Things That Go Bump In the Mind: Ghosts, Fantasies, Myths

By Marty Price

This collection begins with a longish short story based on characters from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It includes ghost stories and stories of the supernatural, but nothing that should be categorized as "horror." It includes a few poems, also with supernatural themes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9781387869862

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Things That Go Bump In the Mind: Ghosts, Fantasies, Myths

Things That Go Bump in the Mind:

Ghosts, Fantasies, Myths

By Marty Price

Copyright © 2017 by Marty Price

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2017

ISBN 978-1-387-86986-2

Windword Press

106 Dunbrook Dr.

Starkville, Mississippi  39759

Dedication

To Ariadne,

mythic consort of the Wind.

Also to Carolyn, Nessie, and Zathras,

who must put up with me.

.

Contents

About the stories

Stolen by the Faeries

To Seken Straunge Strondes

The Cemetery Train

By the Dark of November’s Moon

Rolling Boxcars

Stormclouds

Four Seasons

The Hunt

On a Cloudless Night

A Year in Thirteen Moons (poems)

Selected Poems

Stump-Talk

About the stories

Stolen by the Faeries seems to me a proper dedication for this collection.

To Seken Straunge Strondes is fantasy, styled just a bit like a sword-and-sorcery piece, and giving Geoffrey’s Chaucer’s Knight and Pardoner rather different personalities than he provides in The Canterbury Tales.

The Cemetery Train is the end result of my reading about a real train that carried bodies from London, England to a rural cemetery and thinking about the deaths from a massive twentieth century epidemic, the 1918 Influenza Epidemic. It is a standard ghost story, and does not pretend to be anything more.

By the Dark of the November Moon is a bit more ambitious, in that I give attention to several of the conventions of the Victorian and early twentieth century ghost story – it is offered as a second hand version of a first-person reminiscence of a true story, just as it should be.

Rolling Boxcars plays with the hitchhiking Jesus urban myth that floated about in the 70’s. It is a version of the plethora of disappearing hitchhiker stories and their mirror, the hitchhiker accepting a redemptive ride from a ghost. Neither the hitchhiker nor the driver in this story are ghosts, but …

Stormclouds, set in hurricane season along the southeastern American coast, is a contemporary envisioning of the Ariadne and Dionysus myth.

Four Seasons is just that – a tiny little ghostly or mythic encounter to match each season.

The Hunt is a little foray into images, dreams, and archetypal memory from Indian Summer, that week or two of sunny, dry, and warm weather after the leaves have fallen, the traditional northeastern hunting season.

On a Cloudless Night is a brief vignette, on meeting the ghost of professional cynic Ambrose Bierce.

A Year in Thirteen Moons opens a brief section of poetry, this a series of reminiscences tied to the seasons, and the moons of each season. The moon names are based on some of the standards (Corn Moon and such).

Selected Poems is a sampling of my recent poems, with each of the pieces I’ve included touching on some mythic or fantasy theme.

Sir Gawain in the Dead Times is inspired by one of my favorite poems in the English language, the fourteenth century Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Pictures of Scars is an ecology piece, both celebrating and mourning our tenure on this planet.

When I was Eight-and-a-Half is a carousel ride (of course). Thunderbird features a Thunderbird (the mythic kind). Tourist Memories is my mythic journey to City Lights Books.

May it be long before I die, but when I do, I hope the experience is like The Crossing.

Hearing Ghosts seems the right poem to end on.

Stump-Talk is a sermon I offer myself. Blame (or credit) Shel Silverstein (The Giving Tree) for the stump image. If you don’t like the sermon, blame me. If you like it, credit Walt Whitman, a range of folks who went stumbling about in the Summer of Love, and anybody you can come across who is convinced life can be a beautiful thing.

Stolen by the Faeries

I’ve stepped through the mirror,

Crossed a faerie bridge,

Danced with a lass

Whose gown was moss and grass.

I’ve ventured through a forest

Where trolls were known to prowl,

Sought shelter in a cave,

And found a giant’s grave.

I’ve allowed an Elvan Queen

To whisper in my ear

Though I gently spurned her loving

For the price was far too dear.

When I close my books of magic,

Fresh novels, ancient verse

I yet walk beneath their sunless sky,

For this world seems winter drab --

And page two hundred’s faerie road

Sets a better pace for one like I.

***

To Seken Straunge Strondes

I trou he were a gelding or a mare. – Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

Prologue

It was a spring evening, almost dusk, with a company of three on the road. Two led horses: an aged ruddy charger was led by a tired-looking figure, a knight, while a young man led a young, half-trained bay. The third man, in green, carried a forester’s longbow. The lamps of an inn, Tabbard Inn, were already lit as it appeared to be receiving a diverse company. Just before them on the road two figures lagged, as though waiting for a more quiet moment to approach the inn. Sir Burrton, for so he called himself, hailed the pair.

The one, a Pardoner riding a smallish gray gelding, turned toward him. The other, appearing a Summoner and riding a mule, gave him no mind. Fair sir, the Pardoner spoke in a high, reedlike voice, Do we have business? The knight was wordless. The Pardoner looked intently, Ah, I see we surely do. You look to be on a journey. I have a relic here, a shinbone of Saint Mark, which will give you safety on your way.

The knight nodded. Come away from your friend for a moment. We should speak in private. Sir Burrton left the charger with his companion and walked to the edge of the road, the Pardoner moving rapidly toward him.

Perhaps the thigh bone of Mark would serve me better, he whispered.

Perhaps so, but I think it best we do not tryst. You’ve acquired companions?

Yes, the boy is supposedly my squire. He’s the son of a franklin, knows nothing of arms, but is good with horses and is ready to pretend to be my son. As for Gregory, my yeoman, we have traveled together before. And who pretend you to be and who is your friend?

I’ve traded one field of disrepute for another, and am traveling as a most unsavory sort of Pardoner. I recruited an ecclesiastical Summoner as companion for this pilgrimage – he’s no friend. The man’s as scurvy a pimp as I might find, is eaten with disease and so perverse that all keep distance from us. He is useful, but I will rid myself of him soon enough. See these, I have bones – purchased from a Jew’s dungheap, the remnants of a long-eaten sheep. I have papal bulls, easily forged since my hand knows how to write.

In business?

No, just maintaining my disguise. Are you, like me, on the road to Canterbury?

Surely so, Mark, surely so. But I suspect my motives, mixed as they are, might be purer than yours.

What? I travel in innocence. I would see the Holy Blissful Martyr, beg forgiveness for my iniquity, the Pardoner offered an ironic wink.

Sir Burrton smiled gently, I believe I’ve taken some small measure of that grace we were offered on the Sudanese deserts. Truly, I have changed.

That means you’ve what?

That means I’ve purchased a small holding with my gold, pay these two to pretend to be my household, treat my tenants with kindness, and tell lies of being a knight retired from the wars.

The Pardoner smiled back, If you suggest I should wear a gown, acquire a husband, make an honest woman of myself – no. I prefer my masquerade as a dishonest man. That Buddhist, or Hindu, or whatever he was, spoke rich enough words, but I preferred the substance and the taste of his gold coins.

I accepted them too, but still I wonder at his words.

"And I do not, or dare not. I have heard betrayal in the