Halloween? No, Give me Samhain

Well, we've pulled through that time of year again.  Orange and black, skeletons and ghouls, scary movies, candy, and endless commercials that are just beginning to be replaced by Christmas commercials, and I just keep muting them all.  Especially since this year Halloween coincided with election year and it's up to you to decide which was scarier.  

Of course all the Halloween decorations are still up, while all the Christmas decorations are taking over the earth...  

Meanwhile, I don't like Halloween, because I don't like being scared.  A few reasons:

I was introduced to fear and pain very early.  When I arrived in this country, I had a very, very, very bad (cigarette?) burn on my chest, and 69 years later the physical scar of it is still there:  faint, but it's still there.  

My mother loved scary movies and watched all the ones shown on TV and took me to all the movies, despite the fact that they scared me so bad I couldn't sleep.  (I didn't mind the Dracula movies - Bela Lugosi seemed kind of ridiculous, if not downright funny, to me...  Make of that what you will.)  I remember she and I went to see "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte" (1964, I was eleven), with Bette Davis, Olivia de Haviland, Mary Astor, Agnes Moorehead, and Joseph Cotton in what seemed like an attempt by everyone to kill everyone else, or at least drive them insane. 

There's a scene involving a backseat that kept me horrified all the way home, as well as a few scenes involving a severed hand, and that night, as I was trying to get to sleep, the little dog jumped up on my bed and I woke EVERYONE up screaming my head off.  

My father, on the other hand, took me to all of the sci-fi movies that came out, including Barbarella ("We won't tell your mother about this one," he said, as I ate popcorn to Barbarella stripping in  the airlock) and 2001 A Space Odyssey, which made my much later forays into hallucinogens seem ... familiar, and wondering when the Star Child was going to show up.  

Then there's two years of living on the streets of L.A., where predators abounded, in uniform and out.

Anyway once I became an adult and was able to live the life I wanted to live, I almost never went to scary movies.  Here's my list of exceptions:

The Haunting - Julie Harris and Claire Bloom together made this in my top five of scariest movies ever made, but the acting was so great that I still don't regret having seen it.

Alien - I avoided opening closets at night for a while. But damn, Sigourney Weaver was GREAT.

The Shining - Stanley Kubrick, Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers... Mm-hmm... Love the photograph on the wall.

Bubba Ho-Tep - Any movie with a black JFK (Ossie Davis), an old Elvis (Bruce Campbell), and an ancient mummy, set in a nursing home has to be seen at least once.  And it has its hilarious moments, as well as the ones which make me look elsewhere for a bit.

Anyway, what I really wish America would celebrate is Samhain:

SAMHAIN

It's pronounced SOW (as in cow)-in, a/k/a November in Gaelic. The early literature (from the 9th century) says Samhain was marked by great gatherings and feasts; a time when the ancient burial mounds were opened, the portals to the Otherworld.  Some of the medieval tales also associate Samhain with bonfires and sacrifice.  There was dancing.  Prayers.  Offerings.  

I like bonfires. I like dancing to the moon, the stars, and fire. I like long walks in foggy or frosty forests, and standing on hills, watching the skies.  I like rain, the scent of it - there is nothing more wonderful that the scent of wet pine, hot or cold - the feel of it, the sound of it.  I like what happens when you are perfectly still and the birds and beasts take you for part of the world.  

Granted, every once in a while Pan might show up.

He looks different in winter:

You can sometimes find him at the end of a path:

(He likes dogs)

(Credit for last two photos to Dark Ally.)

BTW, my dream afterlife is shepherd by day, paleolinguist by night, 

and a crone always.

Robert Altman and The Sisters of Mercy

Last week my husband and I watched McCabe and Mrs. Miller - first time for him (and he really loved it), probably second or third time for me.

I first saw it in 1972 or 1973, not sure which. Not long after I got off the streets and got legal. So when I saw it, it punched a hole in my gut for so many reasons. The Leonard Cohen soundtrack especially: I went straight out and bought that album and played it over and over again.  Especially The Stranger Song:

 

It′s true that all the men you knew were dealers
Who said they were through with dealing
Every time you gave them shelter
I know that kind of man, it's hard to hold the hand of anyone
Who is reaching for the sky just to surrender...

He was just some Joseph looking for a manger
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger

And (back then) I realized that yes, that was exactly what my life had been for a very, very, very long time – and was probably instrumental in finally, a year later, dumping my "Joseph looking for a manger". Because that was him. And I didn't want that kind of man or that kind of life any more.

But enough of that meandering down very old paths, I want to talk about the dynamics of McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Meet wandering gambler McCabe (played by Warren Beatty) who comes to what is barely a town (Presbyterian Church) in the wooded mountains of Washington State.  He gambles, drinks, and opens up its first whorehouse, but he has no idea how to run it. Not that he'll admit that when he's confronted by Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) telling him to hire her as the madam because she knows what she's doing:

"What do you do when one girl fancies another? How do you know when a girl really has her monthly or is just taking days off? What about when they don't get their monthlies? Cause they don't. What do you do then? I suppose you know all about seeing to that? An what about the customers? Who's gonna skin 'em back and inspect 'em? You gonna to do that? If you don't, this town will be clapped up inside of two weeks, if it's not already. What about when business is slow? You just gonna let the girls sit around on their bums? I'll tell you something, Mr. McCabe, when a good whore gets time to sit around and think, four out of five times she'll turn to religion 'cause that's what they was born with. And when that happens, you find yourself fillin' the bloody church down there, instead of your own pockets. Now, I haven't got a lot of time to sit around and talk to a man who's too dumb to see a good proposition when it's put to him. Do we make a deal or don't we? Well?"  

No, McCabe doesn't know how to do any of that, he didn't even know about any of that, so he hires her.  She also handles the bookkeeping because McCabe's arithmetic is about as good as his grasp of the business. Any business.  

The result is, instead of damp tents by a muddy road, Mrs. Miller gets the whorehouse built, complete with a bathhouse and regular inspections for all, girls AND their clients. It is hugely popular, the men of Presbyterian Church are clean and fairly happy, and word spreads throughout the territory. 

Basically, it's the women – the "sisters of mercy" - who literally clean up the town.* 

*I will bet money that Altman's fictional town was based on Pendleton, Oregon, who back in the 1800s was a mining town with lots of Chinese workers, bars, and whorehouses, much of it (literally) underground.  

"Discover the secrets of Pendleton’s Underground tunnels"

The truth is, antihero McCabe is a Dunning Kruger idiot, who knows he's the sharpest card in the deck, babbles bullshit, and can never admit he's wrong about anything. (Sounds terribly familiar, doesn't it?)  The only thing he's really good at is gambling.  And drinking. And going along with anything that might make him look good. Including being mistaken for "Pudgy" McCabe—a supposedly dangerous man who once killed someone named Bill Roundtree.  

And then there's the stuff he says that's supposed to prove him smarter than the average bear.  One line he repeats over and over is 

"If a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his ass so much, follow me?"

That kind of patter works with the men of Presbyterian Church, sort of, but it cuts no ice with Mrs. Miller, nor with the mining company that wants to take over his businesses, and especially not with the gunslingers they send after him when McCabe stupidly refuses to sell his "businesses" for the whopping price of $5,500 (worth the equivalent of $150,000 in today's money).  

Sigh...  We've seen one too many McCabes (social media and television have a lot to answer for) but it is a brilliant performance, probably Beatty's best.  

BTW, the sisters of mercy like McCabe - but they don't count on him.  They count on Mrs. Miller, who does indeed know what she's doing.  And that dynamic reminded me of 3 Women, which I've blogged about before. One thing about Altman, he knew how to write and direct women.  Pinkie, Millie, and Willie are each unique, strange, powerful.  Edgar thought he had all the power, but he never had a chance.  Same with McCabe. 

Mrs. Miller, Lily, Kate, Alma, Ida... they all know how to survive in a man's world. Stay alert. Stay aware. Know the difference between nice guys like Cowboy (an unbelievably young Keith Carradine) and most of the townsmen... and stone cold killers like Butler, Kid, and Breed.  McCabe doesn't, and doesn't think he has to. 

    John McCabe: I know what I'm doing. I know what I'm doing.

    Constance Miller: What's he [Butler] carrying around that bloody blunderbuss with him for?

    John McCabe: I don't know. Maybe he come up here to hunt possum.

Much later, McCabe says, "I just don't want to get killed."  

Well, nobody does, my friend.  But in a world of cutthroat businessmen and guns for hire... you have to pay attention and just once in a while, believe the sisters of mercy, not your own bullshit.  

As one reviewer put it on IMDB, "the next time someone tells you that Clint Eastwood reinvented the western with his masterpiece Unforgiven, remember: 21 years before, Altman had experimented and succeeded on that with his McCabe & Mrs. Miller."

"Robert Altman has made a dozen films that can be called great in one way or another, but one of them is perfect, and that one is McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)." - Roger Ebert.

I agree.

Seriously, Trigger Warnings

In 1989, I started graduate school at a university that I'll call The U because three decades have passed.  Maybe things have changed.  Anyway, there was a serial rapist working the campus, striking at night in certain parking lots and various locations around town where students and teachers lived.  

And quite a few of the graduate level history classes took place at night, including one in a professor's home.  In fact, once a rape occurred less than a block away from that house while we were in class.  So that worked out quite well for the professor, but it made for disturbing walks to and from the car for the rest of us.  

Yes, we female students including me always asked one of the guys in the class to escort us to our cars, and they always cooperated, so leaving class wasn't a problem.  The tough part was parking at night, when you got out of the car with your books and notebooks, trying to breathe normally, keep walking, while looking around like your eyes were on swivels...  One of the parking lots had had four assaults, and that's where I had to park for one class because it was  the closest to the building, and anywhere else would have meant that I'd have to walk through two other parking lots which were just as dangerous, because the rapist struck randomly.  

The administration never admitted that the rapes were going on. They did send out a "safety memo" that women should seek escorts at night, just as a matter of common safety.  No mention of the rapist.  And the campus police (more on them later) were never around at night.  A huge number of students signed a petition asking for campus police to monitor the parking lots - but the university said there simply weren't the resources to do that.  Just seek someone to escort you and stay out of dark spaces.  Ignoring the night classes.  The dark parking lots, where sometimes a light went out and wasn't replaced for a few weeks.  The dark street where the professor lived.  And back then, no cell phones…

Hell, I'm getting triggered just writing this.  Because that was a long stretch to live under constant tension and fear, and even after two years on the streets of L.A. as a teenager.  I guess I'd hoped life would get safer, especially at the posh university I'd been lucky enough to get accepted by.  Wrong.  

So I have a few comments about the Cornell 7 and the handling of Jane Doe's case.

Especially after reading what's been made available of the group text among the guys that started off with “Free p---y” in the house, continued with a discussion where one fraternity brother responded to that piece of information by writing “I f---ing love Chi Phi”; and another either sought or provided clarification, “Like you can walk in and whip it out,” and yet another, “Shop still open?” at 1:42 AM on Oct. 19, 2024.

As Monica Hesse said on WaPo:  

“Shop still open?” is a kind of wordplay that requires a little brainpower, especially when made at 1:42 a.m. Your mind may be fuzzy with alcohol or ketamine, but not so fuzzy that you cannot dig out your phone and add a question mark.

The question mark is needed because you do not know whether the woman — a student, just like you — is still there. You are not there, after all. You are in a different room. You are making a premeditated inquiry as to whether you should bother traveling to another part of the house in order to have sex with a woman you have identified as a shop. You have to think about it. You have to press send.

You do not know whether she is conscious or consenting. You are not texting her to find out. She could probably be a better judge of whether she was conscious or consenting, but you have instead decided to group-text your fraternity brothers, entrusting them to be the judge of whether the shop should be open. If you text the shop, you might learn that maybe it never wanted to be open in the first place.

The presence of a group text is both gobsmacking and banal. It conveys that whatever was happening in that room — however drunk or drugged everyone was in that room — several people still thought to document the evening in real time. To make it a bonding experience. To make it a party. To make sure everyone got to the shop before the shop woke up or tried to hide under covers or started crying or wished to get out of that room or did whatever else it is that shops do.

“Shop still open?” wrote one young man, and another wrote back, “Yeah.” (LINK)

Now let's get to the Tompkins County DA, Matthew Van Houten, who said that his decision not to bring charges was based on the contents of Jane Doe's signed 2024 statement. But he told CBS News New York's Saeidi on Tuesday that he had never seen the transcript of what Jane Doe told campus police before his office decided not to bring charges.

NOTE:  This transcript included the direct statements:

“I can say with 100% percent confidence I was raped.”

"And then, of course, I was being hit at the same time. Physically hit very, very hard."*

Anyway, Van Houten said,

"I'm going to follow up on this because this is news to me," he said.

When told Jane Doe had said she was confident she was raped, Van Houten said, "That wasn't information that I had, first of all. Second of all, that is a legal conclusion."

"If she had said those words, we certainly would want to have explored that more," Van Houten continued. "Like I said, that wasn't provided to me." (LINK)

 Now the Cornell Police Department reports ONLY to the Cornell CFO (Chief Financial Officer). And the victim only talked to the Cornell Police Department (remember what I said about university "police departments"?), who condensed 100+ pages of interview to 6 pages that "omitted some of the more forceful and definitive language she used. And it was missing her unequivocal statement that she had been raped." (LINK) The Cornell Police Department sent the condensed version to the CFO of Cornell University, and then it was sent to DA Van Houten, who did what is the standard thing you do for the university that keeps the city in business. Bury it.

“I can say with 100% percent confidence I was raped.”

"And then, of course, I was being hit at the same time. Physically hit very, very hard."*

Anyway, the Ithaca Police Department NEVER SAW THE STATEMENT, NEVER WAS TOLD ABOUT THE CRIME, AND SO NEVER INVESTIGATED, even though Jane Doe and her family thought they were involved in the investigation.  

PLUS

The night before she was gangraped, a student had overdosed from ketamine at that very Cornell frat house.
A recent campus climate survey at Cornell University found that 35% of undergraduate women reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact.

Guess what?  Nothing was done about any of these!  Wow!  What a surprise!  

OK. A couple of suggestions:

(1) Do not let universities and colleges handle their own sexual assault investigations ever again. Ever. Anywhere.  Campus police are basically there to break up street fights and keep things quiet. They ignore the rich frat houses and mop up bad situations. Bury things. They may be called "police departments" but they're not qualified. They certainly weren't back at The U and they apparently weren't at Cornell. 

(2) Ban fraternities.  I don't care how much money they have, or how they're conduits to "good futures".  There's too much bad shit that goes on, from hazings that end up killing students to alcohol and drug overdoses to sexual assaults.  And even though I realize doing this is like closing the barn door after the cattle escape, I really am sick of rapists, alcoholics, and drug addicts reaching high levels of power and influence.  At least the geyser might turn into a trickle.  

"Records show that from 2018 through 2024, more than 1,200 incidents of sexual assault, dating and domestic violence and stalking were reported to Cornell University’s Title IX office, USA TODAY has reported."  Read more at:   (LINK) I'm sure that NONE of them were publicized.  

(3) Quit the rhetoric that it's the woman's fault.  (I know, that's a dream...)  Young men can do stupid things, commit crimes, brag about it online, and the general rap is still, "Do we really want to ruin a young man's life over 20 minutes of action?"   

(Quote from the father of Brock Turner - at the time in a frat at Stanford - who violently raped an unconscious woman and got six months in jail.)  BTW, fun fact - the two men who stopped Brock Turner in mid-rape, chased him down, and held him until the police arrived were Two Swedish graduate students, Peter Lars Jonsson and Carl-Fredrik Arndt, may praise be to their names forever. So immigrants saved her. None of the frat brothers.  

ANSWER:  Yes, we do want to destroy a young man's life over 20 minutes "of action".  Because certain kinds "of action" destroy a young girl's life forever. 

(4) Recognize that in an authoritarian world, the real definition of power - unprettied, unsoftened - is the ability to do whatever you want and get away with it. And one of the absolute proofs of power, to sociopaths, psychopaths, and pack mobs, is the ability to do anything you want to someone subordinate/inferior to you and get away with it. Especially sexual dominance. That's why rape is a standard weapon in war, gangs, prisons or anywhere else where someone has to prove they're the ones calling all the shots.  

*BTW, when Jane Doe said “I can say with 100% percent confidence I was raped.” "And then, of course, I was being hit at the same time. Physically hit very, very hard."

This is exactly what Andrew Tate & his scumbag brother, and every other pimp has been doing since the dawn of time: get the woman back to the pad; drug her; rape her; beat her; share her around; humiliate her; repeat.

Drug, rape, beat, abuse, humiliate. That’s the pattern.  Time for that shit to STOP.

A Resurrection of Poe and Baudelaire

On September 9, David Edgerley Gates wrote "The Tell-Tale Heart", about Edgar Allan Poe's creating "dread through a very calculated use of echoes and repetition, foreshadowing and false narratives. What he’s struggling to write, in effect, is psychological horror. Even though that term, or even the concept, didn’t exist at the time."  (LINK)

I'm not sure that the concept of deliberately creating dread through various means wasn't around in Poe's time is entirely true - there were a lot of Regency Gothic Novels (which Jane Austen made splendid fun of in Northanger Abbey):  1764's The Castle of Ontranto (Horace Walpole), 

“and then the figure, turning slowly round, discovered to Frederic the fleshless jaws and empty sockets of a skeleton, wrapt in a hermit’s cowl. “Angels of peace protect me!” cried Frederic, recoiling. “Deserve their protection!” said the spectre.”
― Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto

1796's The Monk (Matthew Gregory Lewis), 1794's The Mysteries of Udolpho (Ann Radclyffe), 

“You speak like a heroine,” said Montoni contemptuously, “we shall see if you can suffer like one.”

― Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho

and many more which centered around decay,  corruption, sex, dark romance, supernatural forces, wickedness, innocence, and a whole lot of gore.  

But going back to Poe - he was a poet before he was ever a prose writer, and it shows.  Which is undoubtedly the reason why Charles Baudelaire (considered by many to be the modern French poet, and the French poet of modernity) was obsessed with him.

“A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.”
― Edgar Allan Poe
“Always be a poet, even in prose.”
― Charles Baudelaire

"In...1847, I came upon a few fragments of Edgar Allan Poe, and felt a strange sort of shock…[.] I discovered, believe me if you will, poems and stories that I had already thought of, but of which I had only a vague, confused and disorganised idea, and which Poe had managed to pull together and perfect...." (Source)

 And Baudelaire promptly dropped (almost) everything, and spent his most productive years (1856-1865) translating Poe’s works into French. Now he wasn't the first to translate Poe, but he was the one who made Poe's work sing in French. (Baudelaire's Translations at Gutenberg Press for free.) And his translations became the standard throughout Europe.

First note: Despite his obsession with Poe, when Baudelaire named his poetry collection Les Fleurs du Mal -- Flowers of Evil in English -- it was in homage of Nathaniel Hawthorne's highly appropriate Rappaccini's Daughter. (Link here to read on-line)

Second note: In Memoirs of a Drudge, James Thurber reminisces about working at the Riviera edition of the Chicago Tribune in Southern France. (And why didn't my guidance counselor ever tell me about this job?) Anyway, there were regular printers' strikes, and after one of them, the whole press room, half-tanked, got on a train for Cannes. Promptly another argument broke out, this time over which was better, the original or the French translation of Poe's The Raven? And would a real raven be more likely to say, "Jamais plus" or "Nevermore"? "He returned with the claim that our fellow-passenger to a man were passionately on the side of Jamais plus." Betcha the translation was Baudelaire's... 

Another person whom Poe influenced was, of course, H. P. Lovecraft. 

In my early teens, I read most of Poe, most of Lovecraft, and got warped accordingly.  (I'm in good company:  Apparently, so did Stephen King.)  I still say that two of the scariest stories I've ever read are Lovecraft's "The Picture in the House" and "The Shadow Out of Time".  

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.”
― H.P. Lovecraft

“It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth's dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be left alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
― Stephen King

“A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.”
― Stephen King, Skeleton Crew

“A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.”
― Stephen King

Shirley Jackson must have had a very good memory.  From The Lottery to The Haunting of Hill House to (my favorite) We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Jackson was one of the great horror / thriller writers.  

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

        ― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

True horror stories are mostly about language, aren't they?  

“The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it's when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it's when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It's when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there's nothing there...”  ― Stephen King

"Ye get a hankerin'..."  

"I'm going to let my boy in!"

"Whose hand was I holding?"

BTW, Two other horror stories that will scare the sleep from your eyes are ""'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'" (M. R. James) and, of course, "The Monkey's Paw" (W. W. Jacobs).  

The Enemy

When you read / write enough literature, you realize that almost all of it involves overcoming an enemy.  So pick a good one.  

There's the villain, the betrayer, the bully, the sociopath, the serial killer (of whom I am sick unto death), the false friend, the false lover, the rival, the Cain to one's Abel, and all the variations on the theme.  The enemy is the source of tension, that keeps everyone's attention on what the enemy will do next, and the reason why it matters for the hero to win - or lose.  

BTW:  it helps if you pick a good hero, too.

Sometimes the enemy is even more interesting than the hero, and thus the anti-hero is born.  And then the writer has to come up with a new enemy, because even an anti-hero has to have someone to outfight and outwit.  

Sometimes the new enemy is inside the hero / anti-hero:  addiction, PTSD, vampirism (the basis of the whole Twilight series), fear, past crimes, loss, obsession...  Or just self.  

Of course, sometimes you don't know who the enemy is:

Disturbing confession found in abandoned house:

"We found this baseboard in a closet of an abandoned house that recently sold and we were there to give owner an estimate for renovation. The house in an old gated lake community. Everyone there knows everyone and all people’s pasts. The HOA is calling the sheriff to see if they need to investigate further with cadaver dogs at “17” which is a vacant lot where a house once stood.... The HOA board decided to involve the sheriff’s department and 5 deputies and a detective showed up to take a look and collect the board."  (reddit)

There are rumors that this has been entirely made up, and if so, I think that Hollywood should track the person down and put them to good use, either writing or manufacturing sets for thrillers.

AND SOMETIMES YOU FIND OUT THE HARD WAY:

Irish Holiday Home Owner:

SOMETIMES THEY TAG TEAM:

Mothers and Sons:

NON-ALIVE ENEMIES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN POPULAR:

DATA CENTERS

And sometimes, a very unlikely hero:

"Former Playboy Playmate Audra Christiansen told Hefner in 2005 that she had allegedly been sexually abused and trafficked by Epstein, leading to a legal complaint in a Florida court which, sadly, was ignored until now.... The documents allege Hefner subsequently contacted the FBI several times with information about Christiansen’s claims. Yet, according to the legal complaint, the agency did not follow up with her until October 2020, which is roughly 15 years after the initial report."  (LINK)

As one commenter said:  "When Hugh Hefner thinks you’re dodgy…"

I can see it now... someone's going to start writing Hugh Hefner Investigates novels.  They'll sell a ton of them, too...  

 

The Strange Novels of Charles Williams

by Eve Fisher 

A long time ago, there was an informal group of writers, theologians, and intellectuals who collected (mostly) at C. S. Lewis' rooms at Magdalen College, Oxford, or The Eagle & Child Pub: The Inklings. C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkein are the most famous, but in his time, Inkling Charles Williams was highly praised by Lewis, Tolkein, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, and others for his amazing studies of Dante (The Figure of Beatrice inspired Dorothy Sayers' translation of The Divine Comedy), unique Arthurian poetry (Taliessin Through Logres), even more unique theology (Descent of the Dove and He Came Down From Heaven) and some almost completely unexplainable supernatural thrillers that I simply adore.

Charles Williams
by Kimberly Ferguson

Williams was a strange duck. A devout Anglican, he was known as the Magician, and was part of a mystical Christian group that practiced occult rituals while refusing to seek occult powers. Friends described Williams as a bundle of nervous, dynamic energy with 'raw charisma'. He was both passionately faithful to his wife, and carrying on a passionate, unconsummated affair with an Oxford University Press librarian. (He had to have influenced certain characters in Susan Howatch's Starbridge series.) And he wrote some of the best villains ever.

NOTE & WARNING:  Williams wrote his novels in the 1930s and 1940s, and was a man of his time, so he writes some things which are / can be offensive today: racist, sexist (although often his heroines save the day - and the world), etc.  I still enjoy them.  

My personal favorites (and I have read them all) are War in Heaven and Descent into Hell: 

War in Heaven - Opening line: “The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse.” That's one way to keep you reading.

Villains: Sir Giles Tumulty (who also shows up in Many Dimensions) - His book is being published by Persimmon Publishing, where the corpse was found. He's an explorer and antiquarian, with all the charm of a cobra. See how many insults you can find in this meeting between Sir Giles and a police inspector:

"Rackstraw?" Sir Giles had said impatiently, screwing round from his writing-desk a small, brown wrinkled face toward the inspector, "yes, he came to lunch. Why not?"

"No reason at all, sir," the inspector said, "I only wanted to be sure. And when did he leave you—if you remember?"

"About half-past two," Sir Giles said. "Is that what he ought to have done? I'll say two, if you like, if it'll help you catch him. Only, if you do, you must arrange for me to see the hanging."

"If he left at half-past two, that's all I want to know," the inspector said. "Did you happen to mention to anyone that he was coming?"

"Yes," said Sir Giles, "I told the Prime Minister, the Professor of Comparative Etymology at King's College, and the cook downstairs. Why the hell do you ask me these silly questions? Do you suppose I run round telling all my friends that a loathsome little publisher's clerk is going to muck his food about at my table?"

"If you felt like that," the inspector said, holding down his anger, "I wonder you asked him to lunch."

"I asked him to lunch because I'd rather him foul my table than my time," Tumulty answered. "I had to waste an hour over him because he didn't understand a few simple things about my illustrations, and I saved it by working it in with lunch. I expect he charged overtime for it, so that he'd be two shillings to the good, one saved on his food and another extra pay. I should think he could get a woman for that one night. How much do you have to pay, policeman?"

The inspector at the moment felt merely that Sir Giles must be mad; it wasn't till hours afterwards that he became slowly convinced that the question was meant as an insult beyond reach of pardon or vengeance. At the time he stared blankly and said soberly: "I'm a married man, sir."

"You mean you get her for nothing?" Sir Giles asked. "Two can live as cheaply as one, and your extras thrown in? Optimistic, I'm afraid. Well, I'm sorry, but I have to go to the Foreign Office. Come and chat in the taxi; that's what your London taxis are for. When I want a nice long talk with anyone I get in one at Westminster Abbey after lunch and tell him to go to the Nelson Column. We nearly always get there for tea. Oh, good-bye, policeman. Come again some day."

And there's Mr. Gregory Persimmons - Head publisher, fascinated by the occult, domination, control, little children, and the Holy Grail. Sir Giles is fascinated with Persimmons, more as an experiment than anything else:

"You're going mad, you know, Persimmons, and I like watching you."

"Mad?" Gregory said, with another snigger. "You don't go mad this way. People like my wife go mad, and Stephen. But I've got something that doesn't go mad. I'm getting everything so." He stretched out both arms and pressed them downwards with an immense gesture of weight, as if pushing the universe before and below him. "But I want the ointment."

"Better leave it alone," Sir Giles said tantalizingly. "It's tricky stuff, Persimmons. A Jew in Beyrout tried it and didn't get back. Filthy beast he looked, all naked and screaming that he couldn't find his way. That was four years ago, and he's screaming the same thing still, unless he's dead. And there was another fellow in Valparaiso who got too far to be heard screaming; he died pretty soon, because he'd forgotten even how to eat and drink. They tried forcible feeding, I fancy, but it wasn't a success: he was just continually sick. Better leave it alone, Persimmons."

"I tell you I'm perfectly safe," Gregory said. "You promised, Tumulty, you promised."

"My lord God," Sir Giles said, "what does that matter? I don't care whether I promised or not; I don't care whether you want it or not; I only wonder whether I shall get more from—" He broke off. "All right," he said, "I'll give you the address...  It'll save you some time and energy if you mention me. He's a Greek of sorts—I've forgotten his name. But he doesn't keep tons of it, you know. Now, look here, Persimmons. This is two things you have got out of me, and I've had nothing in return. You'd better ask me down to wherever you hatch gargoyles."

The Greek Chemist - Unique in all the characters I've ever read, because he's...  well, read and see:

"Who sent you here?" the Greek asked.

"Sir Giles Tumulty," said Gregory, "and others. But the others I cannot name. They say"—his voice began to tremble—"that you have an ointment."

"I have many precious things." The answer came out of an entire weariness which seemed to take from the adjective all its meaning. "But some of them are not for sale except to buyers."

"I have bought everything." Gregory leaned forward. "The time has come for me to receive."

Still the other made no movement. "The ointment is rich and scarce and strange," he said. "How do I know that you are worth a gift? And what will my master say if I mistake?"

"I cannot prove myself to you," Gregory answered. "That I know of it —is not that enough?"

"It is not enough," the other said. "But I have a friendship for all who are in the way. And priceless things are without any price. If you are not worth the gift, the gift is worth nothing to you. Have you ever used the ointment?"

"Never," Gregory said; "but it is time, I am sure it is time."

"You think so, do you?" the Greek said slowly. "There comes a time when there is nothing left but time—nothing.* Take it if you like."

*BTW, that line haunted me ever since I first read it. It was the center on which I built my story "For Blood".

Later, when the Grail has been found and taken and taken again, the Greek is even more infintely weary when someone suggests taking and destroying the Grail because it's a stronghold of power, and all such strongholds must be destroyed...  

"We can do it if you like," he acquiesced. "If it is worth while."

"It is a stronghold of power, and we can tear it to less than dust. I do not understand you."

"It doesn't matter," he answered. "You will understand one day. There will be nothing else to understand...  It is all one; in the end it is all one. You do not believe each other and neither of you will believe me. But in the end there is nothing at all but you and that which goes by. You will be sick at heart because there is nothing, nothing but a passing, and in the midst of the passing a weariness that is you. All things shall grow fainter, all desire cease in that sickness and the void that is about it. And this, even for me, is when I have only looked into the bottomless pit. For my spirit is still held in a place of material things. But when the body is drawn into the spirit, and at last they fall, then you shall know what the end of desire and destruction is."

And another character's reaction to Persimmons' attempt to tempt him with the "delights of worshipping treachery and malice and cruelty and sin":  

"Satanism?  Satanism is the clerk at the brothel."  

There's some words to live by. 

Descent Into Hell - Another masterpiece of supernatural thriller, complete with dopplegangers, dancing bears, Lilith, and a man who provides a new definition of Gomorrah; also a hanged man, a hanging man, a succubus, a martyr, a poet, a dying woman, a dead man, and a few rippling graves.  

Ere it shall be told. Ere Babylon was dust,

The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,

Met his own image

Walking in the garden.

That apparition, sole of men, he saw.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound

OTHERS:

The Place of the Lion - Platonic Ideals burst through in raw form in a small English village...

Many Dimensions - Sir Giles Tumulty is back, seeking the Stone of Solomon that gives its possesser access to other space, worlds, dimensions, and times...

The Greater Trumps - The original Tarot deck, and a chess set to die for...

All Hallows Eve - Two dead women, walking through London, looking for...

and more...

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!

I happened to find some of my short stories – in fact of most of us SleuthSayers - are appearing on Amazon Kindle for $0.99 with semi-bad AI covers.

Did I miss a contract? Not read the fine print? Should I / we be getting a nickel or a dime each, or is this simply the secondary market?  

Inquiring minds want to know.

PS:  I call it a semi-bad AI cover because there isn't a robot or android anywhere in "For Blood."  I know, details, details...  😉

What To Do With the Body... AGAIN...

Back in 2021 I wrote a blogpost about What To Do With The Body (HERE) - and I still think "the woodchipper in a boat over a good crab nursery" is probably the best idea, but try and find one of those inland.  And while I still have no intention of needing any of the suggestions, I am continually amazed by – and thankful for – the stupidity of real-life murderers.

Celeste Rivas Hernandez

D4vd – Back on September 8, 2025, 14 year old Celeste Rivas Hernandez's body – in a severely decomposed state - was found in the front trunk of a Tesla registered to musician D4vd in a Hollywood Hills tow yard. 

"The Tesla had been at the impound lot for two days after being found abandoned on a Hollywood street, investigators said. The towed vehicle was registered to Burke. Officers had responded to the impound lot "for a foul odor coming from a vehicle," said Los Angeles police.  (LINK)

Gruesome details:  

• "D4vd ordered two chainsaws, a body bag and an inflatable pool on Amazon using a fake name. Investigators say fragments of that pool were found in cut wounds on Celeste's body." (Her body had been dismembered and put in two sacks.) and 
• "D4vd traveled to a location in Santa Barbara County multiple times after Celeste's death, including the night she was murdered, and a Caltrans worker later found the teen's passport card discarded in that area in January of 2025." (LINK)  
• And LINK to a general story about the whole mess so far.  

I have questions about the whole thing:

• Why can't people get it in their heads that dead bodies quickly stink?
• Was there an accomplice?  D4vd was either one cold mf or he had help doing all the things that were done to the victim, not to mention cleaning the place up afterwards...  (NOTE to prosecuters:  check what cleaning agency worked for him.)  
• Why was the Tesla left abandoned on a Hollywood street?  You mean no one tried to steal the damn thing?  Or even just vandalize it?  Isn't that just begging the cops to find it?  
• I also want to know if her parents knew that she was "dating" D4vd at 13, and why they allowed it, but I can come up with my own list of answers to that.  

*****

Speaking of dead bodies and the inevitable stench, check out this story:

"A suspicious death investigation is underway after a body was found inside the Rodeway Inn at 1313 N. Lacrosse Street.

The Rapid City Police Department says officers were dispatched around noon on July 14 for a report of a deceased person located inside a room at the hotel. The case is being handled jointly with the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office.

The body was identified as Jason Horned Eagle, 33, of Rapid City. Police say an autopsy has been conducted, and detectives are now awaiting toxicology results and additional forensic testing to determine Horned Eagle’s specific cause of death. Based on information gathered so far, detectives believe Horned Eagle’s body had been left in the hotel room for several months, according to police.

Police also announced three people have been arrested in connection with efforts to conceal the body. Detectives say the individuals had knowledge of Horned Eagle’s death and made attempts to conceal his body in the hotel. All three are charged with Improper Disposal of a Body."  (LINK)

My Notes:

• SEVERAL MONTHS??? 
• SEVERAL MONTHS IN AN ACTIVE MOTEL???
• Where was the body hidden?  Comments on FB:
• "I've actually seen [hiding it under the bed] on a true crime channel. I managed a motel and started having the maids do deep cleaning by cleaning under the box springs. In the maintenance hallway or ceiling wrapped in plastic would be my other guesses. It's crazy what you find in the ceiling tiles. (I and the staff were trying to bring the clientele up from where it was, so it was a complete overhaul)" 
• "Manager must have managed to keep that room off the available list." 
• My input:  Did they pack the entire bathroom with ice from the ice machine?  
• Who managed to somehow avoid renting out that room?  
• Forever cross off the Rodeway Inn in Rapid City from my list of hotels in the area.  

Meanwhile, purely informational:

Trust Jack.  He knows.

Long Ago and Far Away

I wrote a while back about the Secret Mall Apartment on Netflix, mostly about the social conditions behind it.  And I only briefly mentioned my memories of weird living with fellow artists and the assorted art, all-nighters, constant talk, crazy schemes, weekend parties, home movies, endless music, artwork, and all the general insanity that goes with it. 

Memories are kind of like seeing your
image reflected in the water, aren't they?  

Back in the mid 70s I shared a house in Atlanta with 5-6 other people. (It varied:  My boyfriend and I moved in together, but broke up six months later, and about time, too.  Similar things happened to others.) We each paid $25 per month, and we sometimes had trouble making that. Every room in the house except the kitchen, bathroom, and living room (and a lot of people crashed on the couch) was turned into a bedroom. 

After the break up, my room was the back porch, which had wrap around windows and a gas space heater I lit with a match. I loved it. It was, for me, the equivalent of Tarzan's treehouse, my private sanctuary. I made a desk from a door on boxes with my typewriter and paper and a broken down chair; a mattress on the floor; a makeshift closet; a huge row of books, and FREEDOM!!!!! 

On a tight budget. 

Did I mention poverty? We were all broke, all the time. Like the Secret Mall Apartment artists, none of us were above moving through a restaurant and pocketing the leftovers as we went. We shopped at the day-old bread store (5 loaves for a buck), which also carried such delicacies as dented cans of tunafish (I still can't stand the smell of tuna), smashed boxes of Kraft Mac'n'Cheese (we used water instead of milk in it), and other yummy treats. The only thing I still like from those days is oatmeal. 

I got all my clothes at GoodWill or a couple of the vintage clothing stores in Little Five Points. Including my wedding outfit: a WW2 wedding suit in tattle-tale grey, complete with a half-moon hat with a veil for $15. We had a 1930s-40s themed wedding and we all looked GREAT. 

When we did splurge on dining out, we went to Doby's on Ponce de Leon and got a vegetable plate (4 veg, cornbread) or breakfast or 1 meat, 2 veg, cornbread or biscuit for about $1.75-$2.25. We were indeed the working poor, working all the time, part-time or full-time jobs at all hours of the day or night and then came home to work on our own stuff. I could type 90 wpm, so I worked as a secretarial temp around the city as much as I could during the week and filled in on weekends or slow work times at the corner market a couple of blocks down the road. We ALL did shifts at that market. 

It's because of that last gig that I watch Kevin Smith's Clerks with great nostalgia. And it was just as crappy a corner market as Kevin's Quick Stop Groceries:  No fruit, no veg, just chips, crackers, jerky, pop, etc. If you lived on their food, you'd die. Unless you were pickled in alcohol, which some were. Every Saturday, the local delivery truck dropped off two cases of Polly Peachtree aftershave. The first time that happened, I had no idea why these suddenly appeared, but I found out on Sunday morning: Georgia was a blue-law state, and while no alcohol could be sold on Sundays, the aftershave was 51% alcohol. So all the winos showed up in a long, long line. They bought two bottles: they'd drink the one and puke it up, drink the second and keep it down... 

The liquor and cigarettes were kept behind the cash register. Next to the door there was a bin by the door of paperbacks with their covers ripped off. It didn't take long for me to find out that they weren't just bargain basement fiction, they were detective / spy / porn novels that were so bad they defied belief that anyone had ever written, much less actually sold any of them. But they gave me hope that I'd get published, too, because I sure as hell knew I could write better than THAT. 

There was also a gang that ran the neighborhood, and they strolled through regularly, shoplifting. One night it finally happened: one of the guys on night shift got a gun poked in his face. He emptied out the cash register (none of us were going to die for the owners, who were barely paying us minimum wage), came home, and we all agreed we had to find other work. 

We also made home movies, but get your mind out of the gutter, they weren't the dirty kind. One of the guys had a Super 8 film camera, and he and I cowrote parodies like "Combination Reefer Madness/First Date" (with me as the ingenue), "Dung Stew" (Kung Fu was big at the time), etc. Everyone had a part, including the dog - "Ringo the SuperDog!" - who rescued me on the railroad tracks early one summer morning... 

Meanwhile, I was teaching myself writing by writing like a maniac and reading a stack of books every weekend. I had a guitar and wrote songs and poetry and eventually my first short story. 

One of the guys painted this great mural on his bedroom wall, so that became a thing. Murals went up everywhere, now waiting to be discovered by some future art historian. There was a lot of experimenting in mediums, styles, genres, etc. 

There were fights and diatribes, discussions and debates. People walking out, coming back a couple of days later and everything picked back up. Everyone had something to say, and we said it endlessly, especially with enough beer or wine or weed in us. And we were young enough to stay up all night, show up at work the next day, and come home and (occasionally) do it again.  That or crash so hard we looked like we were dead.

Yes, there was a lot of sex. Or hope for sex:  once a couple of the guys had somehow gotten a date with two student nurses, and went out and rented a porn flick to show them - you can't fix stupid. (Pro tip: probably shouldn't START a date with porn.) But then years later, a friend of ours invited us over to his apartment to join him and his date to see a French film that had just come out: Betty Blue. Turned out it was a first date, and it opened with about 5 minutes of hard-core banging. It's a guy thing, I guess. 

And there was also falling in love.  The real stuff:

Allan and me, 1978 - madly in love and ignoring everyone else at the party.  

Six months later we were married... and still are.

Told you.  Half-moon hat with a veil…