expressing themselves in ways beyond what we could ever dream of expressing in this reality.”
Myrtle spellbound, thoughts running ahead wanting to know how could you channel these other parts into the here and now. Maybe she could somehow heal the onslaught of gum disease and not face having her teeth extracted. She’d stop biting her lip.
“I mean imagine having access to those multiple parts of ourselves. Would you sign up to have those abilities. Have anything you want?”
The group around him looked to one another carrying the same thought.
Myrtle felt colder in the room. And odd the way the group seemed to close in a little too close for comfort around the man. She found herself on the outside of the circle.
The fawning around this man by these who should know better was becoming too much to stand. They followed the stranger like they were all puppy dogs entering the other room where’d he gone.
She obviously wasn’t flavour of the month. She wanted to know more but they’d taken him off.
It was reaching that time; people had departed, through the back room. The stooped man remained, he’d returned to sit back in his chair. She wondered about the stranger and went to look at the other room standing slightly to one side of the door.
Myrtle caught sight of the speaker booked for the talk. He was standing alone over at the table. She saw him with what looked like glass jars. For the moment, he seemed to be taking advantage of the lull. He hadn’t noticed her, more preoccupied with sorting out the contents of the bag.
He was rearranging jars and placing them back into a carpetbag. She took more of an interest in his antics. Something grabbed her attention and was sure she wasn’t mistaken. The jars seemed to have little dolls inside of them and she was sure some glowed and pulsated. The speaker was hurrying to arrange them back into the bag and sure enough looking ham-fisted whilst rushing to get the jars inside out of sight.
“I’d go back the way you came in if you don’t mind me saying.”
It was the man with the stoop. First time he’d really spoke, save for his muted greeting. He rather felt familiar, as if she should know him.
She looked back into the room, the man with the carpetbag had moved over to the far corner. Myrtle taken by a start, there was a tall wicker figure. She was shocked, seeing it dressed in the same clothes as the stranger holding court with them earlier. Then returning to look back at the stooped man, he was gone.
Myrtle felt that rush of a panic. Felt ever so vulnerable and exposed. She moved smartly from the doorway. The room took on a sense of foreboding. The focus of attention now on the stairs and she quickly made her way down them. Her footsteps announced her presence clomping down the wooden steps. The woman on the desk, the one there when Myrtle had entered, was preparing to lock up the building, looked surprised thinking it might have been her partner who had delivered the talk.
“Oh you gave me quite a start then…”
“I’m so sorry I was attending a talk given upstairs the most bizarre thing really, and scary. I was with a group of people who seemed to have left rather quickly from another way out.” Myrtle was anxious.
The woman just looked at her, didn’t say anything while thinking.
“Well there’s only the stairs you came down. Good job you came down when you did, I might have locked you in the place. The alarm would have triggered. That’ll been enough to wake the dead!”
“I don’t know what went on up there, but I’ll be glad to get out, it’s like I… don’t know what to make of it…” Myrtle was trembling.
“Well they do say it’s a haunted place, used to be a meeting place for a coven. There’s a ghost of an old man as well, I’ve never been able to capture him when I’ve been up there.”
Myrtle looked white and had come across unsteady.
“Tell you what you look like you’ve had a fright, come with me a minute and compose yourself. I’ve a jar of something ready to work its magic for you.”
-end-
The Storm Ghosts (Audio Version)
Here is the audio version of The Storm Ghosts, a short monologue from The Field Guides to the Ghostly World.
for written transcript see post here The Storm Ghosts
The Ghostly World Journal
by John Riley
When old of age and looking into the glass and see but a little of what I was, and know that ahead in time and season would if I could make the world a little younger.
For I shall not have walked alone in reflective mind and taken that path of rock and stone.
Hello again, that we meet on a day of such brightness that without conversation without announcement, I know of your spectral presence.
For in this morn of spring, the awakening of dawn, I, bound, with the bleakness of a winter’s season, searching for shelter, that I might find but one moment.
Would it be better to have given another, who could have lived and expressed love in ways I denied? For why not have set me with a heart of ice than a heart that feels and knows pain. Better that, I not feel a life of loneliness.
That I wander through this life as a phantom existing beyond your threshold. That we at times might see of one another and brought close to know one another. Yet the truth remains, we are but long seasons apart and you destined to love another.
A familiar refrain that I greet you, the darkness, and talk with you again.
-end-