Michael Scott Hand

Author Archives: Michael

• Scary Vampyre Story, Conclusion

  Posted at 10:00 am by Michael, on September 24, 2020

  Missed one? Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.  Part 4.

  Ripped from the pages of an age-yellowed penny blood, the page stained and smeared, the cover lost and the author dead to time, yet from these half-writ fragments forms a story in the mind…

  Last Time…

  “Peter,” said Manuel, returning to the tomb and standing opposite. “I’m going to need you to cut off her head.”

  Now…

  Slowly, Peter shook his head. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and grave dust stung his eyes. “This is impossible,” he said. “Impossible.”

  He looked away from Lucille, past Father McCafferty to the boy outside. “How did you know? What part have you to play in this depravity?”

  “Now is not the time, Peter,” said Father McCafferty.

  “The boy needs a doctor,” said Peter, his voice cracking on the last word of the sentence. He did not want to look down at Lucille LaFey’s bloated, undead body. He would not.

  “Peter!” hissed Manuel. “A doctor will be no help; the boy will not awaken until the job is done. We must sever him from the source.”

  Father McCafferty’s lamp began to flicker as though caught in a breeze—except that there was no breeze within the cramped confines of Lucille LaFey’s tomb. The statue of the Virgin Mary looked down on them impassively, eyes blank like the gorgon.

  Peter looked down at the oversized cleaver in his hands. The edge of the blade glinted in the light, edged with fire. “I can’t…” he said. His stomach turned over. He began to shake.

  Manuel Churchill gripped Peter by the arm and said: “For Sammael: you must.”

  The vampyre hunter released his grip and took up the mallet and the stake. Peter glanced at Father McCafferty, whose face looked lined and ancient in the shadows cast by the lamp.

  “We must strike together,” said Manuel. “Now: get into position. At my count, on one…”

  This is happening, thought Peter. In his imagination the stone lips of the Virgin Mary had twisted into something matching Lucille Lafey’s smirk. He extended his arms above the body, the sharp edge of the cleaver hovering directly above Lucille LaFey’s exposed, smooth-skinned neck.

  “Three…” Manuel took up the wooden stake and the mallet. “Two…” the vampyre hunter took a moment to align the stake above her heart. “One!”

  The mallet struck the stake with a high-pitched wooden clink. No air whispered out from Lucille LaFey’s punctured lung, for vampyres do not breathe. But there was another sound, from her lips, a whispered word: a lilting sing-song lullaby, a lover’s whisper. Peter hesitated and the vampyre’s eyes snapped open.

  “Out!” Manuel screamed. “Get out!”

  Continue reading →
  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments

• Grand Game

  Posted at 9:01 am by Michael, on September 23, 2020

  Right now the Grand Game’s being played,
  But I’m tired of making patterns out of shadows I’ve made,
  And I’m tired of seeking secrets when the truth is so plain,
  And I’ve heard the plain is where the rain falls mainly in Spain,
  So I’ll try to educate you ’bout the state of my brain,
  I know I might seem kind of crazy but I’m far from insane,
  On the inside I am levitating on another plane.

  Posted in Poems | 0 Comments

• 21092020

  Posted at 8:33 am by Michael, on September 21, 2020

  I sip coffee to collect my thoughts. The wind beats against the windows.

  More coffee and I stretch my neck. I stretch my shoulders. Has the caffeine kicked in yet? It’s starting to.

  I sit before a blank white box, pressing buttons. My fingers are clumsy on the keys; they’ve not yet found their rhythm.

  The buttons I press correspond to letters and the letters become words; these are the sums of language.

  Monday is a sum of last week and the week before. Behold the wondrous, cascading maths of time.

  A constant re-beginning, like a child’s nursery rhyme. An infinite progression into the future: another new beginning, another Monday, another.

  New week’s resolutions resolve themselves. Time conveys us forward. Last week is stripped and crushed like an old car in a junkyard. The metal husks of old weeks pile high.

  Another new beginning, another Monday, another.

  Good morning, Monday.

  Posted in Other | 0 Comments

• 14092020

  Posted at 9:22 am by Michael, on September 14, 2020

  The trees are art. The wind that causes them to sway is art. I am art, one man, standing at a train station watching the wind in the trees.

  Imagine a window looking in on an art gallery. The art is what you can see through the window: people looking at paintings. The art is both the window and the people.

  Imagine an art exhibition made up of nothing but windows: each one looking out at a different scene. Through one you see the tree tops; swaying or still. Through another, the streets of the city. Small cars go by outside. Toy cars; real cars.

  Look up, through the skylight at the centre of this exhibition of windows and see the clouds above. Or blue sky. Glance across the room and spot a reflection of yourself in one of the windows, a hanging light obscuring the view beyond.

  Realise then: that you are art.

  Good morning, Monday.

  Posted in Other | 0 Comments

• The Fable of the Flitmice

  Posted at 9:25 am by Michael, on September 10, 2020

  Before men ruled the world it was the domain of beasts.

  All were guided by the Great and Noble Order, such that even those creatures who preyed upon one another for sustenance never took more than they needed and a long and glorious peace reigned.

  But then came Lilith, Queen of the Frozen Hells and spurned lover of Lucifer. And with her she brought a frost that stripped the earth bare.

  The beasts first began to starve and then they went mad. It was not long before they turned on each other, for desperation breeds evil; indiscriminate killing came upon the earth.

  Some of the creatures were faster to adapt than others. Among them the wolves, who became Lilith’s willing servants. The wolves roamed freely through these blighted lands they called the Frostwood and took whatever they pleased.

  It was not long, however, before game became scarce and even Lilith’s wolves grew hungry. They were forced to seek out ever smaller prey in their holes and burrows—foxes, rabbits and mice. Entire colonies were slaughtered, snatched from their homes by the jaws of the ravenous wolves.

  Some of the foxes fled, for foxes are cunning and quick-witted. Many of the rabbits fought back, with a thumping of feet and a gnashing of teeth. But the mice only cowered in their homes, uncertain of what to do and stricken with fear.

  The mice convened a council. Various suggestions were proposed and each was dismissed as more foolish or dangerous than the last. The mice debated until they could barely squeak another word. Eventually only one plan remained, but it seemed even more foolish and dangerous than all of the others had combined.

  The mice decided to seek out Ol’ Grandfather Crow, one of the oldest creatures in the Frostwood and a powerful magician. Ol’ Grandfather Crow had long been an enemy to the mice, but it was known that he had not aligned himself with the White Queen; if any could save them from the wolves, it would be he.

  And so the mice sent a delegation across the Frostwood to seek an audience with Ol’ Grandfather Crow. The adventures they had could fill several volumes. When, at last, they reached their destination they stood bravely before the magician and pleaded with him that they might be granted wings with which they could escape from the wolves as the crows were able.

  To the great surprise of the mouse delegation, Ol’ Grandfather Crow agreed. But instead of granting the mice the same shimmering feathery wings of his ilk, he instead cursed them with strange, leathery wings, such that they would never be confused with crows.

  Such is the way that Ol’ Grandfather Crow created bats—and why bats are sometimes called flitmice, by those who have lived long enough to remember the old stories.

  The flitmice were forced from their nests. Some used their new wings to flee the Frostwood and found refuge: on mountains and in caves, in distant jungles amongst the high trees. There they remain to this day.

  But others among the mice were displeased by the magician’s trickery and so, another council was convened. There they agreed to seek out an even greater enemy than Ol’ Grandfather Crow and an even more powerful magician… they sought out the Great Serpent himself and found him, at last, deep within the Frostwood, coiled up in the skull of a long-dead giant.

  Without pretence, the Great Serpent told the mice that their salvation could be found in Lilith’s garden. For although the frost had killed many of the plants in the Frostwood, there in Lilith’s garden, grew a tree heavily laden with a prickly red fruit: the vampire tree.

  In great numbers the flitmice descended upon Lilith’s garden, where they found the tree exactly as the Serpent had told them. In desperation they clutched and tore at the fruit, gorging themselves on it until their chins were stained red and dark droplets fell upon the snow.

  The Great Serpent had been right: for the fruit made the flitmice stronger and smarter… but it also made them thirsty.

  And that is the story of how mice became bats and how bats became vampires. And the moral, it is told, to never trust a magician no matter how desperate you become; for magic never comes without a cost.

  Continue reading →
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• White Noise

  Posted at 11:49 am by Michael, on September 7, 2020

  Posted in Films | 0 Comments

• 07092020

  Posted at 5:50 am by Michael, on September 7, 2020

  I draw until my wrists get sore.

  I practice music until my fingers cramp.

  I write and write and write and write.

  I write stories. I write stories about stories. I write stories tangentially linked with other stories in ways too obscure for anyone other than me to know about.

  I expose truth and then bury it beneath a great obfuscating mound of rock and dirt and grass.

  A tree stands upon that mound and there are leaves upon the tree. Each leaf contains an intricate pattern of veins that mirrors the infinite.

  So enamoured by the venation of the leaves we forget the tree, the grass, the dirt, the rock and we forget that truth that’s buried beneath.

  I write until my hands get sore.

  Again I get it wrong; I get it wrong.

  I draw until my wrists begin to ache.

  What are these, the scribbles of a child?

  I practice playing chords until, frustrated, I bash my fists against the keys.

  Cacophony. Cacophony.

  I write and write and write and write and write and write and write.

  Good morning, Monday.

  Posted in Other | 0 Comments

• Black Spot

  Posted at 7:14 am by Michael, on September 5, 2020

  

  Posted in Photographs | 0 Comments

• The Seeing Thing

  Posted at 8:07 am by Michael, on September 3, 2020

  

  Posted in Photographs | 0 Comments

• Scary Vampyre Story, Part 4

  Posted at 8:47 am by Michael, on September 2, 2020

  Missed one? Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. 

  Ripped from the pages of an age-yellowed penny blood, the page stained and smeared, the cover lost and the author dead to time, yet from these half-writ fragments forms a story in the mind…

  Peter wedged the crowbar into the crack at the edge of the door. He leaned on it, carefully at first in case the stone decided to crumble. But the door to the tomb seemed stuck fast, for even as he leaned more heavily on the crowbar it refused to budge.

  “Shall I fetch Haldur to help?” asked Father McCafferty and like the words of a spell it seemed his mere suggestion was what finally caused the door to grumble open.

  Inch by horrible inch, Peter prised his way into the darkness. When the door was open far enough for him to put his weight behind it he leaned on it heavily, flattening soil as he pushed it aside. The rectangle of light cast by Manuel’s reflecting mirrors hit Peter firmly in the eyes when he turned back to look at them. “It is done,” he said, squinting.

  All three men stared into the confined box of the tomb. Now Peter was certain that he could smell death, although the smell seemed indistinguishable from dust and stone. The sarcophagus took up almost the entire space inside the tomb, a stone box within a stone box. There was a shelf on the back wall of the tomb upon which stood a pale statue of the Virgin Mary. As Peter moved away the light from the mirrors danced across her draping skirts.

  There was no sign of Sammael.

  They lit a gas lantern to illuminate the tomb. The priest held the lamp in one hand, while in the other he tightly clasped a crucifix that he kept pointed at all times towards the unmarked stone sarcophagus.

  Manuel and Peter moved to opposite sides of the stone box where Lucille LaFey had been laid to rest. Peter did his best to try not to imagine what awaited them beyond that heavy stone lid. His mind conjured images of skin stretched tight across old bones. It was deathly cold inside the tomb.

  Moving with almost agonising deliberateness, Manuel Churchill placed the sharpened cleaver atop the sarcophagus and instructed Peter to take it. Manuel went on to place a clove of garlic upon the shelf at the feet of the Virgin Mary. Beside the garlic he placed a sharp wooden peg and a wooden mallet with which to strike it.

  “Do not be alarmed, Peter, by what you are about to see.”

  In the doorway to the tomb Father McCafferty was shaking. The light from the lantern flickered. Behind the priest, the day seemed impossibly bright; almost painfully so. Father McCafferty was a crucifix-wielding silhouette outlined against that blinding brilliance.

  “Help me shift the lid,” said Manuel, shuffling sideways so that Peter could push it without trapping him against the wall. Peter placed the cleaver at his feet, with the sharp edge pointing away. He gripped the lid of the sarcophagus and it shifted too easily, sliding aside with the sound of stone against stone.

  “Hold up the lamp, Father,” said Manuel and Father McCafferty stepped forward to help illuminate whatever lay within the stone sarcophagus. Peter gasped at what he saw, while the priest gave voice to the boy’s name: “Sammael…”

  Peter had no idea how the boy had managed to sneak into the tomb, surely the door alone would have been too heavy for him to open. The boy lay across the Lucille LaFey’s corpse, his face against her breast. The boy lay as still as the corpse, so still in fact that Peter feared the worst. “Is he..?”

  Manuel shook his head. Reaching into the sarcophagus he lifted the boy away from the body and then dragged him out into the sunlight. The boy’s body was limp and extremely pale. There were red smears around his lips as though he had been eating berries.

  And now too was the body of Lucille LaFey revealed. The body was plump and smooth-skinned, looking as though it had been dead for no longer than hours rather than decades. Her eyes were closed and her lips were turned up in what almost appeared to be a smirk. A thin line of dried blood ran down her chin.

  “Peter,” said Manuel, stepping back inside the tomb and standing on the opposite side. “I’m going to need you to cut off her head.”

  Posted in Stories | 0 Comments

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