A Cauldron of Uncanny Dreams

By Donald Firesmith

An anthology of uncanny short stories to read late at night from the award-winning author of the Hell Holes series and The Secrets of the Hawthorne House. Read stories about a very special birthday party, a memorable farmer’s daughter, a collector of unique collectables, the investigation of a Romanian strigoi, and an unintended consequence of using voodoo dolls for revenge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donald Firesmith
• Release date: Dec 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005671334

Donald Firesmith

Donald Firesmith is a multi-award-winning author of speculative fiction including science fiction (alien invasion), fantasy (magical wands), and modern urban paranormal novels.Prior to recently retiring to devote himself full-time to his novels, Donald Firesmith earned an international reputation as a distinguished engineer, authoring seven system/software engineering books based on his 40+ years spent developing large, complex software-intensive systems.He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with his wife Becky, his son Dane, and varying numbers of dogs and cats.You can learn more about the author by visiting his personal website:http://sites.google.com/a/firesmith.net/donald-firesmith/His magical wands and autographed copies of his books are also available from the Firesmith’s Wand Shoppe at: https://www.etsy.com/shop/FiresmithWandShop

Book preview

A Cauldron of Uncanny Dreams

Donald Firesmith

A Cauldron of Uncanny Dreams

By Donald Firesmith

Copyright 2020 by Donald G. Firesmith

First Edition: December 2020

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All characters and events in this work are figments of the author’s imagination.

1. Science Fiction 2. Paranormal 3. Fantasy 4. Horror

Purchase autographed books by contacting the author at:

Magical Wand Press

20 Bradford Avenue

Pittsburgh, PA 15205

http://donaldfiresmith.com

This book is typeset in Times New Roman and Algerian.

Edited using AutoCrit™, Grammarly™, and ProWritingAid™

Book cover by Pamela C. Rice

Interior design by Donald Firesmith

Table of Contents

Her Mother’s Eyes

The Collector

Grandma Buford’s Birthday

The Farmer’s Daughter

The Haunting of the Ederescu House

Madam Kaldunya's Dolls

Billy the Arsonist

The Vow

Afterword

Her Mother’s Eyes

She has her mother’s eyes.

She keeps them in the back of her freezer

With her father’s hands and her husband’s heart.

She often thinks of them and smiles.

The Collector

Margery McElroy was a collector. In fact, all of her friends were collectors. Janet Wilson, who lived across the street, collected salt and pepper shakers from around the world. Harriet Miller lived two streets over and had a collection of hundreds of ceramic frogs, while Margery’s friend, Lisa Howard, collected miniature paintings of butterflies.

But Margery had never been very interested in her friends’ collections, not really. Of course, she would never give the slightest hint of her boredom with frogs or painted butterflies. When she visited her friends, Margery would listen to them prattle on and on about their recent finds, smiling and nodding approvingly when they presented their newest prizes. But she only humored the others so that when she invited them over, they would ‘ooh’ and ‘ah’ in envious admiration as she regaled them with her latest treasure, a rare discovery in perfect condition without the slightest crack or chip.

Margery collected miniature ceramic houses and buildings of all kinds. She started years ago with an inexpensive Christmas village, and her collection rapidly expanded from there. Soon, she was adding small snow-covered trees and tiny figurines of Christmas carolers to a wintry village that had grown into a small town covering her entire dining room table. The following October, she added a Halloween town with half a dozen haunted houses to her Christmas collectibles. The next spring, she added an entire coastline of porcelain lighthouses. By summer, it ceased to matter what it was, expensive or cheap, finely crafted or the most rudely constructed, as long as it was something new to add to her ever-expanding collection.

Since her husband passed four years earlier and her children were all grown and in homes of their own, Margery filled her empty days and empty house with small ceramic buildings of every shape and kind. Her son’s old room celebrated Christmas all year long, while her daughter’s bedroom held a miniature Halloween haunted by hundreds of miniscule ghosts and monsters of every kind. Not a single surface in any room remained that had not been transformed into a landscape of tiny towns and diminutive villages. As the months went by, her guests grew to feel like Gulliver in a porcelain land of Lilliputians.

Depending on the time of the year, every Saturday would find Margery and her friends trawling the antique shops, flea markets, yard sales, and estate sales. On Sundays, while the others were in church, Margery would religiously drive to nearby towns. She would look for out-of-the-way places where she could find that one-of-a-kind treasure that would force her to rearrange her rooms and perhaps even move an older find into a closet, or worse yet, a neatly labeled box in her overstuffed attic.

It was on just such a Sunday that she discovered Aaron’s Antiques: Collectibles for the Discriminating Collector in a tiny town two counties away. Squeezed between a second-hand clothing store and a long-closed bakery, the small antique shop was in an old run-down building on a narrow back street. The shop had seen more than a few hard years since it turned a profit for its owner. The building desperately needed paint, and it had apparently been months, if not years, since the shop’s large window had a thorough cleaning.

Several months earlier, Margery had picked the town clean, but she had somehow failed to spot the hand-painted sign posted along the country road that also served as the town’s main street. The small sign simply held the single word ‘Antiques’ next to a crooked arrow pointing first around the corner and then bending again towards the little shop on the narrow side street. Margery nearly missed the sign as she drove by, but it somehow seemed to call to her. She quickly turned her car around and followed the sign’s directions.

Stopping in front of the antique shop, Margery examined it with the discerning eye of an experienced collector. Whereas most people would have found the shop distinctly uninviting, she deduced that its owner had fallen upon hard times, and that meant the prices should be exceptionally low.

Margery walked up to the window and peered in. The broad shelf behind the glass held the usual items: a stereopticon with a small box of paired photographs, a few tattered bibles and old books of little value, and a larger box filled with worn-out kitchen and farm tools that had long outlived their usefulness. But in one corner, something caught her eye. She walked over, but the window was so dirty, the sky so gray, and the inside of the store so poorly lit that she could only tell that