Author: Alexander Fawn

The girls often spent time together in the evenings, after school.

On this occasion they decided to have another go on the Ouija board. Previous attempts to call up people from the other side had been a waste of time. They only played with it this time because they were at a loose end. They set it up on the bedroom floor with each of them sitting cross-legged at either end. They each placed their fingertips lightly on the heart-shaped planchette and sat asking each other what they should search for when the thing began to move. It made its way gradually across the board and stopped at the letter B. They just sat staring at one another for a while, not quite believing what had happened.

“Did you do that?” said the girl.

“No, I swear, “said her friend.

“Thought not, shall we keep going?”

The moment her friend nodded they both felt the thing tugging at their fingers. It moved the short distance and came to rest on the E.

“B, E”, her friend whispered. “Be something or someone, maybe?”

It began moving again, this time it made its way to the V.

Her friend again, “Be valuable?’ Don’t think so.”

The other girl giggled nervously. “Probably not. Let’s just keep going, OK?”

“OK,” came the reply, and once more the planchette quivered then moved back to the A. It began to move immediately this time and the girl trying to scribble the letters down each time said, “Can we just pause at the next letter, I’m noting these down?”

“Sure, if it’ll let us. Look! It stopped at the L. It could be, Be valuable or something like it.”

“OK,” said the other, “I’ve made a note so far. That’s B, E, V, A, L. Beval? No, that’s the wrong spelling. Anyway, I’ve noticed something else.”

“What?”

“This thing stops when you take your fingers off.”

“Really? Good to know. Let’s keep going. I’ve seen the time. I have to go soon.”

“Right,” said the other and watched as four more letters were indicated, then, to their surprise, the thing sped quickly to the bottom of the board where it said, GOOD BYE.

They both sat back, feeling exhausted.

“Wow!” said the girl holding the paper. Reading it, she said, “B, E, V, A, L, D, E, R and S. That’s bevalders, and that doesn’t make sense.”

They both shrugged.

Her friend said, “I really must go,” and stood up, saying, “That was fun. Spooky, but fun.”

As they left the room the front doorbell sounded. The girl called to her mother, “My friend’s leaving now, mum. I’ll get it.”

A faint, “OK, dear,” came from the sitting room.

When they opened the door they found a young woman standing there. She was pale and terribly thin and wearing some sort of old fashioned pinafore.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Beverly Alders, I believe you summoned me.”

The two men sat playing scrabble.

They had been neighbours for several years, although they had never really got on. The night the man at number 29 invited the man from 34 to come round for a drink, he knew that his wife, visiting her sister in a nearby town, wouldn’t be back for a couple of days. They would have the place to themselves. It was as well that the visitor called when the owner’s wife was away. There had been an unfortunate incident when the visitor, severely drunk, had insulted the homeowner’s wife. She had never got over it, but the husband had decided, man to man, to put it behind them and spend time relaxing and catching up. He remembered two things about him, namely, he liked playing scrabble and was an avid tea drinker. To that end he had the board set up ready and the kettle boiling when the man arrived.

When he arrived he was instantly shown the board on the table, which obviously pleased him, and he was offered a cup of very special herbal tea. His neighbour could see that he was willing to let bygones be bygones. Before long they were sitting at the board, sipping their teas and placing tiles down, making words. They were somewhere in the middle of the game when the homeowner exclaimed.

“Wow! Just look at that! A seven-letter word, ‘toxicor’. I get a triple and a double score with that!” Chuckling to himself, he picked up a pen and began adding up his score.

His visitor said, “Hang on a minute. Toxi what? Doesn’t sound like a proper word; are you sure?”

“Toxicor,” he repeats. “It’s a highly poisonous plant, a cousin of Wolfsbane. As a matter of fact, I have a small patch of it in the back garden.” He handed him the dictionary “Go ahead. Look it up.”

The other takes it and looks it up. He shrugs and says, “OK. Your right.”

“Yes, it’s an interesting plant. Apparently, if ingested, it causes heart arrhythmia, and after a few hours complete failure. As a poison it’s virtually undetectable, I’m told.”

“You don’t say,” said his visitor, obviously tiring of the conversation. “Shall we play on? Despite your big score, I would say that the odds are in my favour.” He was right. He won the game and soon after left in a happy frame of mind.

When he had gone, his host looked up at the clock. He calculated that his neighbour should pass away in his sleep at around two in the morning.

After what he had said to his wife that night, he regarded this as a kindness.

There can be no doubt that he was a special case, but nobody knew it.

Whereas most people understood perfectly well how past events have come and gone, along with the concept that future events were likely to take place; he didn’t… In fact, for him, he knew only the present. This state of constant nowness was all that was real to him; all that existed. In most respects this state of affairs hardly impinged upon what was seen to be a perfectly ordinary life. Those around him only experienced the occasional odd moments when there seemed to be something a little off, a touch of something not quite right, an elusive notion that whatever it was, no finger could be placed upon it.

It was he alone that saw his meeting and marrying his schoolgirl sweetheart, having three children, his watching them scatter to the world creating their own lives, his wife succumbing to cancer, his working life coming to an end and his recent diagnosis of something unstoppable that was about to have him yield to the end of it all, all in the same moment. No one would see that this was happening. No one would be aware that this elderly gentleman had lived with this condition. Only he knew that when that inevitable moment came it would be the exact same now that he had ever known.

For him, it was all timeless.

The night wind sweeps over the ridge and descends along the grassy slope.

The trees that live there respond with a rattle of leaves, bouncing gently on twigs. This open space within the endless forest plays to a different tune. Only the great white moon gives light between the trees at the bottom of the hill, where dark trunks support an endless canopy. The low hooting melody gives a presence to the bird sitting otherwise silently in a high branch. Its large twitching head rotates and its large eyes keep watch for the slightest movement across the leafy floor. There is a rustle beneath. Wings expand and the majestic creature drops and swoops in silence and gathers up. Soon after, the quiet returns, and the age-old mysticism of nature resumes, constant and private, unfolding at a steady and well-practised pace.

For us, there may be sadness that the flight has passed unseen.

But for us, there is the joy of knowing that it was there.

Let there be spells,

For those who wish to use them.

Allow them the right to reclaim

Some perceived long lost power,

That drives the mystic in them.

–

Let their words stir life into bygone charms.

Leave them in peace to work the uncanny and unseen.

Whether real or only imagined,

Leave them to fan their enchanted fire.

–

Grant them the joy of laying ghosts to rest,

Summoning the unseen to cast out evil spirits,

Ailments cured and wishes made whole,

Turning away the hauntings,

While quelling dark passions by revoking evil.

–

Spells based on words.

Using poetic witchery and the rites of nature,

Accessing magic, both light and dark,

Both spoken and sung.

–

Looking through the eternal, chanting secret words.

Finding dreams with jangling spells and charms.

Plucking at destiny’s web, righting past wrongs,

Incantations made without sound, dispelling troubled waters.

Giving vent to sorcery, while allowing fantasy to sway.

Pushing veils aside, parting shadows,

Despatching demons.

–

Delving into forgotten arts, sharing celestial regions.

Courting the supernatural, undoing the mysterious.

Releasing ancient powers, exalting the essence of eternity

By returning to another time, but allowing sleeping spirits to slumber.

–

If they mean no harm,

Wandering through celestial planes,

Finding manifestations in shadow,

Searching ageless realms,

Opening the treasured book,

Making signs and symbols,

Then, let there be spells.

His careful planning always did justice to his chosen profession.

He was a thinking man. He was always anxious to do justice to his work. For him, it was never anything but a simple question of justice. After all, these were bad people, weren’t they? The garden was growing dark. There were so many forms of justice; his was just one of them. The back of the house was lit with windows. The man he received his orders from would always insist on justice. He was comfortably leaning against the tree at the end of the garden. He was proud of the way his work was carried out in order to administer justice. The rifle hanging by his side would stay there until the man appeared. Then, he thought, justice would be served.

The man would come out of the house and light a cigar, the paperwork told him that this was his habit. None of this was without justice, when one thought of it logically. The night was growing cold. In this case, as the intended victim was an international arms dealer, it had to be poetic justice, right?

He heard voices coming from the back of the house. He raised his weapon, because these people needed to be brought to justice.

The red laser dot that travelled up the side of his body, put there by the arms-dealer’s bodyguard, was yet one more example of justice…

His father felt that his son needed toughening up.

His mother wasn’t sure. Up to this point, his main interest was focused on borrowing as many books that he could that dealt with Greek Mythology from the local library. This, and anything he could find on the great philosophers of the world. He had also come across a book that he found most interesting that told the story of Alexander the Great. His mother had no real problem with any of this; his father saw most of it as unhelpful reading material. They knew that he’d been bullied at school on several occasions. His father’s idea was to get him involved in some physical sport.

He felt that it had to be some close contact activity that would give him a few knocks, thus enabling him to take some of the rough and tumble that life was bound to dish out as he grew older. After thinking about it for some time, he came up with the idea of Taekwondo.

There was a club not far from their home, and after making an initial call, his father arranged to take him along to the first session to help him settle in. When they met up with the instructor his father introduced him as Lax. He went on to explain that his real name was Alexander, but when his younger brother had tried to pronounce it while at a very young age, it had come out as Lax. Chuckling about it, he told the man that from that time the nickname had just stuck.

Finally, his father left, leaving his son to deal with the whole new world he was entering. His instructor said, “OK, Lax. Let me show you around.”

As they moved off, under his breath, he whispered… “My name is Alexander.”

He knew that everything has an intrinsic value.

As a loss assessor for a major company where he dealt with all manner of loss-related insurance claims, he was used to placing a value on things. That’s why he gave serious thought to the fact that the box of oddments that was taking up room in the shed, would have to be worth something to somebody. There weren’t enough items to make it worthwhile paying to be a seller at the local flea market. In fact, when he thought about it, he didn’t want money for any of it. He just wanted to get rid of it. He balked at the temptation to literally tip it all into the rubbish bin. No, someone would find some of it useful, he felt sure. He took everything out of the cardboard box he had been accumulating it in, one thing at a time. There were at least two dozen items.

It occurred to him that he could put them all out on the front verge with a sign saying they were free and telling people to help themselves. He spent half-an-hour making up a sign, opening up a small picnic table and arranging all the bits and pieces neatly for people to see. His street usually got busy during the afternoon. He went in and waited.

A short time later he heard a car pull up. He watched through his front window, pleased to see that somebody was interested. He stepped back, not wanting to be seen. He’d go out later to see what was taken.

When he did, he found the bric-a-brac had been tipped into a pile, and the table was gone!

In every country there is a town. In every town there is a street. In every street there is a house. In every house there is a room. In every room there is air. In every air there is nitrogen and oxygen. In every nitrogen and oxygen there is life-sustaining. In every life-sustaining there is survival. In every survival there is a story. In every story there is a desire. In every desire there is a goal. In every goal there is a price, and that price is living in a country…

It was just unbelievable, so many things were breaking over such a short period of time.

It started the night before, when they came in. First the knob came off the back door when they tried to open it, then the handle broke in the bathroom when they went to flush the toilet, and this was followed by the globe going on the bedside lamp. Now, in the morning, sitting on the edge of the bed pulling his socks on, he was jarred to one side and nearly ended up on the floor when the whole thing drop sideways with a crack.

He came down mumbling, “Rotten leg came off, didn’t it!

She looked up from unwrapping food, “What leg?”

“One of the legs gave way on the bed; could be worse, I suppose.”

She shrugged.

He went on, “When we came in last night, I had a feeling about it.”

“You did?”

“I was right, wasn’t I? Things breaking. Now, the bed. Could be worse.”

She went looking for plates. Not having much luck, she sighed and gave a grunt of disapproval.

He sat at the counter, saying, “Never mind, it could be worse.”

Now, she was struggling, trying to open one of the drawers. She called out, “Can you fix this? I need cutlery.”

He went over and yanked at it. The front section came off in is hand, with the drawer still jammed in place. He managed to slide his hand in and bring out what she wanted.

She shook her head in annoyance.

“I know,” he said, ‘but, it could be worse.”

“You keep saying that. How could it be worse?”

“Well, think about it. What if we weren’t squatters? What if we lived here?”