continued from Part 4 . . .
We did not smudge Zephyr’s house. The Mothman had never appeared inside it, only outside. Besides, her parents were home. So we took our sage bundles and our scented candles into the woods. I drew a quick protective circle with salt and stared into a flame to drop myself into a trance. This was all quick and dirty, because I didn’t really believe we were contacting an independent spiritual entity.
And then it was there, in the darkness outside the circle, eyes glowing red-orange like coals in a campfire. Then I was there, looking back at myself, and at Zephyr, our faces flickering by candlelight. Two perspectives, alternating, like those ambiguous figures from Psych 101. Duck / Rabbit? Maiden / Crone? It was very strange.
“I see him,” Zephyr said. “Do something.” She seemed pretty calm. I guess she believed my magical theatrics were enough to protect her.
According to the Internet, all I had to do to dispel a tulpa was to let it know that I was done with it, that I would no longer be paying attention to it. I took the words directly from a website. I’ve decided that I’m going to stop forcing you. You’re going to stop being here with me, I recited, internally.
No, the Mothman said. You are not done with me. Look at yourself, faking a ritual in the woods to impress a girl.
“I banish you!” I shouted.
Grow up and join the real world, the Mothman said, its red eyes expressionless, its mouthless face immobile. Its voice was not my voice. It was deep, and rich, and echoed up from some place inside me that I did not know, or even recognize.
A wind arose out of nowhere, and the Mothman leaped into the trees. We heard it scrambling up through the rustling of the leaves, and than a single heavy flap as it launched itself into the night sky. Does an astral projection have mass?
“You did it,” Zephyr breathed, putting her hand on my arm. “Is he really gone?”
I sighed. “I don’t know.” This was going to suck. “And I have something to tell you.”
She banished me. Not formally, not ritually, but in the ‘Never fucking talk to me again’ kind of way. I had to find a new coffee shop.
In the two years since then, I have neither seen nor been the Mothman. That flap is apparently over.
She’s still active on the other Flap, the paranormal smartphone app. I finally got one, and installed the app, and followed her, under my own name. She hasn’t blocked me.
That’s a good sign.
Oh, no.
Want more?
Sometimes an Image Just Sticks with You
My elementary school library had a copy of Usborne’s All About Monsters. I’m pretty sure they had the whole Worlds of the Unknown series. There was supposedly a campaign to bring them back, but the pages on Usborne’s website all give “don’t exist” errors. Which is kind of funny.
I don’t know how many times I checked it out over those 8 years (no middle school then), but it must have been several. Of the images in this blog post, only the one above rang a bell in my head. Another came from the UFO book, imagining the homeworld of the Kelly-Hopkinsville Goblins, circling Eta Cassieopeiae (way too many vowels there).
which left such an impression on me that it has shown up repeatedly in my fiction
and even in my academic work, though it did not occur to me to cite it at the time.
The Haunted Generation (and Hauntology)
I am not alone in this. Bob Fischer appears to have made a career of chronicling his experiences as part of what he calls the Haunted Generation of the 1970s. The blog covers all sorts of pop culture ephemera from that period. The Britishness of it adds an extra layer of weirdness.
None our our PSAs were that creepy. It reminds me of the last part of Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson, which went deeply and suddenly dark.
I’m pretty sure it was my fifth-grade teacher, Claudinna Cash, who read that book to us (do teachers still read books out loud?), probably during milk break in the afternoon.
(We did not have an old lady and a cart. We had a bucket and a rotating milk duty schedule, where the lucky stiff on duty got to go to the lunch room and retrieve the milk. Any reason to get up and move, right?)
Anyway, one foggy morning we were on our way to school in my mom’s 68 Olds Cutlass, with the black plastic bench seats that would burn the crap out of you on sunny summer afternoons, when we came upon a bad car accident. There was my teacher, Mrs. Cash, standing by the side of the road — freaking out — while a guy I did not recognize lay on the side of the road with his eyes closed. We pulled over, and my mom got out of the car to try and calm her. We kids just stayed in the car and stared at what we thought was a dead body.
He wasn’t dead, it turned out, but he did spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair because of spinal cord damage. His name was Mike Brown. He and his wife Sue (who happened to be a nurse) ran the S&M Grocery in Bee Lick for many years. They did very well, for that economically depressed area, and sponsored a personal fireworks display every 4th of July. The volunteer fire department treated it as a training for their members. Everyone else got to eat and drink for free, that one night of the year.
That’s right. The S&M Grocery. Endlessly amusing to repressed country kids. I probably still have the trucker cap around here somewhere.
And — it’s not the only one. Search it. You’ll see. It doesn’t appear to be a chain, just the repeated inventions of individual store owners.
The Browns’ eventual mistake was building a grand new house, which soured the relationship with the community, and they had to sell the store, which has remained open with different names, under a long series of south Asian managers.
I’m sure there’s a moral there, but I don’t know what it is.
.. deleted my Section re Nine Lives - Legends of the Nine Lives - no contributions in almost a year since an Open Invitation to add yer own - so near dyin it’s only Blind Luck flipped the coin as I blew past El Gato Nine Lives & vectoring in remorselessly twards 18 free passes .. i do swear
As opposed to ‘ghosts, goblins, skin walkers, undertoads, zombie woofs - & dred frumious bandersnatch et al Inc - I just assume the fine hand of shamanism is doing some leg pulling & playing around much of the time.. & that Dalai Llama dude.. serious serious mojo.. Saw him pull an astonishing stunt outta thin air in Madison, Wisconsin.. & also been droned musically by the Tantric Lamasery of Lhasa marching band (not) - astonishing deceptive stuff I done with Digital Ambient Recording in the circular Convocation Hall / University of Toronto