Attention writers, bloggers, and artists of all media: if you’re looking for a prompt or a bit of inspiration this month, consider looking for what’s hidden (or lurking) among the trees.

This September Arboreality will host The Festival of the Trees issue 39 on the theme of Secrets, and you’re all invited to join me, Jade Blackwater, and bring your friends too!

The Festival of the Trees is a monthly blog carnival featuring trees and forests.  For the September Festival, our theme is Secrets:

“Forests, farms, gardens, urban trees, and ancient-rock-clinging-wind-whipped Bristlecone pine stands can be an escape, a place to hide, a space to rest, a home for buried treasure. This month, I invite you to reveal a small glimpse of a secret among the trees. Consider the quiet spots you go to sit, the trees which have stood in silent observation of the events of your life, the aromatic memory of the garden from a place you have visited. With word, image, sound, or otherwise inspired creation, give us a peek at what you see, or what you can imagine.”

Grab your free-wheeling creative license (and maybe a big, heavy club) and reveal what’s hidden in the dark, mutable forest.

Then post your creations online at your blog, photo album, or other web-based resource, and send me the link:

trees[at]brainripples[dot]com

Deadline for submissions is August 28, 2009.

Questions, comments, suggestions? Drop me an email.

(Don’t forget to drop breadcrumbs along the trail as you go!

…..wouldn’t want to get lost out there.)

[Photos taken October 2008 at the Prehistoric Gardens]

PS – We’re still seeking volunteers to host The Festival of the Trees #40 and beyond! This is a great way to broaden your audience, and of course – have fun in the trees.

To learn more, contact Dave (bontasaurus[at]yahoo[dot]com) and Pablo (editor[at]roundrockjournal[dot]com), and visit the Volunteer to Host page for details.

I have spent Summers and Winters up in the Mountains of Washington State

where

I have followed trails

and ridden on old logging roads

on horseback and by motorcycle.

And sometimes

I would follow

Creeks

and Rivers

and small streams

by foot.

Alone

I would follow the running water from the safety of the river banks

which always smelled like rotten leaves and wet dirt

and I would try to ignore the way the water would be loud and talkative one moment

and completely silent the next.

I have even gone on rafting trips and taken canoes out onto the water with my friends

and in the pictures that have been taken I am never smiling.

 My mouth is always set in a hard straight line

and

I am grimacing in every single shot spanning over  30 years.

Today I thought about the Rivers and Streams, the Creeks I have explored and when I tried to picture one-

any one of the many I have been too

the only image that came to me

was

one of

a hand

gently moving the black laughing water from side to side

and that hand

…was not mine.

PT 2

From the Continuing Adventures of Milo and Jingle

They were a husband and a wife on their Honeymoon  and they were in a museum looking at one of a hundred mummies .

The mummy that Jingle and Milo  were looking was in it’s sarcophagus, the lid was off and the mummy and it’s coffin were  standing upright encased in a glass case.

 A the mummy’s feet was the story about the nameless princess- dead for thousands of years now-  with the back of her skull missing.

Was it a murder?

Was it an accident during the embalming process?

Who buried the Princess, whose hands were also missing,below the floor of a tomb belonging to the many dogs once owned by the Pharaoh

asked the card

which also had a black and white picture next to it of the Mummy’s unwrapped head

showing the curious

the damaged skull.

Jingle looked into the face of the long dead woman and snickered-she did not laugh, she did not chuckle…she snickered

 and when she realized her husband was watching her she blushed- just a little,

 cleared her throat a tiny bit-

and then she tried,

 not very successfully,

 to saunter away like all of the rest of the Musuem Vistors who were just looking around on that July afternoon.

” Jingle…come back here…Jingle… “

And Jingle said to Milo as she disappeared comfortably into the rows of the dead.

” When some people tell you hands off …they mean it Milo. “

One night

in my neighbor’s front yard

I saw a man digging  a hole just up off of the sidewalk

by the orange glow of a streetlight

which kept flashing off and on with a buzz and a hum and a click.

I asked the man if he was burying something.

Buzz. Hum. Click.

Maybe it was one of Mrs Figueroa’s many black cats which were always running around in the street in the middle of the night.

Was it one of her cats I asked.

Buzz. Hum. Click.

They were all fine he told me.

Maybe he was helping to move around one of Mrs Figueroa’s many rose bushes that dotted her fence line. Maybe Mrs. Figueroa wanted one of her white rose bushes right under her living room window where she could see it when she opened her curtains in the morning.

Is that what he was doing, moving flowers around? I asked.

Buzz. Hum. Click.

No.

So- come one- what gives I ask, what are you burying here in the dark under a streetlight that won’t stay on.

I’m not burying anything he told me.

Buzz. Hum. Click

I’m digging something up.

Click.

Once I saw a man wearing an expensive business suit and a man in clothes that were torn and dirty – digging a hole together next to the railroad tracks.

I couldn’t imagine under what circumstances these two could ever have met, talked and decided one morning to go out with shovels and start to dig as trains roared and hissed by them, as crows lined the barbed wire topped fence that they climbed-

just so that they could up digging side by side

next to the railroad tracks early one Monday Morning.

When I drove by eight hours later the men were gone and the shovel was resting right there next to the fence.

It was there two days later when I drove by and it was still there a week later and I started to wonder by the third week

about the man in the suit and the homeless man digging side by side next to the railroad tracks.

I went out one Sunday just after sunrise and stood next to the shovel, and then I actually touched the shovel and I wondered about those two men.

And I took the shovel in my hands and laughed and then I put it back and scaled the fence and dropped to the other side and when I did there was a man standing there.

He asked me what I was doing and I told him about the Well Dressed Man and the Not So Well Dressed Man digging through all that rock and hard packed earth.

” Crazy ” said the man.

” No kidding.” I agreed.

” So what do you suppose they were digging for? “

I laughed some more just to show that it didn’t really matter to me.

And then I turned back to the fence and grabbed at it and said, ” We’ll need another shovel “

Every Halloween people pay good money to stay at the Longyear Hotel in a little town called Duwamish Bay.

By candlelight they listen to stories about the odd  history of Duwamish Bay and the strange story about a woman who wrote books  for another person whose name is very famous in the world of horror and about how she buried the dead by night and how sometimes she would haunt the roads and hills by moonlight looking for stories.

Once a man from a little town in Kansas flew all the out to Duwamish Bay and he checked into the hotel and asked for Livia’s room.

” Guests don’t stay in that room, ” Mr Longyear, the owner of the Inn said. ” We actually rent out her writing room, which if you’d care to see it-”

” I wouldn’t “ Parker Overland said ” I’d like to stay in Livia’s room, isn’t that your stock and trade here? Stay in the room where a real, how do you put it ” Ghost Writer ” once lived?”

“ Sir, that’s what I’m saying…she wrote her novels upstairs in the sitting room – she didn’t write them in her bedroom…”

” I understand you, what I’m saying is, I want to stay in Livia Longyear’s bedroom, I want to know what she saw just before she fell asleep at night and I want to know what it was she saw when she opened her eyes. That’s what I want.”

” Mr. Overland, it’s bare bones in there and not very comfortable. Livia’s bedroom is the oldest room in the house. Her sitting room though is available for private parties- and we do have a few hours free where you can have the room to yourself. We even have a guide available to – “

” Look Sir ” Mr. Overland glared down into the small dark face of Mr Longyear ” I want to get inside of this writer’s head, I want to know why she wrote stories for someone else that made them famous and why she allowed her to die in obscurity as a retired gravedigger in a town whose main stock and trade is a permanent Sideshow and an abandoned Insane Asylum. I want to understand it all.”

” A lot of people ask those questions Mr Overland and they don’t need to stay in Livia’ bedroom to do it. “

” Of course they do, but this woman has been inside of my head for over 30 years and I think it’s only fair that now I get inside of her head and walk around for awhile.”

Mr Overland’s face was not filled with excitement or curiosity. It was not earnest. He looked like a man who had spent a sleepless night being tormented by a mosquito.That’s what Mr Overland looked like and he was doing it right in the middle of the place Livia Longyear called home.

An hour or so later Mr. Overland had his way which was no a surprise to him. 

Parker Overland was used to getting it and at the moment he was very annoyed at the short uppity man with the funny name who thought he could change that simple fact of nature.

Mrs. Longyear came into the Parlor with a little drink for Parker and she handed it to him.

” I’ve called my daughter in to get Livia’s room ready. She takes care of those things for me. “Cardela Longyear held her hands up; they were twisted and swollen with arthritis. This is what happens when you get old I suppose.”

” I suppose. “Parker held the glass up to Cardela and downed his drink and placed it back on the tray and then Cardela turned her back and right there in front of Parker Overland eyes the world filled with stars and then darkness and he fell into it over and over and over again.

” Done? ” Cardela called to her daughter who was working in Livia’ s room.

” Yeah Ma, but let me tell you it wasn’t easy. Wow that was a mess. Whose idea was it to let her bedroom? Lolo’s?”

” It was your Father’s.”

Sunny leaned against the door and asked, ” how come this guy? “

” Your father has a good sense about people Sunny. If he thought it was best to give this man what he wanted then it was the best decision. Besides, this Mr. Overland was specific. He wanted to see what Livia saw when she opened eyes.”

” Whatever. People are weird. When’s dinner I’m starved…”

Sunny was about to walk by her Mother when Cardela swiped at her daughter’s arm. Sunny grabbed it as if a board had just hit her and she hissed, ” Cool it Ma that one hurt.”

” You’re not done, I’ll bet you left the lights on and a mess in there…go finish.”

Sunny rolled her eyes up and opened the little door that led from the kitchen to Livia’ s bedroom downstairs.

Everyone in the family knew that Livia wrote her books in her bedroom. And in Sunny’s opinion it would have made her family a lot more money if they’d just told the truth.

But Cardela didn’t want people walking in and out of her kitchen all day so they moved Livia’s  desk upstairs and left all the rest downstairs.

Besides, Livia’s desk was the important thing- that’s where the family would find her neatly written manuscripts waiting for them to send out when she was done writing.

Sunny walked across the room she had fixed up and she guessed, as she swept up the dust from around the marble crypt in the center of the room,  that just about now Mr. Overland was about to see what it was Livia saw when she opened her eyes.

Cavana Devaney’s house has windows between its walls.

The windows have been painted black and they’ve been nailed shut and even though there is no sunlight here they are still warm to the touch.

” Almost done? ” A voice called into Cavana’ s house, ” It’s getting late and I don’t want to drive over Old Creek in the dark. That place creeps me out. “

” Oh yeah? Why’s that? “

” Cause it’s haunted. “

” Please.”

” But it’s true, I heard that years ago some crazy woman buried some Aliens under the Bridge and when they started to rot everyone in town got sick.”

Cavana’s House listened and the lace curtains that covered her windows stopped stirring and in the darkest corners a little light made it’s way in.

” You work in a funeral home you ding bat, have you ever seen a ghost?”

” No.”

” Then why are you afraid of that Bridge? “

The Strange voices wandered through Cavana’s House, stopping here and there to smooth, straighten and make right ruined pieces of furniture.

They fixed and restored fixtures.

And with skilled hands they brought Cavana’s House back to life.

” Because it’s haunted. “

” Fine, it’s haunted, but by what? “

” Ghosts. Look, just because I’ve never seen one doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Maybe we’re just not looking in the right places.”

” Geeze, are you going to close up here or should I? “

” Go ahead.” Roman Droguett said to his partner Lister ” But you’ve been out there, you know something is out on that Bridge. Everybody knows it. Everybody’s known it since the year that woman found those bones hanging from the tree at the north end of the Bridge.You’re just so blind you can’t see what’s under your own nose.”

” How true ” thought Cavana’s House as the Mortician named Lister closed the incision just above her collarbone with heavy white thread ” How true.”

In the town of Bury, Washington there is a street named Fatal Lane.

The Planning Department in Bury changed it’s name to the less obvious name of 51st Ave West because there were always accidents or underage drinking or people in gray and black robes drawing pentagrams and runes on the trees and then someone did something to Mrs. Machin’s cat Darwin that snapped  Bury’s last nerve.

Darwin came home one Halloween with a pentagram shaved onto the top of his head and Mrs. Machin took Darwin, her shotgun and about a dozen angry pet lovers to the next City Council meeting and she spoke for about 15 minutes on those ” Looney Tunes ” from Seattle coming out to Bury to look for ghosts.

At that point she launched into a long and colorful speech about the lack of mental health care in our health care system and how that would be responsible for ending the world, as we know it.

Then Adeen launched into a speech about going Green.

It’s not like the Council could stop her from talking because she’d called ahead and had herself put on the agenda. And nobody in Bury was going to try and pull that gun out of her hands because it was loaded.

As a matter of fact it was always loaded

Everyone in Bury knew you could end up with a backside full of shot for no other reason then Adeen was trigger happy and she had a very bad temper. Even a few ‘ Looney Tunes’ from Seattle learned that fact the hardway.

To placate Mrs. Machin, because at one point instead of waving Darwin around she waved the gun around and blew a hole in the ceiling a motion to recommend the street of Fatal Lane be renamed 51st Ave West was made and passed by the City Council.

” And what purpose will that serve? ” Mrs. Machin asked with gun firmly in hand.

” Well Adeen, it’s not likely that those Ghost Hunter TV shows are going to want to waste air time talking about 51st Ave West and it’s high traffic fatality rate are they?” asked one Councilman.

One of the Councilwomen said from under the table, ” they’ll end up sounding like a traffic report on the five o’clock news Adeen. It’s that darned name that makes it sound Supernatural. Fatal Lane. Who was the Mental Defective that gave it that name anyway?”

” It was your Grandfather Marisol. And get up off the floor would you?” the Mayor said as he rubbed his forehead.

” Look Adeen, we’ll Fatal  turn it into a one way one lane street. Nobody will be able to park out there and you know how ticket happy…. I mean diligent our Officers are about traffic enforcement. It’s a start, all right? “

Adeen Machin stared up at the hole in the ceiling and then she spit some plaster out of her mouth. ” Fine, but if Darwin or anyone else’s pet gets abused again 51st Ave goes back to being Fatal Lane…. do we have an agreement?”

Somebody from in back of the room made a motion to Adeen’s proposal.

And it passed.

51st Ave W turned up on Maps and Fatal Lane disappeared and then stories new stories about a lost road in the town of Bury that spirits used to travel to the next world turned up.

That same year Darwin came home, two days before Halloween with a goat’s head drawn onto his side with White Out.

On Halloween Mrs. Machin and her friends went out to Fatal Lane and waited for ” those loonies ” to show up.

Mrs. Machin was the first to step out onto the road and when the robed figures saw the all five foot nothing of Mrs. Machin they tried, to their credit, not to laugh.

Only when the five foot nothing Mrs. Machin held Darwin up they did laugh and the rest of Mrs. Machin’s friends came from the shadows the laughter…. died.

” So tell me, educate me please ” Adeen said in a low roar ” why you lot insist on coming up here and tormenting us for every damned Halloween.”

” This road is a path to the next world, it’s cursed, and that’s why people disappear from here- never to be seen again.”

Adeen practically choked ” Are you out of your minds?” This road doesn’t go into the next world; this road leads straight to the back door of Fallen Prison. That’s why they call it Fatal Lane you numbskulls. This is the road the Prison uses to transport the condemned on.”

 No it’s not, ” said a young woman who forgot to speak through clenched teeth thus returning her voice to its naturally shrill state. ” Fallen is shut down, there aren’t any executions going on out there.”

Adeen raised her shotgun to her shoulder. ” Guess again…okay people let’s go.”

you can find inspiration in the strangest places 

When I was a kid our next door neighbor was a nice old lady named Mrs. Hanley Parsons.

She lived all alone in a house full of old fashioned furniture that looked brand new and she always wore black dresses and around her neck she worse a string of pearls and her wristwatch didn’t have numbers on it.

In fact none of the clocks in Mrs. Hanley Parson’s House had numbers on them.

Once I asked Mrs. Parsons about her faceless clocks and she said, ” Time and I had a parting of ways years ago, but I like clocks, I like the sounds they make. Do you understand what I mean?”

I nodded and said ” No.”

Mrs. Parsons laughed and she offered me a plate of cookies (almond) and I took one. ” I make them myself. In the old days I used to do a lot of baking and cooking. I stopped though.”

” Why’d you stop? “

” Oh, I fell into a career. And in those days women didn’t have jobs outside the home let alone careers. So I lost my husband and my children and even my family. With no one to make a home for, my domestic skills…” she seemed to be looking for the right word on the ceiling ” suffered.”

” Just because you got a job? ” I asked in disbelief.

” A career ” Mrs.Parsons told me. ” A job is something you do for a living. A career is something you become.”

” Did you like what you used to do? “

” Very much so.”

” Do you miss it? ” I asked.

Mrs. Parsons nodded and said, ” It gave me purpose.”

I liked Mrs. Parsons, she taught me how to read when I was only five years old and by the time I started Kindergarten I was reading at the first grade level. By the first grade I was reading two years up.

All because of Mrs. Parsons.

Mrs. Parsons also taught me how start pumpkin plants in Dixie cups and how to prune Roses.

But no matter what we were doing, or how well I learned her lessons she would always get a little sad when she talked about the old days and her career.

When I was about 8 years old my parents told me we were moving away from Seattle and I went next door to tell Mrs. Parsons.

” Well, ” she said, ” that’s very sad news. I’m going to miss you. You’re very good company.”

” Mrs. Parsons ” I asked, ” do you think you could teach me your career? That way I could remember you always.”

Mrs. Parsons laughed and she said, ” I’ll make you a deal, I’ll teach you part of my job and you decide in the end if it’s something you like doing.”

So Mrs. Parsons told me to go down to her basement and look under the steps and to bring up the little wicker basket. I carried the basket upstairs to the kitchen where Mrs. Parsons was dusting her fresh baked almond cookies with powdered sugar.

I put the basket on the table and she reached in and slowly removed the contents and sat them on the table in front of us. ” So, where to start.” she said to herself.

 I looked up at her and shrugged and said. ” At once upon a time?”

Mrs. Parsons laughed and that’s how it started.

I learned about Mrs. Parsons career every day for about a week, and then one day I went to Mrs. Parson’s house and a man answered the door.

He was Mrs. Parson’s son and he told me she had died.

Just as I was about to turn away he reached down and handed me the little wicker basket and said, ” I suppose this is yours.”

I nodded and kept my hands behind my back.

Mrs. Parson’s Son looked a little nervous and he sat the basket down and slid it towards me with his foot and when he stepped back I reached down and picked it up.

I didn’t say thank you and looking back on it, I don’t think he expected me too.

So now at the age of 42, I still have that wicker basket (my cat uses it for a bed) and on the top shelf of my book case pushed against the wall is a fully functional hangman’s noose.

It’s all that left of Mrs. Parson’s career.

Unless you count this story of course.

amm

In this story are doorways to some Macabre Tales

by a Macabre

Writer.

Enoy

and

have

Happy Halloween

Last Year

after it rained

an old retaining wall

Under Anita’s Owl Creek Bridge gave way

and 

Fir Trees and Hemlocks and Cedars

and chunks of thin white clay

slid down into onto Old Creek Road.

An Old Cemetery called Mourning Ridge

gave up some of it’s occupants

and the broken and ruined coffins littered the road

like confetti.

Mr Butcherbroom and his wife were the first to come down

to look at the damage.

Mrs Butherbroom looked up at the Bridge and cursed

Mr Butherbroom swore

Mrs Butherbroom asked

 the darkness

that always seems to hang around Anita’s Bridge like fog

“ Do you think it’s still here? ”

Mr Butherbroom took his wife’s arm and they walked

away

and

from under Anita’s Bridge

The Creek gurgled and turned

and

it sounded

like

laughter.

When I was a kid my Mom told me this story about a failed exorcism.

The thing of it is nobody knew it failed for about 40 years. The story was that a young man had been taken over by a demon and a priest was supposed to have driven the demon out.

When the man died 40 years later, he was supposed to have confessed to a Priest on his deathbed that he (the demon) had never left.

I found out later that more then a few people suspected this all along.

After he died they buried him just outside of the Cemetery.

No one knows where.

But he’s out there.

He IS real.

How do I know?

How do you think I found my way to my own Owl Creek Bridge?

By chance?

It’s okay I don’t believe that either.

 amg

What would bring you out to Anita’s Owl Creek Bridge so late at night?

How strange, you sat in your car and waited for the the sunset.

You waited for hours.

Which makes me wonder

What did you come looking for here in the darkness under Anita’s Owl Creek Bridge?

Evidence of Misdeeds? Dark Secrets? Murder? Mayhem?

The Devil?

Me?

How interesting… how puzzling…how amusing.

Under the Bridge is bad enough by daylight- in the evening it’s Hell on Earth.

Sometimes I go down there for stories and it’s days before I can sleep through the night again.

Days.

So I think I’ll wait for you in your car, where it’s dry and warm and dark.

When you get back we’ll chat.

It’ll be a scream.

amm