Awesome version of “New York Girls” performed by Camptown Shakers.

Camptown Shakers photo from their Facebook page.

Here are my STORIES and info on my Novels

(“At The Brothel,” circa 1850 – Photoshopped by Joe – Orig. below)

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” – Psalm 23:4

-

Having just awoken, I leaned out the window and watered the grass in the yard two stories below. The sun was warm on my face and blurred my vision. An easy spring breeze curled through me, to my bones. It was nearly three in the afternoon. In one hand I had a women’s black silk glove that someone had given me last night. I lifted it to my nose. It smelled both sweet and musty. I tried to remember who had given it to me…

No one could manage such a place except for Black. He wasn’t as tall as Jack or Gabe the gorilla, but he was a big, big man. He was as gentle as a dove, until you did one of his girls wrong. Then he spoke with his fists. One shot to the jaw was all it usually took. His saloon was where society met, nose-to-fist in some cases. On most nights it was filled with gold-finders all scrubbed and thinking they were dandies and a fare share of rich men looking to shed some skin. There were card and dice games, any kind of gambling really, and it seemed like there were two women for every man.

Besides the women and gambling, men went there for the saloon’s underworld appeal. Yet they didn’t have to worry much about the wild rogues. Most were afraid of Black’s wrath. While the pickpockets and prigs knew they chanced loosing a finger or two if they were caught. And of those that challenged Black, his thing was to knock them into a bloody pulp with his ham hock fists, drag them the half block to the wharves and toss ‘em in the bay. Best thing was to let him take the finger. Or when he said you had enough of the drink or pulled you off one of his girls: you left. His violence was extraordinary. Any time that I was there and a man lost their senses and danced toward troubled waters, I always thought it was ‘cause the girls were so pretty. Yet there was more to the place, and even Black himself. I guess I was too focused on pleasure and never opened my eyes to what was really going on.

On the night I met old Dan Tucker, when the farm girl had been killed, he had wanted to meet Jack Jefferies. On the way back to the firehouse to find Jack, we scooted into Black Sullivan’s because I wanted a good time. Jack and Gabe the gorilla showed up by chance an hour or two after us. It was the first time I had ever seen them at Black’s.

I was pie-faced by then, and old Dan had the lot at the bar rioting with song and laughter. If he wasn’t singing he was telling jokes. Or the songs were jokes. Hard to tell with this minstrel. The drinks were flying off the bar. My head was in the clouds. I couldn’t say if Dan and Jack properly spoke or not.

Maybe in another bar they would have sat and chatted. But inside Black’s you were absorbed in the place like the drink into sawdust on the floor. It was the lure of the night, as it always seemed to be heading for a magical zenith.

That night there was the usual drinking crowd at the bar, which was in the rear. It was raised up a step and gave a view over the whole place where oil lamps hung over an array of gambling tables and cast a gloomy glow upon a menagerie of clientele chomping on cigars, sucking down drinks, staring down cards as eagerly as the women who floated freely about with the tobacco smoke. With a big pink face dotted by freckles and brow the size of a brick, Black Sullivan stood like a pillar, lumbering here and there, watching over all with his withdrawn, lightless gaze. So distant and seemingly brainless, newcomers were shocked by his outbursts of violence. Most men weren’t aware Black was onto their skullduggery until they woke in the street with a broken face.

I did catch Black’s head turned once or twice to old Dan. While the minstrel was singing, he intermittently poked me and quacked into my ear. Besides Dan’s horrible lisping voice, the place was bursting with noise and vibrancy. I was too drunk to know what he was saying. I nodded a lot. I remembered Dan pointing with his big nose to a tall man, who wore a suit tailored tight to bring attention to his frame. He was a lean spartan with sinewy muscles. He looked to be able to go all day and night.

This stranger wasn’t handsome.  His face was too narrow. His eyes seemed to shoot arrows. Very piercing. As bung-eyed as I was, I kept watch, hoping to make some sense of him. The man didn’t have a drink or a smoke or any interest in gambling or women. He just stood there. His airs were those of a man that didn’t need anyone. He really was ”the gambler” that night. I kept waiting for Black to approach him.

Not long after Jack and Gabe the gorilla came in, a young girl seemed to drop down upon the stranger like a ferocious bug, pawing at his jacket and trying to clasp his hands. Yet he never once looked at her or gesticulated in her direction. He didn’t even talk to her from what I could see, maybe a word here or there. But she kept at him.

I went out in the yard to relieve myself. On the way back inside past the gambling tables, my eyes drifted to the hands, cards, chips and tumbling dice. Someone gripped my skull like it was a tomato they were looking to crush. I feared the worst, that it was Black. I couldn’t turn properly though glimpsed a man’s dark tail coat and wiry frame. It was the spartan. He wore a rich-scented cologne that was so poignant, it clogged my airway.

The grip left me feeling helpless for the first time in my life. There was nothing I could do to free myself or stop him from doing what he pleased. The grip was inhuman. And then I caught close sight of the girl who’d been pawing at him. With her youthful lips and soft lines of her face and still yet to lose all baby fat, the look in her eye was that of a person who had lived ten lives and wanted no more. She was the farm girl! Only then did I realize old Dan had tried to tell me it was her. And the Spartan squeezing my head–he was her killer!

Just hours ago old Dan and I had found the farm girl after she had been savagely murdered. Her long dress had been soaked with blood. We each took a hand and dragged her body through a grassy field into an old barn. Her neck hung loosely like a torn rag doll’s. We were going to properly bury her, but old Dan had went out for a look and saw the demon was still near. Madly, old Dan flew off, taking leaping strides, heels stamping into the dirt road. He led with his big nose like he was sniffing his way.

It took a minute or two to catch up to old Dan. He ran bow-legged, as if he had coins in his pockets that he didn’t want to lose.

“I bet he’s so gorged with her blood, he’s probably burping it up,” he quacked.

“If we can’t kill it, why are we following?”

“I want you to see his face,” he said, galloping along with spittle flying from his lips.

“Oh yeah.”

Old Dan’s brow grew taught as he quacked on. ”You’re going to be the one to kill him, or be killed by him.”

“That’s the job,” I said, knowing my usual fate.

We came down to the bottom of a nobby hill and continued along a street of closed shops and slowed at the next street where warehouses loomed black and mountainous. The tang of sea water was in the air. Old Dan said he had lost sight of the demon, though I hadn’t seen the fleeing monster since soon after we started our pursuit. It was then that we set out to find Jack, and wound up in Black’s place.

“Old Dan said you are going to kill me,” the demon said, his hand slipping down over the nape of my neck. “I’ll give you chance, soon. But beware, my evil has command over flesh, bones, and spirit. If you succeed, it will pass through you. If even for a moment you try to embrace this evil, you will open a door to a black room, where awaits the playful Death herself. In her hands, no misery is too great, no death is too painful.” He chortled and loosened his grip. “Go to work, Lizbeth.” he said to the pretty farm girl.

As dead as the look in her eyes, she managed to conjure up a spark of light and tenderness as she gazed at the monster.

“Go to work,” he said.

“But I want your sweet kisses.”

“Go to work. Your Black’s girl now.”

The monster let go my neck. A strong breeze full of his cologne came over me. I shrugged as I turned. The monster had vanished. The farm girl dropped her head into her bare hands and began to softly weep. I gazed over the gambling men with the whores at their sides and looked as best I could into the women’s faces, seeing a similar lifelessness of which I had seen in the farm girl. From the other end of the bar I caught Black Sullivan glaring at me.

(“At The Brothel,” circa 1850 – Constantin Guys)

—

Here are all the posts in this series: Episode Forty-Three

House of Laughter

Old Dan Tucker

Black Sullivan And His Girls

More coming next week…

Here are my STORIES and info on my Novels

(Original Jim Crow)

In the eyes of the men in the brass band I could see they were smiling. They did their best to play “Jump Jim Crow” and paid little mind to the black-faced minstrel singer named old Dan Tucker. He kept coming close to knocking into them. Dancing so crazed, he looked like a fighting cock. I guzzled another glass of spiced rum, and then squeezed through the audience of farmers in scrappy suits and their families, who were pressed close to a rowdy bunch of lubbers. Those goons seemed to swallow something rotten as I pushed pass for a better look.

Now up in front I had a clear view of old Dan as he whipped his hands like they were on fire, kicked out his feet and then made scissoring motions with his legs. He also forced a wide smile from one corner of his mouth. Up close, it looked like I was watching a headless chicken scurry before young children. Even more remarkable was Dan’s voice. He sounded like a quacking duck.

But only minutes after I reached the front, there came an explosive round of applause, and old Dan bowed like a flapping flag. The minstrel show had ended.

Some of the players packed up their instruments or went to the bar. Old Dan took a few minutes to wipe off the charcoal makeup, and then quickly made for the back door. A few of the lubbers stood in his path, wagging their hands, trying to copy Dan’s movements. They were drunk and wouldn’t let him pass. I thought they wanted to start a fight, yet they began to sing, ”New York Girls.” And Dan gave a wan smile, threw out his hand and sang along.

“‘I took her out to Tiffany’s, I spared her no expense. I bought her two gold earrings, they cost me fifteen cents. And away you Johnny, my dear honey. Oh you New York girls, you love us for our money…’”

As Dan sang I took a closer look at his face, which was still surrounded by a ring of black makeup. Like a seafaring man, he had blotched brown skin prematurely aged by both the sun and too much drink. He had scruffy black whiskers and dark eyes that rarely held one focus. They were so flighty, they reminded me of the starry light which had drawn me to him in the first place.

“‘Your hard-earned cash will disappear, your rig and boots as well. For Yankee girls are tougher than the other side of Hell. And away you Johnny, my dear honey. Oh you New York girls, you love us for our money…’”

Old Dan turned away from the howling men and cried with what seemed a mouth full of spittle, which was how he sang. “Don’t you see him?” It seemed he spoke to no one in particular. Then he raised his voice even louder. “He’s over there,” he said, though now lighted upon me with eyes that raged with both madness and concern. ”He’s with the real pretty one. O’er there,” he said and pointed toward a comely group of families by the front door.

“See who?” I cried, moving closer to Dan. A few of the drunkards gave me odd looks like I was the crazy one.

“He’s with the pretty virgin,” Dan replied. “Loves ‘em pretty ones. You haven’t spotted him?”

“Who?” I said, flustered. The old school house was thick with tobacco smoke. Faces across the room were clouded.

“O’, he’s gone out. Follow me,” Dan said, frowning, and slipped between the men and out the door before I hardly took a step.

Once outside under a moonlit firmament, I thoroughly enjoyed a breath of warm and fresh spring air. I jogged to catch up with old Dan. He was walking fast and turning every which way. Off in a field of long grass were two motioning silhouettes. There came a muffled cry. I was about to sprint to them, when old Dan grabbed my arm. His grip was surprisingly strong for a thin and gangly man like himself.

“Can you smell it? It’s too late,” he said.

“Smell what?”

“Blood.”

“Blood?” I said, yet could smell only grass and peat.

“You can’t save her, and you can’t fight him, especially when he’s slaked his thirst.”

“He’s a blood sucker?”

“She’s dead,” old Dan said, and then looked at me with a crooked gaze. “You should have been onto him.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re the demon slayer. One sent by Jack Jefferies.”

“I’m with Jack, but he didn’t send me,” I said.

“You’re here now, and a young woman is dead. Are they sending other more capable assassins?”

“No one sent me.”

“Yes they did!”

“How?”

“I’ve followed the monster all over the country. He was in love with African blood, now he fancies European. He told me so himself, and that he was on his way to New York in search of the best supply. Last month I sent a letter to the man in Manhattan who handles such matters. I let him know the demon was on his way, and I was in pursuit. The response was from a man named Jack Jefferies. He said he was employed in the service of God and Country. It was a very nice letter. Very official.”

“No one sent me,” I said, wiping a bit of Dan’s spittle off my face.

“Jack sent me a telegram last week. Don’t know how he found me. I didn’t even know where I was! The telegram said Joe Harris would meet me upon my arrival and see to my every need.”

“I’m Joe!” I said and ruminated over what I had said to Jack just a few hours ago. He had been grumpy and distant, though knowing Jack, such moods were always followed by bright and cheery ones. Yet I had took it upon myself to say how I didn’t know if this killing business was the life for me. Jack’s sour mood had prompted the comment. He grumbled in response, then minutes later when I had said I was going out for a walk, he looked up with a long face. ”Try and run from me,” he said. “You won’t get very far.”

Once again I was amazed by Jack’s insight and foreknowledge into coming events. If he didn’t outright direct my path to old Dan Tucker, he had foreseen how our paths would cross.

“While I performed tonight,” old Dan said, “I saw the demon eyeing the women and children. He was smacking his red lips and smiling. He wanted me to know how he would soon be drinking all their blood.” Old Dan looked to where the woman had been killed. All was silent. “In a few days he will need to feed again, and he will look for me. He says I attract the best victims.”

“Just a minute man,” I said.

“Eh?”

“How do you know I’m me–Joe Harris?”

“You’re covered in blood,” he said with the craziest eyes. “The type that don’t wash away so easy.”

I looked deeper into old Dan’s eyes, thinking his madness would surely be mine some day. Just like the demon blood…

—

(“Old Dan Tucker” performed by Jack Nuckols, Mark Meadows and Stephanie Meadows)

—

Here are all the posts in this series: Episode Forty-Three

House of Laughter

Old Dan Tucker

Black Sullivan And His Girls

More coming next week…

Here are my STORIES and info on my Novels

(Vohezer’s House – Photo/photoshopped by Joe – Orig. below)

I was on the couch in front of our *50″ LG plasma TV with my feet up, because that’s what I like to do. Guy Fieri was on TV lapping at his digits, while his eyes bulged as big as doughnuts as he tried to tell me about how good this monster burger he was mangian on was.

I was dreaming about grilling up my own slab of juicy beef infused with cheese and onions. Lady friend(LF), who was breezing about the apartment while talking on her cell, has us on this whacked out diet and exercise program. When we eat, it’s like we’re grazing a field, so I really needed to take that trip through the TV and be at Guy’s side.

Steps away from me in the dining room, the pizza and Chinese delivery guys(aka num and nuts) were bouncing in their chairs, frothed up and effervescing over this guy they had over, which I’m calling “a friend”–to be nice. I think his name is Morgan, but I was trying not to pay attention as I always do when he’s around.

Morgan’s lofty papaya-orange hair was bobbing. “I’m an inventor,” he said to me like he hadn’t said it fifty times before, and in his cartoonish manner as it seemed he spoke with his tongue pressed to his teeth. He fingered a bright yellow Styrofoam orb he had brought with him. It looked like planet Saturn with its rings attached. And he kept looking at me because he is one of those types that has to look at strangers when he talks. You know them. You’re buying a package of Trident Layers at CVS, and he’s talking to the checkout girl and looking back at you with his batty eyes like he thinks you give a crap.

“Ideas just come to me, and I invent them. Heehee,” Morgan said, sounding like a daft parrot.

Ok. Whatever.

He held planet Saturn by the rings. Dressed in purple skinny jeans and a flaming yellow shirt, and with his wacky hairstyle, he looked like an exotic bird. “I invented this, and it’s like an indoor Frisbee. It’s called ‘Fecees.’”

I raised my brow.

“It’s squishy soft and fuunnnnn. Heeheehee,” Morgan said and tossed the Fecees or whatever it was, because that’s what it sounded like he was calling it.

The orb circled the room and came back to him. I was pretty impressed.

“Heeheehee,” Morgan smiled, mashing the Fecees into a small ball, while num and nuts chortled along.

“It’s fun. Heeheehee. I like to play with it in my hands.” He held up the Fecees, which retained its smaller shape. “It comes back so you can play with it all by yourself. Heeheehee.” He bounced it off the wall, caught it, and then began windmilling his right arm, while he extended his left arm with both wrists crooked. He kicked out his stiff and straight left leg. It looked like he was a soldier preparing for some strange march.

I leaned closer to the TV, focusing hard on Guy Fieri and hoping to be drawn in by his punky ebullience.

“I’m funny, right,” Morgan said. “And gay! Yah! Heehee.” He tossed the Fecees, and to my dismay, he hit the wall just above my TV. He then stomped his feet in place and caught the Fecees on the return bounce. He stared at me like he was trying to burn a hole in my noggin’.

Num and nuts saw him staring, and they focused on me like I was a bug on the tips of their noses. I felt like I was locked in a clown car.

I was about to lay into Morgan and take a shot at num and nuts, when LF came into the room with a big tray of snacks. She wore a gracious smile and looked upon us with eyes of splendor. I tried to relax, knowing if I yelled at the troika from Bizarroland, it would ruin her mood, and she would tear into muah.

“You don’t remember me. Heeheehee,” Morgan said to me and gave a thin derisive smile. “You really don’t!”

Num and nuts guffawed like they were paid to. LF set down the tray loaded with pita chips and various dips on the dining room table. She smiled upon us like we were one happy family.

Morgan shuffled his feet, while smacking the tips of his shoes against the floor. He sang, ”‘I come to town de udder night, I hear de noise an saw de fight.’ Heeheehee…”

Every muscle in my body stiffened. A dream I had just last night about my past life in the 1850s came back to me. I had dreamed about that house, that strange house. It was located in Brooklyn, less than a mile from our “firehouse“. If I only would have passed it by, but I couldn’t resist…

It was early evening in the spring of 1854. I had been ambulating upon a road overlooking the Brooklyn wharves by the mouth of the East River. I was gazing upon a forest of masts, including those across the river that stopped just short of Battery Park, which encompassed the tip of Manhattan. A promenade ran along that shoreline, and no ships docked there. Some strange bit of starry yellow light drew my attention. It stirred in the sky then dropped into the trees, not 100 yards away. I detoured off the road and through a field, toward the light.

Laughter resounded from some unseen gathering. The light zipped out of sight. I came upon a large farmhouse and freshly tilled land. Just up the dirt road that ran past the farm, I traced the frolicsome sounds to an old red school house. The laughter and cries from inside its walls were astounding. The planking seemed to be vibrating from all the exuberance.

I had to pay a tall, rail-thin man to gain entrance. They were having a minstrel performance in the open first floor. I headed to makeshift bar and ordered a spiced rum that seemed to wake my every sense. At the center of the hubbub, a man dressed in tattered clothes and wearing blackface was singing, dancing, and kicking up dust. A maniacal light flickered behind his eyes.

It was him! It was Dan…

Morgan began to sing, breaking my reverie, and I found myself caught between the past and the present. ”‘Here’s old Dan Tucker, he comes to town. He swings the ladies round and round. He swings one east, he swings one west; he swings with the one he loves the best–‘”

I heard Dan’s laughter in my head…

“‘–Old Dan Tucker was a fine old soul, buckskin belly and a rubber asshole. Swallowed a barrel of cider down, and then he sh-t all over town.’”

Morgan broke into his worst fit of laughter, sounding just like Dan.

-

(Vohelezer’s House in Richmond Town – Photo by Joe)

* Props to Polar Bear Dave who gave me the 50″ LG plasma TV after winning it in a raffle!

—

Here are all the posts in this series: Episode Forty-Three

House of Laughter

Old Dan Tucker

Black Sullivan And His Girls

More coming next week…

Here are my STORIES and info on my Novels

(Rose and Crown Tavern in New Dorp, 1665-1854 – Photoshopped by Joe – *Orig. below)

I was roaring drunk as Minna pulled me by the hand through the crowded tavern. Along with the proprietor and his wife behind the bar, we were the only ones in motion. Yet quick-moving shadows peeled up and kept disappearing from the walls. I was looking about for the source, when I caught Minna’s wavy brown blades of hair slithering upon her shoulders like tiny snakes. She turned and gave the most perfect rosy smile, matched by her green eyes that brimmed with lust.

The front door opened, and a gush of fresh air filled my nostrils. I dismissed the danger signs and found myself wanting to go outside. I turned to see a familiar flash of white over by the bar. It was Gabe the gorilla’s stunningly white smile. Minna jerked my arm seemingly with the strength of a man and flung me forward. I careened onto the porch and down the few steps. My feet sunk into the soggy lawn as I slowed. Minna bolted past me, clenching her floor-length dress and lifting the hem.

I turned in a circled, aghast to find a heavy, low-lying fog. The old tavern was barely visible. I plucked up the knife holstered in my boot and held the handle tightly in my palm, blade pressed to my forearm.

“Why must you bother with me?” I cried out, just able to see Minna’s skirts drawing through the fog. A chill hit my face, and I remembered that only moments before Minna had told me she was Satan’s minion. Yet I had followed her somewhat willingly outside.

“You have it wrong,” Minna whispered in her brutish German accent, slipping completely out of sight. “It is you who followed me, but as I told you, that’s what men do, drunk or not. They follow, some to their own deaths–”

Clenching the knife in my fist, I turned, trying to home in on her voice and find her. I would have to slaughter her. She would reanimate if not properly obliterated, but that proposition was to be dealt with on another day. My only concern was surviving the night.

“–but it’s your time to go. Let me take you to the other side. It will be painless.”

“You are the fire,” I said, repeating what she had called herself. I spun around, having no idea where she stood. Branches poked through the cloud cover. I could no longer see the old tavern with its derelict planking.

“Right,” she said and came back into view. Her body was rigid as she circled me. Her eyes were now greenish-red and piercing. She held out her hand and leaned back with her head, seeming like a snake readying to strike. “Refuse my fire and his heat will be unbearable.”

“Satan’s?”

“Must we go through that again?” she said, and dashed forward, trying to snatch my arm. I jumped back and slashed wildly with the knife, cutting into her forearm. She circled around and showed a toothy smile as she grabbed her bloody sleeve.

The darkness rose from my innards and with it, so did the killer inside me. There would be more blood. Hers… But I better not get lost, I thought. It might give her an advantage. I stepped toward where I thought the tavern was and came to a muddy road.

“Strike me down with your knife if you must,” Minna said, running her hand over her bloody arm and licking her fingers clean. “I’m mostly flesh and blood. But then he will come, and you cannot kill him.”

I grabbed my stomach and retched. Lifting my head, I was overtaken by a dizzy spell. I could just hear a voice repeating a familiar hymn.

“‘Adoro te devote. I devoutly adore you. O’ hidden Deity. Truly hidden beneath these appearances…’”

I did my best to retrace my footprints in the soggy ground, while listening to the hymn. More voices joined, yet were chanting in Latin. “’Tantum ergo. Adoro te devote. Adoro te devote. Tantum ergo…’” Now it sounded like a horrible and dissonant song in a minor key.

My footprints led to an oak tree. A thick plume of smoke rolled right at me.

“You have cholera morbus,” Minna said, blood smeared across her lips. “You will die soon. Come to me for a peaceful death.”

The knife somehow slipped from my hand. I reached down for it, then quickly dropped to my knees and searched the muddy ground. The knife was gone.

“‘My whole heart submits to you… Adoro te devote. Adoro te devote… And in contemplating you, it surrenders itself completely…’”

I vomited a hot stream of gin and bile.

“He is coming soon!” Minna said. “It’s me or him. Choose now.” Her eyes batted and she looked nervously about. “If you don’t come with me, you’ll always regret your choice!”

I looked up from my knees. The fog stirred near Minna.

“You will rue this day for all eternity!” she shrieked.

There came the familiar whoosh of Gabe the gorilla’s spiked bludgeon. He hit Minna’s head on an upward slant and sent her spiraling with the bludgeon implanted in her skull. She went crashing down some fifteen feet away. Just after she hit the ground, her body scrunched and her skin started to wrinkle. Her new form reminded me of the old man I had seen on the beach in New Dorp the day before.

I stood, feeling less and less sick by the moment. I took one last look at the once-beautiful Minna. She was decomposing right before my very eyes.

The fog began to lift. It was a very dark night. The moon and stars were hidden by cloud cover.

I caught someone glaring at me from the top of a very steep hill that ran down toward the old tavern. The person or thing had bright red eyes.

-

(Rose and Crown Tavern - Fine art print by Granger)

-

Afterword

Over the following days, I grew very sick, but did not succumb to cholera.

And Satan in his truest form did not come for me in that spring of 1854. I can’t say if that was him staring down at me from the hill that night, though over the years and my handful of past lives, he has repeatedly sent his minions out after me. I can’t remember if I ever fell prey to their wily ways. But that’s what this blog is for, as my past lives come back to me, I will write about them here.

Bald Punk

December 2012 in New Dorp, Staten Island

—

Here are all the posts in this series: Episode Forty-Two

What’s In A Name?

My Blood Is Your Blood (Hear The Beast!)

I Am The Fire

Surviving the Night

Here are my STORIES and info on my Novels

With some trepidation of never seeing our fine oyster sloop again, we left it tied to a makeshift pier in New Dorp Beach and set out on a horse-drawn cart Jack had sent for prior to our coming to Staten Island. We headed along a wooded road surrounded by farmland that ran straight up from the shore. We wanted to talk with the families of the missing and murdered. They were all were located in the town of New Dorp. Jack had gotten the names out of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. But those we found would not speak to us; not one of them. Such was the disturbed nature we saw in their eyes, it was clear that no amount of begging or pleading for information would help.

A farmer, whose young girl had been abducted from his own bed in the middle of the night, met us on his property cradling an old blunderbuss. A newspaper report had stated that the girl had gone missing in the arms of an unidentified fiend, and that the father had searched the woodland beyond his fields, while his daughter cried out to him. When we asked the farmer to once again recount the events of that night, he threatened to shoot us if we didn’t leave his property. As with the others, a paralytic fear gripped the man’s body and gleamed in his eyes.

Jack said that the terror the beast had put into its victims had been born out of the fires of Hell, and had been transmitted through them to their family members. Before the three of us left each homestead, the one bit of information Jack culled was the name and relation of those we saw. Soon he pointed out to us that the non-blood relatives we met, such as step-parents and children from other marriages, did not display the same visceral fear. Gabe the gorilla and I agreed.

By sundown we had gone about one and a half miles inland on the same road. It was very straight. Only in the last later quarter mile did the road rise up much. At the top of the road and to the left, facing a steep hill, we found an old tavern where we rented rooms for the night.

-

A flash of lightning illuminated the room, followed seconds later by the crackle and explosion of thunder. I sat up in bed and put my feet on the floor. In a fetal position and still seeming to take up every last inch of the bed, Gabe the gorilla snored loudly on the other side of the room. Rain pattered on the window panes. It was a spring afternoon, yet there was a chill in the damp air. Aching from head-to-toe, it took some of my might to climb to my feet.

I dressed quickly and saw Jack was gone from the other bedroom in the garret. I went downstairs into the noisy tavern. The lamps on the walls and behind the bar burned brightly. Well-dressed gentlemen and farmers in shabby suits sat together at the tables and also stood at the bar. It was very queer to see four fair-haired ladies sitting at a table together without a male companion. I wiped my eyes as I surveyed the crowd, never having seen so many females in a bar unless I was counting whores. But none of these women sat on any of the men’s laps or leered at the customers, or drank gin or whiskey. It was all very strange*.

The corpulent proprietor came out from behind the bar. He ushered me into a small room and sat me at a table. He hurried out of the room and came back seconds later with a steaming glass of spiced rum. He set it down on the table along with a fork and a soup spoon. The glass warmed my hands, and the drink enlivened my spirit. The man put another log into the crackling hearth, below a kettle of simmering soup. Burning pine and sweet pipe smoke hung heavily in the air. Just minutes later his equally stout wife brought me a meal of roast pig, stewed liver, cold bread, and soup.

I felt my pockets. They were stuffed with money. Then I remembered Jack had paid the husband and wife handsomely for the three of us to stay one week. The price included food and drink. The couple, who both had strong German accents, had each counted the bills with looks of surprise, though had also been wide-eyed at the size of Jack and especially the gorilla. The couple seemed to have had past experience with demons and knew what the three of us were there for. More closely, I was almost sure the previous night that they had talked of a monster who terrorized their village in “the old country”, but I had drank far too much gin to remember what was said. One moment last night I was on my feet at the bar, the next I woke in a bed upstairs.

Jack sat down at the table and joined me for supper. He had gone out and gotten a shave and a haircut. Gabe the gorilla came down moments later and also sat with us.

Jack looked closely at me as I now sipped gin. “We’ll be stalking the demon tonight, so watch your altitudes.”

“I’m a f–king killer, drunk or not, was born to do this,” I said.

Jack stared into my eyes, and then blinked. “We’ll start on the top of the main road here; the one we came up. It’s the busiest area, having most the shops and establishments.”

“See where things take us,” I said and gesticulated with my hand out toward the crowd.

The both of us possessed almost hound-like senses for otherworld activity, if evil lurked in the night, we would be able to find its direction. Whereas our companion, Gabe the gorilla, was just a killing machine.

Jack lifted his glass of gin and seemed to thoroughly examine the clear fluid. “A newspaper account has all the murders and abductions occurring between the hours of 2 and 3 a.m. So we’ll go out around 1.”

“The only known dead are two adult males,” the gorilla said in his naturally high-pitched voice that now sounded a touch aristocratic. “They were knifed to death. I don’t think their end came at the hands of our demon. They were probably players in a criminal operation.”

“Yes, or gambling men,” I said.

“Which leaves us with six missing people,” Jack said. “Three mothers and three young girls.”

“One woman was pregnant,” I said, sweating, staring at the leaping flames in the large fireplace. It cast a healthy glow over the crowd, coloring many faces.

“So we may find them alive as yet,” the gorilla said, sitting up straight. His beefy shoulders were near the top of my head.

Jack coughed into his fist. “If we find any of the missing alive, even the children, we are left with only one manner in which to deal with them.”

“Kill them,” the gorilla said.

I was now spellbound by the flames. I could just see a face, same as when I sometimes stared into clouds in the sky. I spoke seemingly to the fire, “I won’t kill them.”

“You have the eye that can see through flesh. You will bare witness to their now cursed souls,” Jack said. “You will have no choice.” He waited a moment, then raised his voice. ”There’s nothing we can do. You must for your own sake, and for that of the virginal and innocent.”

“I won’t do it,” I said, able to make out the shape of a woman’s face in the fire. Yet it was so perfect, it was closer to being a reflection. I turned and scanned the faces in the crowd.

“Then you risk knowing all the horrors the underworld can heap upon a man’s soul,” Jack said.

The image in the fire drifted before my eyes, giving me a case of double vision. At that same moment, I lighted upon a young woman and the fiery image fit perfectly over her face. When our gazes met, her eyes glinted a sinfully bluish-red. I thought her either a whore or the Devil incarnate. She turned away and began to speak with another young woman and a gray-haired gentleman. There was a haughty look in his eyes, and I thought he must be a lawyer. The three of them laughed. I looked back into the fire. Sweat dripped down my ears, and I took off my top hat.

Over the course of the next hour, I couldn’t stop sweating or exchanging glances with the woman whose face I had seen in the fire. I drank the gin like it was ale.

I was soon as drunk as a pirate on the high seas. Jack ordered me a coffee, which the proprietor, without my asking, sweetened generously with rum.

I took my coffee outside and took a piss in the slick cobbled street. I came back in. Jack and the gorilla were talking to the older gray-haired man who I thought was a lawyer. He wore a fine suit. A woman, who I had never seen before, beamed up at him.

I moved closer to hear what they were saying. A second later someone brushed up against me. It was the woman whose face I seen in the fire.

She gave a closed mouth smile. Her face was pale, but her cheeks were rosy. She looked at the proprietor as she spoke with a rich German accent. “They say I am their daughter. I am not.”

“Oh.”

“I’m here for him and only him.”

“Who?”

“You know him.”

“Satan?”

“You can call him that, but what you saw yesterday was just one small part of him. Because he is not one being, but many. ”

“How do you serve him?” I said and wiped a heavy sweat from my brow.

“No matter the shape he takes on, people always fear him. They don’t trust him. But they will follow a beautiful woman like myself, even if it is to their death.”

“You killed those women and children here.”

“No, they drank bad water from an old well and were diseased and dying. I ended their suffering and helped deliver them to a better place than this world.”

“Who are you?”

“I am the fire. That’s all you need know.”

“Can you tell me your name?”

“Minna.”

I used my shirtsleeve to wipe the sweat from the sides of my face. I felt a cramp in my stomach. “Why are you telling me this?” I asked as sweat dripped into my eyes, momentarily blinding me.

“You drank from that same well.”

I remembered wandering off into the bushes to take a piss as we came up through New Dorp yesterday. I had seen an old stone well and pulled up a bucket of water and taken a sip. It tasted funny and I spat it out and then washed my mouth out with a gulp of gin.

“Come now,” Minna said with a smile, then grabbed my hand and pulled. ”He’s outside, waiting for you.”

-

*Author’s note: Funny how Staten Island was whacked, even back then! Click here to read about one of my modern day adventures in SI.

—

Here are all the posts in this series: Episode Forty-Two

What’s In A Name?

My Blood Is Your Blood (Hear The Beast!)

I Am The Fire

Surviving the Night

Here are my STORIES and info on my Novels

Look closely at the above photo and you can see the height the water rose to on the brickwork. This house is on a section of a street that is about three to four feet higher than other sections of the neighborhood.

All of these photos are from Midland Beach in Staten Island, except for one that I took of Coney Island Hospital. I’ve been working there the past few days. It’s currently closed because of water damage due to the hurricane.

Last Saturday was my only day off, and I went by a friend’s house to help cleanup. That was about five days after the hurricane first hit. It’s when I took these photos.

It seemed that just about every few minutes there was another group of strangers walking by offering food, beverages, clothing, or to help with the cleanup.

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Click here for some photos my brother Dave took: Hurricane Sandy – Staten Island

Here are my STORIES and info on my Novels

(Photos by Dave)

My brother took these photos. All are from either Midland Beach or South Beach in Staten Island. They were taken about five days after the hurricane first hit. Click here to see more Hurricane Sandy pics.

Here are my STORIES and info on my Novels

May 1854 – New Dorp Beach.

In the same spot by the water, where I had just seen a horned creature surrounded by a blood-red mist, there now stood an old man. He was staring out across the clear bay. A lump on his right shoulder seemed to place a great weight on his back and bow out his legs that looked like sticks as his trousers flapped in a strong breeze.

I clenched two fists full of sand and rose to my feet. The wretched image of the creature drifted through my mind’s eye. It had so disturbed me, that I had dropped to my knees in prayer. It was something I did often since meeting Father Keane a fortnight ago, across the bay in Coney Island. He had said I needed to let the Lord hear my voice, and that He would guide me in good times and in bad. In times past, I might have scorned the advice, but of late I’d been having horrible nightmares that foretold my own death. I sensed a coming doom. My premonitions intensified last night after Jack Jefferies had said we were leaving for Staten Island in the morning to battle a savage archfiend, who killed mercilessly and who no one had ever seen.

In a starched white shirt with a high collar and a top hat, which made his nearly six-foot-five frame look all the more imposing, Jack came pounding down the beach. ”Did you see that?” he said. His eyes were jumpy and very bright. “The demon changed into an old man right before our eyes.” He started toward the old man, who turned and scudded up the shore and away from us, in the direction of the green woodland that ran along the edge of the long, empty beach. The old man’s bowed legs hardly bent, though he was still light-footed and spry.

Jack ran ahead, while I only jogged, knowing our effort was futile. Sure enough, the old man slipped into the woods and disappeared.

“He’s gone,” I said and slowed to a stop. The blue skies caught my eye as I tried to remember The Divine Praises prayer. I spoke under my breath. “‘Benedictus Deus. Benedictum Nomen Sanctum eius. Benedictus Jesus Christus…‘”

“I’ve never seen or heard of a shapeshifter changing so completely, right before one’s eyes,” Jack said breathlessly. “And in the daylight. That was a powerful, powerful monster.” His eyes were glossy, and then anger flared in them. ”Are you praying, again?” He rushed forward and smacked me with his open hand across my face. I stumbled back, and he shoved me down to the sand. I deftly pulled out the dagger that was holstered in my boot and flipped the blade below my wrist. Jack fell on top of me and brandished his own blade. “That priest has made you crazy.” His eyes flashed to the hand where I held the dagger hidden from sight. “Stop this praying, stop it now!”

I looked calmly into his eyes, muscles twitching, ready to jab the blade into his left kidney.

Jack took his weight off me and stood. He turned away and resheathed the knife in a pocket next to the revolver on his hip. It was a full moment before he calmly spoke. “Just before that shapeshifter changed into the old man, I heard him speak. His voice was carried by the wind. Did you hear him?”

“He was far away,” I said, blinking, ”but I did hear something. He repeated it twice.”

“What was it you heard?”

Just then I could taste blood in my mouth. A line of blood ran from my nose and over my lips. Jack saw it and held out a handkerchief. I shook my head and took out one from my back pocket. I held it firmly to my nose. The blood tasted strange and different. It had a sweet tang. I lifted my palm off my lips to speak a lie. “Couldn’t hear it so good.”

Jack looked off to the woods where the old man had disappeared. “That shapeshifter was no ordinary demon. Given all I’ve been told, until we learn anything different, that was the beast himself. That was Satan. He is the evil killing livestock and stealing children. He is the reason we were sent to this island.”

Someone whistled. We both turned and saw Gabe the gorilla driving a horse-drawn cart. Tall as Jack but broader and more muscular, the gorilla was scrunched on the boxed seat, holding the reins to a brown stallion. Gabe looked nearly as big as the horse. He paused right before the edge of the sand.

Jack started toward Gabe.

My gaze fell to my scuffed black boots that were planted in the yellow sand. I thought about the words I had heard. They sent a chill through my bones. I coughed and then spit out a wad of sickeningly sweet blood that did not taste like my own. I clenched my mouth shut, not wanting to admit to Jack or even myself what I had heard, yet the words resounded it my head. The beast had said: ”My blood is your blood.”

-

Click to hear the beast(you know who HE is!) say: “My blood is your blood.” Don’t ask me how I made this recording. It’s really terrifying sh-t. I’m not doing so good. I’m just not.

—

Here are all the posts in this series: Episode Forty-Two

What’s In A Name?

My Blood Is Your Blood (Hear The Beast!)

I Am The Fire

Surviving the Night

Here are my STORIES and info on my Novels

The voice seems to come through frozen lips, which are surrounded by atrophied muscles, sounding as if the speaker is a bloodless thing(which it is). No matter the identity it assumes, I always recognize the tone. Plus the words it chooses trigger ruminations of previous encounters… “I’m only looking out for you. I have your best interests in mind. I only want to help. Doing you a favor.” Blood is what the creature doesn’t have and it’s what it wants. Bloodshed seems to pump life into its core. I can clearly hear the creature saying through gasps of ecstasy, “She’s got a demon’s heart, can’t you hear it? Ohhhh, take her life, before she takes yours.”

It gets into my head and under my skin, and it feels like a gloomy cloud looms over my being. Soon, something within is pulsing and wanton. I find I’m taking in long draughts of air, searching for a certain scent. When I finally lock onto it, my senses go wild and my sanity follows. The iron-rich scent of blood fills my nostrils. Bloodlust surges through my very being. If I don’t give into it, I feel I will die a hundred horrible deaths. And since I’ve killed and been killed in my past lives, I have intimate knowledge of the most awful ways to die.

I can remember the first time I saw its true form. I was on a desolate beach in Staten Island in the Spring of 1854. The sun was nowhere to be seen though the skies were blue. A bowed-legged and hunched creature was trolling the edge of the water, perhaps one hundred yards away. Such was the evil it projected upon me, all I could think was to genuflect in prayer. “*Tantum ergo. Adoro te devote,” I began, knees planted in the sand, while angling my face toward the heavens. “‘Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom His love commits me here; ever this day, be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.’” Eyes closed, enjoying the warmth upon my face, I had hoped with all my heart that God had heard my words and knew of the horrors I faced in His name.

Yet there would be no escape from the creature at my back. Even now I wonder, how many times can a dead thing reanimate? And when it does, it changes form, and finds its way back to me. There’s rarely been a time in which I’ve been free of the creature; it’s like a cruel wind that forever howls my name…

-

The four of us were heading off to an art and music festival in Hoboken. The mere mention of NJ vexes me, but I’ll bite the ol’ tongue and just say, “click here” to read about one of my Garden State adventures.

I stood in the foyer of our apartment with Scrappy D firmly in my arms. I was waiting for the pizza and Chinese delivery guys(aka num and nuts) to finish messing with their hair. Lady friend(LF) had already breezed past me minutes before looking beautiful and strong, like a lotus flower in full bloom. She had gone down to wait in the car. I was waiting because I like to be the last one out, to make sure that the little guy is safely locked inside.

Like chickens out into an open pen, num and nuts came strutting and squawking through the living room. They were sporting the Emo, blown-and-pushed-forward hairstyle, while just yesterday they had their manes slicked like Travolta’s “Tony Manero.” The two bastards motioned around me and Scrappy like feeding birds, yet somehow still looked halfway cool and styling in waist-hugging jackets and skinny jeans. Scrappy took them in with his huge mofo eyes and I knew he was thinking probably something close to what I was. That the two of them would look even better if they were stuffed like birds, mounted on pedestals, and behind the glass in a Museum of Natural History exhibit titled, “Wack-a-doos of Style and Cool, 2012″. As if to show the birds the way to freedom, I opened the door into the exterior hall and stomped my foot.

On the stairs and going down, I turned back to see that they had stopped to preen in the hallway’s full-length mirror. I found myself thinking about that demon I had first encountered on the sandy shores of Staten Island in the Spring of 1854. Like all demons that could change form, it could not hide the image of its true self in a mirror. I tried to envision what had happened on that beach, some 160 odd years ago. But what mainly was coming back to me were fragmented thoughts of the demon’s name. It was on the tip of my tongue–

I took a step up the stairs and told myself, now was not the time to think about demons. The day was to be all about drinking in art, music, and fun. I yelled at num and nuts to hurry up.

They were slow to move away from the mirror. Blood rose to my head. I tried to make light of the moment by reminding myself that when it comes to their style and comportment, it’s just a ruse to hide the fact that they are whacked, plain and simple. They are their names. The facade that they put up is called a “humbug.” P. T. Barnum–now that’s a great name–was a master at creating humbugs. Num and nuts passed me on the stairs as I tried to recall the demon’s name.

-

We had a great time at the fair, and I would tell you all about it, but I have a bad case of demons on the brain. One demon, especially–yet I can’t remember its name!

Also of late, I’ve been thinking about what a name can signify.

So speaking of aforementioned P. T. Barnum, in the case of someone famous like him, the name becomes the man, and the man becomes the name. Though in many cases, a man can become an insignificant name. As I did in the past life of mine I’m writing about, where my name was Joe Harris. It was a perfect name for my needs. The surname was not too common place like Smith, Jones, Williams, or Taylor, but common place enough. And “Joe,” speaks for itself.

Back then, NYC’s population was about one-half million. And there weren’t many people doing what I was doing–hunting and killing demons. Even before I started that, I scratched out a day’s work doing whatever job came my way. I preferred easy money. Thievery and burglary were my specialties. So it was best to be spoken of as: ”So which Joe Harris is that now?”

For all I remember, I might have been born with the name, Joe Harris. Not to get off track, but I was born, for the sake of the past life I’ve been writing about, in the late 1830s. I’ve had at least two past lives since then, and only one that I can remember before that. But part of me knows that if I dig deep, there were more.

Now as far as the name of that demon I first saw in Staten Island, I can remember Jack Jefferies was on the beach too that day, and had also seen it. Thereafter, I can remember him referring to it as ”the beast.” While two weeks before over in Coney Island, Father Keane had heard a voice in the wind and said it was “the beast” and that it knew my name.

Yet that designation–calling a being ”the beast”–is usually reserved for Satan himself. And that thought brings me to a place where I don’t want to be. Because whenever I think of “the beast,” my senses tell me that that entity, knows of me even still. It knows my real name, which is my soul’s name. And once a demon knows that, they can find you anywhere, even if you’re asleep.

It’s quite terrifying, don’t you think?

—

Here are all the posts in this series: Episode Forty-Two

What’s In A Name?

My Blood Is Your Blood (Hear The Beast!)

I Am The Fire

Surviving the Night

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*Latin phrases:

Tantum ergo: Down in adoration falling

Adoro te devote: I devoutly adore thee

Here are my STORIES and info on my Novels