Category Archives: novel

July 2, 2019 · 10:42 am

When the Captain Came Calling… Canto 26

Canto Twenty-Six – The Secrets of Stupid Dogs

Valerie-squirrel, despite the almost endless supply of squirrel energy provided by a fast-pumping squirrel heart, was panting and out of breath as she stopped at the corner of Cecily Dettbarn’s porch roof.  She needed to catch her breath, but she could see Mazie Haire’s Gingerbread House on the other side of the Norwall water tower, just across the street.  Even better, she hadn’t seen Skaggs the cat for at least two blocks.

The evil cat had nearly caught her as she ran along the fence back at the Kellogg place.  When he had lunged at her, he missed, and he toppled into the concrete birdbath that sat between the fence and Mrs. Kellogg’s big bay window on the west side of the house.  She hadn’t seen the cat since she had left him behind there, sputtering cat-curses and spitting out old sparrow feathers.

Valerie-squirrel had gone back up into the trees to travel the rest of the way north on Whitten Avenue, and then from maple to maple along the north side of main street.

Now, looking carefully all around for signs of danger and lurking cats, she climbed down the trellis on the side of the Dettbarn house.  She then sniffed the air and scampered quickly across the street to tall grass under the water tower.

“Boof!  Boof!  Boof!” barked Barky Bill from the end of his chain behind Martin’s Bar and Grill.

“What does boof mean, stupid dog?” Valerie-squirrel thought in the direction of the stupid dog.

“Well, it means boof, or possibly bark in dog language.  How is it you don’t know that already?  You are a dog, aren’t you?”

Valerie-squirrel was stunned.  “I thought the cat told me dogs can’t speak.  You’re Barky Bill, aren’t you?”

“I answer to that, yeah.  But also, Stupid Dog, and Ijit Dog, and Damned Dog… and some other strange words that end in dog.”

“Skaggs the cat told me you couldn’t speak.”

“Yeah.  The cat’s right.  Dumb dogs can’t speak.”

“But you’re talking to me now.  What do you mean dogs can’t speak?”

“You are a dog, ain’t ya?  Dogs can talk to other dogs.  We do it by waggin’ tails and sniffin’ butts and stuff.  You know about that, right?”

“I’m not a dog.  I am a girl, actually.  Valerie Clarke.  But I’ve been turned into a squirrel by black magic.”

“Oh, yeah.  You are a squirrel!  I can smell you from here.  But not the eating kind of squirrel.  I can smell that you are not a real squirrel.”

“Do you smell the cat?  Skaggs?  He was chasing me, trying to kill me.”

“No.  I hate the dumb cat.  I will kill him some day.  I don’t smell him now… no.”

“Good.  Promise you won’t eat me if I go over to the Gingerbread House?”

“The witch’s house?  You don’t want to go there.”

“Yes, I do.  And I don’t want you to attack me when I try to get there.”

“Oh, I would never eat you.  You smell like the prettiest little squirrel-girl that ever lived in this town.  I will protect you.  I will boof at the cat if he comes near.  And one day I will kill him.  But I could never eat you.  Barky Bill is a good boy, yes, he is.”

Valerie-squirrel was a little worried that Barky Bill might not be completely sane as dogs go.  She didn’t know if she dared run past too close to the chained and perpetually angry dog.  So, giving him the widest possible berth she could manage, she slipped under the water tower and down the alley behind main street into the back yard of the Gingerbread House. “Boof! Boof!  Boof-boof-boof-boof!” was how Barky Bill ended their brief conversation.

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June 25, 2019 · 3:45 pm

When the Captain Came Calling… Canto

Canto Twenty-Five – Squirrel on the Lam

Valerie-squirrel found that even though she had rapidly ascended through the hollows of the brickwork, dodging obstacles, squeezing through narrows, and working her paws at a high rate of speed, she reached the top with energy to spare.  Her squirrel-body was almost infinitely flexible and full of muscle.  What skateboard miracles she could perform if her body were only like that as a human!

But she came out under the eaves of the Philips’ house and was soon racing across the roof.  She leaped into the branches of the tall maple that stood in front of Mary’s house.  The leaves were mostly yellow with fall color, but bright reds and scarlet colors tipped the five points of almost every leaf.  The view was amazing from the heights of the tree, especially because of her squirrel eyes that gave her very nearly a 360-degree view around her.  It was like three-dimensional vision warped into surround-see super-reality.  And yet, as amazing as the view was, her squirrel heart knew despair because the Pidney and Mary squirrels were nowhere to be seen.  Had cats eaten them already?  She shuddered to think it.  Was it up to her to save them?  Could they somehow save her?

There was no squirrel-plan that made sense at that moment.  Her instincts were screaming at her to run and climb and jump… and eat nuts.  But how could any of that be helpful?  Especially eating nuts?

She knew this predicament had to be the result of magic, probably evil magic.  How could she turn herself back into a human girl?  The only real magic she was aware of before this terrible curse was the magic revealed to her by the witch, Mazie Haire.  Somehow she had to go and find the Haire woman, and somehow she had to make the woman understand, through a stream of screamed-out squirrel curses, chreeks, and chit-it-its, that magically somehow the witch would interpret, what had happened to Valerie, and that she needed the old witch to change her back.  But how to get there?

“I see you up there!”  The cat’s voice startled her because, even though she could clearly see the cat on the ground far below, it sounded as loud as if she were face to face with the ugly old cat.  She calmed herself with the realization that the cat was somehow telepathic.

She looked intently at the cat, wiggled her blond tail, and thought intensely in its general direction.  “Can you read minds, damned old cat?” she heard herself say.

“I can hear you animal-talking,” said Skaggs from below.  “I can’t hear what you’re thinking.  But I don’t need to know that to know you must come down from that tree to get the help you need.”

She ran along a maple branch and launched herself through the air, landing in a branch of the elm tree next door in the Pixeley’s yard.  “I can travel from tree to tree!” she cried out with her mind.

“Not all the way to where you need to go.  There is too much space for you to cross to go north to the witch’s house.”

“How did you know I wanted to go there?”

“Where else would you go in your present situation?  You need that old witch’s magic to undo what Oojie did.  Am I right?”

“You are about as wrong as anything could be… because you are… you’re evil!  Evil is always wrong!”

“I am not evil.  But I will admit, to a squirrel a cat surely seems evil.”

“I will find a way.”  She leaped down onto the red tar-paper shingles of the Pixeley house.  There was no tree near enough going to the north, but there were bushes around the house.  And there was a line of pine trees in Tom Kellogg’s yard to the north.

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June 21, 2019 · 4:18 pm

Chewing on Gingerbread Stories

I have started re-reading my werewolf stories again as I intend to promote the heck out of the two books pictured here in the rest of 2019.

Both books are intertwined even though they are both stand-alone novels with different genre ties and different themes. They share the same characters, many of the same scenes (though seen from different viewpoints in each novel), many of the same plot points, and the same werewolf. I like to think that reading both books together makes a better, more nuanced story as a two-book whole. But each book is also a whole in itself. And you can read them in either order.

I started by re-reading Recipes for Gingerbread Children. This book is basically a fairy-tale story-collection contrasted with a Holocaust survivor’s story. It is about how a storyteller manages to shape the world around her to help herself and others make sense out of a cruel world filled with evil and betrayal.

Dunderella and the Wolf Girl (a random werewolf illustration not connected to either book)

The Baby Werewolf is a Gothic horror tale where the real monster is hidden by deeply buried secrets, and lies have to be pierced to protect the innocent. I will re-read and promote this book second. I love both of these books with a paternal sort of overlooking-the-warts-and-birth-defects love.

So, I have a plan. A hopelessly pie-in-the-sky plan. But a plan. And hopefully at least some part of the plan will work.

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June 18, 2019 · 2:54 pm

When the Captain Came Calling… Canto 24

Canto Twenty-Four – Squirrel Time

It was Skaggs the cat that started the action.   He stared at Valerie-squirrel with evil, mismatched eyes.  He licked his evil cat-lips.  Then he launched himself into the air, intending to come down on top of Valerie-squirrel’s head.

Pidney-squirrel was having none of that.  Faster than the eye could follow, he dashed over to defend Valerie-squirrel, latching on to Skaggs the cat’s left rear haunch with his sharp squirrel teeth.

“Yeeowehrrrrr-owwwerrrr!” screamed the cat as he tumbled over his wound into a very un-catlike pile of Pidney-squirrel-and-Skaggs-the-cat-awkwardness all wrapped up in a fight to the death.

“Chreee-chit-it-it-it!” cried Valerie, trying hard to say, “I’ll help you, Pidney-squirrel!” but not managing it very well.  She caught the tip of the cat’s tail in her mouth and bit hard with her own sharp squirrel teeth.

“Have a care, cat!” said Oojie.  “You can eat the boy-squirrel, but not the girl-squirrels.  I need them alive!”

The enraged cat was, paws and claws, splayed out in agony in four directions at once, spitting his fury and hatred at the squirrels who still had him impaled with buck teeth.

“You will die, beautiful one!” swore Skaggs in the mental language Valerie-squirrel had come to think of as cat language.  “I don’t care what the juju thing says.  He is only someone’s servant!  Not the witch-doctor himself.”

Mary-squirrel pulled at Pidney and made him let go of Skaggs’ hind leg.  She dragged him over to the furnace fixture and up a pipe that was wrapped with black tape where the squirrels could get a decent claw- hold.  Both Pidney and Mary squirrels shot up the pipe and out the open basement window above it.

Valerie-squirrel realized too late that she should’ve let go and followed them up the pipe.  The evil cat whipped his injured tail around and launched her toward the stairs.  Mary Philips’ father always kept a waste basket at the foot of the stairs, and Valerie-squirrel, head over tail, spiraled into it.

“Get outside and get the other squirrels!” Skaggs commanded the other cats.  “This one is all mine!”

The other cats disappeared up the cellar stairs and out of the house.

“You cannot kill the girl squirrel!” commanded Oojie with a shout.

“Spare me, little familiar… for that’s what you are, only the witch’s familiar, not the actual witch.  Magic flows through you, but it does not come from you.  You can’t control me.”    

Valerie-squirrel knew she was in deep and dire distress, so she felt around in the darkness for possible weapons.  But how does one wield a weapon with squirrel paws?  And then she realized that the waste basket was made of wicker.  She quickly bit into the soft woody fibers with her amazingly sharp incisors.

“I am going to report you to the master!” Oojie said to the cat.

“Go ahead.  I will have a nice squirrel lunch while you get him.  I have her trapped in this human trash thingy.”

The hole was big enough to squirm through.  And with luck, there was a mouse hole in the basement brickwork right near where she tumbled out on the dark floor.  She wriggled through the opening and into the hollow tunnel that was on the inside of the cinderblock wall.  She could see light somewhere far above.

“Where are you, beautiful one?  How can you be hiding under this paper and string and old apple cores?”

Valerie-squirrel heard the basket being batted away and new light flooded in the door of the mouse hole.

“Aha!  So that is where you have gone.”

The cat’s paw came reaching in through the hole, the only part of Skaggs that actually fit.  He nearly got a hold on Valerie-squirrel’s bushy blond tail.  She wasn’t used to having a tail the way a real squirrel would be.  She tucked it up underneath herself just in time.  Then she began to climb up through the brickwork.  It was a long, hard climb basically going straight up, but she could manage with four splayed squirrel legs.

“You haven’t escaped me yet!” cried the cat.  “I will have you still.” Her tiny heart beat even faster as she climbed.

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June 11, 2019 · 4:27 pm

When the Captain Came Calling… Canto 23

Canto Twenty-Three – The Juju Man

“This is a very strange story,” said Pidney, blushing furiously.

“It’s practically pornography,” said Mary softly.

“I think the interesting part is where it tells about the juju man,” said Valerie.  “It tells us how to make it work.”

“Yeah, it does kinda, doesn’t it?” said Pid.

“It doesn’t say the order to tap them in,” said Mary, looking at the ugly wooden man with the even uglier wooden mask on his face.

“It doesn’t say they have to be tapped in order,” reminded Valerie.  “It just says to tap them each one time and say the magic words.”  She reached out her hand and tapped each of the twenty-eight tattoos only one time.

“Good gawd, Val, don’t do it!” whimpered Pidney.

“You mean say the magic words?” asked Mary.

“Yes!” said Pidney.

“Juju do dah goodah!” sang Valerie as if on cue.  Nothing happened.

“Don’t !” screeched Pidney.

“You must also have to say oojie-magoober,” said Mary.

“Oh, Mary!   No!” cried Pid.  At that moment a cloudy stream of purple smoke boiled out of the top of the wooden juju man.  The idol began to glow with an eerie greenish-blue neon light.  The smoke was sweet smelling, like burning sugar.

The little wooden man began to shake himself as if he was trying to wake himself up.

“Who are you?” Valerie asked him with a Cheshire Cat’s grin.

“Juju do dah!  Yaya!” cried the little wooden man.  “I am Oojie Magoober.  You have summoned me!”

“What?” said Mary.  “It was an accident.  Go back to sleep or something.”

“I cannot sleep again until my task is complete,”

“What’s your task, then?” asked Pidney.  “We will help you do it if we have to.”

“I must take a virgin back to my master, Mangkukulan!”

“Which virgin do you mean?” asked Valerie.

“You will do nicely, but my master asked for the other one.”

“No!” said Pidney.  “Not that!  You may not do that!”  The football hero drew himself up to his full height and towered over the little wooden man.

“Very well.  Be warned.  I shall cheat and use magic.  Oojie Magoober squirrelly doo dah!  Yaya!”

The little wooden man twitched his stubby wooden fingers at Pidney, and suddenly the football hero shrank down into his clothes, until nothing was left but a twitching pile of empty boy’s clothing piled upon empty boy’s shoes.

“What have you done!” cried Mary.  “Pidney!”

From out of the collar of the empty shirt, a reddish-brown squirrel popped his squirming, chittering body free.

“You turned him into a squirrel?” cried Valerie, distraught.

“Smaller and easier to deal with.”

“But there are still two of us against one of you,” said Mary menacingly.  “Both of us are bigger than you.”

“Oojie Magoober squirrelly doo dah, two dah, yaya!”  The fingers waggled at Valerie and Mary both.

Valerie felt a wave of nausea pass through her tummy and then the room swirled around her.  Everything went dark.  Except, it was a colored darkness.  Roughly the same color as the pink blouse Val had been wearing.  She pushed at the darkness around her and felt that it was cloth.  Her hands felt funny.  Not the kind of funny that makes you laugh.  It was a funny tingly feeling in the finger nails as she clawed at the cloth around her.  Then she found an opening.

As she freed her head and eyes from the darkness, she saw one of Mary’s saddle shoes.  In it sat a confused and forlorn-looking squirrel covered in about the same shade of auburn fur as Mary’s hair.  Then, horrified, she looked at her own two hands.  Squirrel paws.  Her arms and body were covered with a golden-blond fur that was not far from Val’s own hair color.

“We’ve been turned into squirrels!” she tried to say to the Mary-squirrel.  “Chee-chee chit-it-it-it!” was what actually came out.

“No one understands squirrel talk,” said Oojie.  “Now get into my sack.”

Valerie-squirrel rushed to the side of the saddle shoe where Pidney-squirrel had joined Mary-squirrel.

“Chit-it-it-it Chree-eek!” cried the Pidney-squirrel, leaping onto the wooden-head’s mask and sinking gnawing buck teeth into it.

“You can’t hurt me,” said the wooden man.  “You are just squirrels.  And I don’t even have to get you into the sack by myself.    That is the very reason I asked the cats to help.” Suddenly, at the top of cellar stairs, five cats appeared.  Valerie shuddered as she recognized flat-headed old Skaggs.  And he was leering evilly at her.

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June 7, 2019 · 2:16 am

Hurry Up and Worry, Murray!

Mary, the leader of the Pirates, with Squirrel Valerie and Invisible Captain Dettbarn

I am now writing every novel as if it will be the last one that I ever write. So it is with my current work-in-progress, When the Captain Came Calling. It is a story that comes before my best novel, Snow Babies, already written and published, but was actually formed in my head and in my libretto long before I began putting Snow Babies down on the page. It is a good novel, but not the best I have ever written. I am very near to completing it.

But, unfortunately, I am also very near to completing my whole life. Pain is a constant reminder that my health is so poor, that each new day could easily literally be my last.

The IRS is trying their best to help me on towards the grave.

While I am currently dealing with the tax burden from 2018, they dug up another unpaid bill from 2017, a late-payment penalty they forgot to tell me about last December. More than $200 dollars worth. I am flatter than broke.

So, I am forced to Uber drive once more. Yesterday and today I picked up fares again for the first time in the last ten months. And I am not really well enough to do it. The curse is heavy.

But this grumpy old man ain’t quite dead yet.

One more novel to finish, and maybe another one after that.’

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June 4, 2019 · 3:41 pm

When the Captain Came Calling… Canto 22

Canto Twenty-Two – A Beach-Front Home

I followed the naked girl and her pet red panda about a mile along the beach.  She skipped and sang songs in a language I didn’t recognize, but sounded a lot like the Filipino language.  The panda sported about like a playful puppy, following her devotedly.  I didn’t think you found red pandas on small Pacific islands like the one we were on, but it didn’t matter what I thought.  I was no scientist or naturalist, so I didn’t really know.  I kept looking worriedly out to sea.  I mean, I did know for a fact that Chinooki the mermaid could eat people.

“We have been coming to this house, my tahanan,” she said proudly, showing me a beached submarine from World War Two.  It had a large rising sun flag from the Empire of Japan painted on the conning tower.

“You live in a submarine?”

“It is where Mangkukulan wants me to stay while we wait for the volcano.”

“Oh.  It’s like that, is it?  Well, show me.  Do you have any guns aboard?  Or swords?  Something to protect us from Chinooki?”

“Oh, silly captain man, Chinooki serves Mangkukulan.  She will not be harming me.  And she is ordered not to be hurting you also.”

I was a little worried about the actual intentions of this coo-coo man.  I didn’t think he really had Malutu’s best interests at heart.  Not if he meant to toss her naked into an erupting volcano.  I followed her warily up the side of the submarine and down into a hatch near the nose.

“My goodness, this is certainly rusty and rather dreary,” I said as I surveyed the narrow candle-lit corridor in the center of the submarine.  I followed her into the forward section where I really expected to see a forward torpedo room.  I found, however, that it had been hollowed out, lined with bamboo, and turned into a cozy and rather decent living space.  It had a bed in the center of the not over-large room.  There was a potbellied stove that had obviously been put there for cooking.  The room was also decorated with carved wooden idols.  They were the kind of Tiki idols that you could buy in Honolulu if you were a tourist who liked kitschy stuff to decorate your porch back in Iowa with.  Especially one large ugly idol with a man-like body and wearing a frightful carved mask.

“You have a nice home here.  Didn’t you say something about clothes you could put on?”

“Oh, yes.  Or… you could be getting naked too, Captain.”

“No, no.  Put on a dress please.  You need to be decent around me.”

She pulled out a rather nice red cloth dress with a white flower pattern on it.  It was a Hawaiian sort of wrap-around affair.

“This okay?  Or are you wanting the kimono?”

“That one is fine.  You are very beautiful like that.”

“Yes, I am being beautiful for you.  It is being important that I get you to like me very, very much.”

“Oh, yes?”

“I am liking you.  But I must be telling Mangkukulan that you are here now.  Chinooki has done well.”

“Um, maybe we can hold off a bit on telling the coo-coo man.”

“Why?  I am supposed to be telling him immediately… faster if it is being possible.”

“Are you sure that coo-coo man has our best interests at heart?  I mean, it seems to me like he might be trying to hurt us in some way.”  I was imagining being tossed into the volcano along with the girl.

“Oh, no.  This he will not be doing.  I will be sending the juju to tell him you are here.”

She went over to the biggest, ugliest Tiki idol and tapped his tattoos, once each until she had tapped them all.  And she sang;

“Juju do dah goodah… oojie-magoober!”  Purple smoke poured out of the top of the Tiki’s head and filled the room with a smell like burnt sugar.

“Is that a magic spell or something?”

“Yes, it is being something.  We are wanting you to be very comfortable here, Captain mans.  Will you not be taking off your clothes?”

“I most certainly will not.”

“Okay.  We will be doing the talking about it.  You will see.”

To my utter shock and horror, the Tiki man began to glow with an unearthly greenish-blue light.  He moved as if he were alive and trying to shake himself awake.

“It’s alive?”

“Don’t be being silly.  It is made of wood.  But, Oojie-magoober, please be telling Mangkukulan that the Captain is here.”

“Juju doo dah!  Yaya!” said the wooden creature.  Then it scampered out of the room and out of the submarine.

“You are liking Malutu, yes?” she asked me.

“Yes.  You are very beautiful.”

“Good-good!  Now you will be taking off your clothes, Captain.”  And just like that she had me naked.  I was as much under her spell as the wooden Tiki man.

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June 4, 2019 · 3:22 pm

When the Captain Came Calling… Canto 17

Canto Seventeen – Invisible People

The next day Valerie had a chance to hang out with Pidney and Mary again, so she took it.  She road into town on the school bus after school with Danny Murphy.  They didn’t actually talk about anything the whole way.  Anticipation is often better than the real thing.  And it wasn’t often that Mary and Pid were both off directly after school.  Pidney had no football practice that afternoon, and Mary canceled whatever school meetings she had planned that day in order to come back to Norwall with him after school.  The four Pirates were supposed to meet in the Library for Pirate business.

“There’s Mary and Pid,” said Danny pointing as he and Val stepped off Milo’s school bus.

“Yeah, but who is that?” Valerie asked, pointing at a mysterious cloaked figure standing behind the tree by the Library door.  She was instantly reminded of the cloaked man she had seen the day they got the Tiki idol.

“Hey, Pidney!” Danny shouted, “who is that near you behind that tree?”

Pidney was holding the door of his step-dad’s old 70’s Lincoln Mercury to help Mary get out.  Mary carried a tall stack of books.  They had driven home from the high school in Belle City together.

“What man?  Where?”  The figure moved out of sight behind the large fluffy pine tree.

“Look behind the tree!” shouted Valerie.

Pid walked around to where he could see behind the tree.  He looked back a Valerie and Danny and shrugged.  “Nobody here that I can see,” he said.

“You guys need to see what we found in the high school library,” said Mary waving them to come towards the Library building.

Valerie looked at Danny.  He shrugged.  They both walked toward the Library.

“I found some old high school yearbooks in the library,” said Mary.  “We can use them to get an idea what Captain Dettbarn used to look like.  He’s kinda hard to describe any other way.”

“And there’s a book about the ship, Mary Celeste.  It tells about the old ghost ship, not the Captain’s ship, but I still think it is important,” said Pidney.

Valerie and Danny walked across the street from the bus stop to join the two high school kids.

“Here’s the 1962 Belle City Bronco yearbook,” said Mary, handing the black-bound thin book of pictures to Valerie.  “The Captain is in the Junior Class in that one.  He had a beard then, just like the one he had on his face the last time I saw him.”

Valerie opened to the page of Junior portraits and ran her finger over the C’s and D’s until she got to Dettbarn.  He was kind of a dumpy fat boy even then, with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a derfy smile that showed his crooked teeth.  He had a rather ratty looking beard, which was perfect for a rodent-like face, that, while it didn’t look like a rat, it did look an awful lot like the face of a woodchuck, or some kind of short-toothed beaver.

“He’s kinda funny looking,” Val said to herself, but loud enough for all to hear.

“Now, see here!  I take exception to that remark!” said a cloaked and hatted figure stepping out of the shadow of the evergreen tree by the door.

“Who…?” croaked Mary, leaping away from the figure and towards Pidney.

“Help me…!” squawked Danny as he awkwardly leaped into Pidney’s arms, the football muscles catching hold of the smaller boy easily.

“Don’t you get mad at me!” said Valerie hotly.  “It is not like I was talking to you… whoever you are!”  She lunged toward the stranger, grabbing his yachting cap and yanking it off his head. 

But where the head was supposed to be… nothing at all there except a pair of thick bifocal glasses hanging in the air like they were weightless in outer space.

Valerie looked at the glasses, and then down at the yearbook picture still in her other hand.  Yes, it was an updated version of the same style of thick glasses. 

“Erm…  Captain Dettbarn.  It’s you!”

“Uncle Noah?” Mary said.  “What happened to your head?”

“Oh, um… it’s still there, Mary dear.  Head-hunters didn’t eat it or anything.  I am just the victim of a curse.  A curse that makes my body completely invisible.”  He removed the cloak to reveal a free-standing pair of pants, a short-sleeved red-and-white-striped shirt, and empty neckerchief, and floating white gloves that didn’t seem to be properly attached to the invisible dumpy body wearing the sailor’s clothes.

“Er, uh… sir?” asked Pidney, “What is all this purple smoke coming out from behind the pine tree?  It has a funky smell, like burning sugar or something.”

“Well, I hate to say it, but that is an indicator that the witchdoctor himself is watching us at the moment from somewhere not too far away.  That purple smoke always seems to come around right before some evil magic happens.”

“Oh, that’s not good.  Maybe we better go inside the library before anything bad can happen.”  Mary was looking around the street for signs of the evil witchdoctor.

Pidney put Danny on the ground and both boys headed up the Public Library steps.

“Um, uh… Pretty girl, can I have my hat back.  I want to go in the library in disguise.  No sense in scaring the librarian.”

Valerie frowned at the invisible man as she handed him back the hat and the disembodied gloves placed it back on top of his invisible rodent-like head.

“Let’s go inside the Library,” said Mary.  “We have things to talk about and questions to ask… Lots and lots of questions to ask.”

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May 28, 2019 · 11:16 am

When the Captain Came Calling… Canto 21

Canto Twenty-One – The Deserted Beach

I was all alone on the island for all I knew, so I immediately got busy on my best Robinson Crusoe plan.  And then my headache made me rethink that, and I went back to sleep for another two hours.  I think it was two hours, estimating by the sun, but I don’t really know how to estimate time by the sun, and as I decided the first order of business had to be to locate any useful wreckage from the ship that had washed up on the shore, my head started hurting again, so I slept again.  Now, I know from re-reading this paragraph that I was probably sleeping way too much… and I didn’t know for sure that Chinooki wouldn’t come up on the sand to eat me, but, well… having this kind of horror-story adventure in the South Seas was really tiring.

When I did finally search the beach, I found almost nothing at all to help me.  I needed a knife, or a hammer, or a gun, or a shovel… but all I found was this log book and a wooden crate full of Pink Fizz Cherry Soda Pop.  Luckily, I also discovered I still had a pencil in my jeans pocket, otherwise I might’ve forgotten everything that happened before I could write it all down.  I know my thinking was a little fuzzy at the time… or possibly Pink Fizzy… but I wrote down everything as truthfully as I possibly could so that whoever found the book would know what happened to the Reefer Mary Celeste and her crew. 

Inland on the island was jungle… a rather thick jungle.  But I desperately needed food and fresh water.  And if I tried walking the beach until I either found civilization or discovered I was on a deserted island; I might die of dehydration and thirst before I discovered I was all alone for certain.  So, I made a brief foray into the island.  If I met headhunters or an evil killer gorilla, I couldn’t do any more about it than writing a scathing commentary on why they shouldn’t be eating me raw in this log book.  I could write that I hoped to give them a fatal case of indigestion as long as they ate my writing hand last.

The jungle was very hot and humid, but I found a rainwater pool a short way into the jungle and was able to slake my thirst. Coconuts and bananas were growing in abundance near the pool.   I also ate.  And it was then that I saw her for the first time.  She was a young girl.  I admit, at the time, I didn’t really know how young.  But she was lovely.  She was Asian-looking with slanted eyes and caramel-brown skin.  She had black hair and dark brown eyes that twinkled at me as she smiled.  And she was standing on the edge of the pool completely nude.  The only thing she wore was an adolescent red panda sitting on her shoulder and grimacing at me with a raccoon-like smile.

“Parlez vous Francais?” she said.  “Tagalog?  Maybe English?”

“I understand English,” I confessed.

“Ah, so good.  I am liking practicing my English.  We don’t be speaking it on this island.  Maligayang pagdating sa masasamang isla.  That means be welcome to Evil Island.”

I didn’t know whether to be frightened or worried about the name of the place, or be incredibly embarrassed that I was talking to a completely naked girl.  “I… I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to spy on you while you were bathing.  I will give you some privacy…”

“Huwag pumunta!  I mean… don’t be going away!  I be liking you.  I don’t be wearing clothings on this island, but I am having a kimono back at my bahay… my house.  I can be putting it on if hubad is wrongness for you.”

“Um, well, I…”  I didn’t know what to say. I was seven kinds of flustered and at least three kinds of embarrassed.

“Please.  Gwapong Lalaki and I are wanting to be talking to you.  It is lonely on the island, waiting for sa galit na bulkan…  for the volcano.”

“You… you are waiting for the volcano?”  I looked up at the high mountain peak about a mile inland.  Black smoke curled nastily out of the top of it.

“Yes.  I am being the virgin bride.  I am waiting for my husband to be.”

This of course sounded like some of the worst rumors I had ever heard about South Seas islanders.  It seemed they intended to throw this beautiful, naked young girl into the volcano to appease an angry god or some such nonsense.

“We have to get you out of here,” I said as bravely as I could manage.

“Yes, yes, that is what I am waiting for.”

“Um, you are?”

“Oh, yes, my husband is to be coming and taking me away from here forever.”

I was determined to rescue the poor girl.

“What is your name, sweetie?”

“I am Malutu… the Red Flower of Matuling Lupa.”

“I don’t have a way off the island at the moment, but I can build us a boat or something…”

“First you are coming to the house of Malutu and Gwapong Lalaki.  Follow us.”

She padded out of the clearing on bare feet and back towards the beach.  She apparently had a house to live in while she waited for her evil people to throw her into the volcano.  I followed her, not knowing what else to do.

“Um, Malutu?  You haven’t seen any mermaids on the beach have you?”

“Mermaids?  You are meaning sirena Chinooki?”

“You actually know about her?”

“Of course, silly man…  She is being the one who brought you to me.”

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May 21, 2019 · 11:09 am

When the Captain Came Calling… Canto 20

Canto Twenty – The Evil Island

We were lost because the Reefer Mary Celeste no longer had a navigator aboard, and Chinooki had apparently destroyed the radio and all the other electronic equipment on board as well.  Kooky and I tried to keep her on the course we had been following, but two of us were simply not enough people to manage a ship of the size of the Mary.  We quickly lost our way in a thick fog and we were going in an unknown direction at too high a rate of speed.  We knew how to use a compass and we might even have been able to wait for the stars if our minds hadn’t been turned to Jell-O pudding by the mermaid’s singing.

“She killed all of our crew, didn’t she?” said Kooky.

“She did.  You know, Chuck warned us about her.  We should’ve listened.”

“You are right, Captain.  I realize that now.  But at the time, it was like I was under a spell or something.  She had power over me.”

“Yes, she did.  Over all of us, apparently.”

“I am so sorry, Captain.  I’ve caused the death of us all, haven’t I?”

“None of us should ever have let someone else take control of our lives.  We should’ve realized the danger from the start.  You can’t blame yourself alone.”

It was right after that conversation that Kooky spotted Chinooki sitting on a distant rock.

“I am going to make her pay, Captain.  She is going to regret coming on board the Reefer Mary Celeste.”

Kooky was at the wheel, and he steered the entire ship directly towards the rock where Chinooki was sitting.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I’ll ram her!  I will run her over!”

“Kooky, she’s singing right now.  Do you think maybe she wants us to do exactly what you are doing?”

“Maybe so.  Maybe not.  But I have ta!” And the strangest thing is that I let him do it.  I let him ram the Mary bow-first into the rock.  It tore through most of the front end of the ship, separating her at mid-ship into two parts, both of which sank to the bottom.  I remember swimming in the ocean with shark fins in the water near the horizon.  I remember hearing Kooky call out and a sudden thrashing, and I wondered if it were the sharks or the mermaid herself who claimed him.  I never saw him again.  I never saw any of them again.  I blacked out, and don’t remember anything before awakening on the sand of the Evil Island’s shore.

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