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Ghost Riders in the Sky

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By Ed Staskus

   Oliver was on the back patio downing the remains of a hot dog on a windy and overcast northeastern Ohio evening when he heard hooves. He glanced into the kitchen behind him where there was a floating corner television shelf. He thought his father might be watching something after dinner. The kitchen was empty. He looked all around, down the line of backyard patios, and across the field behind their housing development all the way to the trees where Ralph the Honey Badger lived. The cattail patch in the middle of the field was a rolling wave of green. Yellow pollen streamed off the sausage-shaped flower spikes being whipped by the wind. He didn’t see anything galloping anywhere.

   Then he heard a man singing.

   “If you wanna save your soul, from Hell a-riding on our range, then, cowboy, change your ways today, or with us you will ride, trying to catch the Devil’s herd, across these endless skies, yippie-yi-o, yippie-yi-yay, ghost riders in the sky.”

   He heard a horse neigh. A cowboy on a horse was at the far end of the field. He rode towards Oliver. He looked the worse for wear. He wasn’t singing. The singing was coming from the sky.

   “That’s right son,” the cowboy said, hitching his horse to the LED light pole on the patio. “It’s one of them ghost riders up there singin’ that song.”

   “Ghost riders?”

   “Up there, look.”

   “All at once a mighty herd, of red eyed cows he saw, plowin’ through the ragged skies, and up the cloudy draw, their brands were still on fire, and their hooves were made of steel, their horns were black and shiny, and their hot breath he could feel.”

   “I see them, but I don’t see how they can be real way up there, although I can feel their hot breath when they huff,” Oliver said, putting his hot dog down.

   “Be glad you ain’t in the middle of that cursed herd.”

   “Where they did they come from”

   “They come from forever, although others say they come from the pit.”

   “What is your name””

   “My name be Wyatt, Liver-Eating Wyatt, on account of I like eating liver.”

   He was wearing a surplus Civil War frock coat and canvas pants with leather leggings to protect his legs from thorny bushes. His hat was slouchy and weather beaten.  His boots had raised pointy heels. He wore a mangy checked bandana around his neck. There was a Winchester ‘73 rifle in his saddle scabbard. It was clean as a whistle. He was dusty all over.

   “Do you know Wyatt Earp?”

   “I can’t say I do, partner.”

   “Where did you come from?”

   “I come from the Red River down Texas way where we was driving a herd, three thousand head of them. I was one of the swing riders, keeping the line straight. I was singing to the herd one night trying to keep them calm when there was the whir of a rattlesnake and a thunderclap. They got spooked by the snake and when the thunderclap happened they stampeded. Me and the others been chasing that herd through the sky ever since.”

   “Their faces gaunt, their eyes were blurred, their shirts all soaked with sweat, he’s riding hard to catch that herd, but he ain’t caught ’em yet, cause they’ve got to ride forever
on that range up in the sky, on horses snorting fire, as they ride on, hear their cry, yippie-yi-o, yippie-yi-yay, ghost riders in the sky.”

   “Who are the other cowboys?”

   “I don’t rightly know. One of those boys told me I got to change my ways and repent and that would save my soul. I didn’t even know I had a soul. He declared that if I don’t I’ll be doomed to chase that herd across the sky from now until the twelfth of never.”

   “That’s a long time,” Oliver said, even though he had no idea how long the twelfth of never was.

   “My branding iron will rust away before then.”

   “Why do you have to change your life?”

   “Well, son, I don’t want to be riding herd when I’m a hundred years old, if I live that long, which don’t seem likely.”

   Cowboying was dangerous work. There were stampedes that trampled them when they tried to turn the herd. Their horses kicked, bucked, and threw them. If one of their boots got caught in a stirrup the horse might drag them to death. There were dust storms and bone-numbing blizzards. There was scurvy and smallpox. Bugs and snakes bit them. They had to sleep on the ground on the cattle trail, rain or shine. It left many cowboys broken old men before they even got old.

   “No, I mean, did you do something bad that you have to say you’re sorry about and that you promise to never do again?”

   “Maybe, maybe not.”

   “What kind of maybe?”

   “Maybe we was in Abilene one time, at the end of a trail drive that took more than two months, and we was drinking a bit, letting off steam, firing our guns into the air, when the town marshal and his deputies showed up, and we might have fired a shot or two at them. Another time we was in Boot Hill drinking some cheap whiskey and playing some poker when we caught a card sharp using marked cards. There might have been a brawl and we might have fired a revolver in his direction and the card sharp might have ended up seeing a sawbones. I ain’t saying it was right to shoot him, but it was his own  fault. He was lucky to not end up in the bone yard. Another time outside of Dodge City we might have come across some unmarked open range cattle and made them our own, but everybody does that, so I’m not going to say sorry about riding off with them.”

   “Oh, I see, those kind of maybes.”

   Oliver didn’t know very much about cowboys. Everything he knew came from the movies. He thought they all wore Stetsons. He didn’t know most of them wore sombreros or bowler hats. He thought they were quick draws who dueled in the middle of dusty streets in broad daylight. He didn’t know that more often than not they didn’t carry handguns, most towns had strict gun control laws, and when there was gunplay it happened in sunless alleys and from behind water barrels. He didn’t know that when cowboys carried a handgun they usually loaded it with five, not six bullets. They didn’t carry it chambered so that if they bumped into something and their gun went off, which they were prone to do, they wouldn’t shoot themselves in the leg. He thought they were always fighting off Indians. He didn’t know that hardly ever happened. Disease and bad weather were deadlier than redskins, by far.

   “What are you going to do about that herd in the sky?”

   “I’m the nighthawk tonight. I bedded them down when we stopped here, but I think it’s time we get going. The weather don’t look none too good.” There was a flash of lightning. The riders in the sky were rounding up stragglers and getting the herd ready to move. There was another flash of lightning.

   The cowboy got back on his quarter horse. The horses had natural cow sense and a reputation for explosive speed. “I got to get us back on the Chisholm Trail. This trail we’re on don’t lead nowhere. If I leave it to those ghost riders that’s where we will end up. It’s time for me to cut a path.”

   “Do you want some beef jerky for the trip?”

   “You mean seca?”

   “I guess so.”

    “I won’t say no to that.”

   Oliver gave the cowboy a half dozen Slim Jims.

   “What’s that wrapped around the seca?”

   “Heat-sealed plastic.”

   “What’s that?” the cowboy asked, looking like a drover’s dog being shown a card trick.

   “It’s a long story.”

   “All, right then, see you later.”

   “Catch you on the flip,” Oliver said.

   Watching the cowboy ride away he heard, “As the riders loped on by he heard one call his name, if you wanna save your soul from Hell a-ridin’ on our range, then cowboy change your ways today or with us you will ride, tryin’ to catch the Devil’s herd across these endless skies.”

   The next morning it was raining hard when Oliver woke up. He lay in bed listening to the raindrops hit the roof until he got up and went downstairs. His mother and sister Emma were having breakfast. His father was on his treadmill working out before going to work. He was streaming a rerun of an old TV series called “Rawhide” while he jogged. Clint Eastwood was the ramrod Rowdy Yates. Oliver couldn’t believe how young he looked, not like the leathery geezer he had seen. Rowdy Yates was mixing it up with a cow hand called Toothless. It looked like trouble was brewing. 

   He liked the theme song and hummed it going into the kitchen, wondering if Emma, who had a hollow leg, had left any ham and eggs for him or if it was going to be a last piece of old toast.

   “Don’t try to understand ’em,  just rope and throw and brand ’em, keep movin’, movin’, movin’, though they’re disapprovin’, keep them doggies movin’, Rawhide!”

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street  http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

“Made in Cleveland”  

Coming of age in the rough and tumble of the 1960s and 1970s. A collection of street level stories set in Cleveland, Ohio.

Available on Amazon and Apple Books

A Crying of Lot 49 Production

Legos On the Loose

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By Ed Staskus

   The day Maryann Shelly got her Lego Creative Brick Box was the day she got to work. Her Lego Man started off small, less than an inch tall, when she started building him. He didn’t stay small for long. Every day Maryann made him bigger. By the end of the month he was as big as her, which was just shy of five foot tall. Less than a month later he was eight feet tall and wouldn’t fit in the house anymore. She moved him outside behind the garage, under an eave so he wouldn’t get wet.

   One day she noticed her supply of Lego plates, tiles, and bricks, the basic building blocks, was running low. She scratched her head in bewilderment. She hadn’t been working on anything lately. Where were all the pieces going?

   She found out where they were going on a Saturday morning. It was a fine sunny day. She and Amelia, a friend of hers, had gone for a walk along the railroad tracks as far as Lane Rd., went back on S. Ridge Rd., and cut through Canterbury Crossing to return to their housing development.

   “Do you want to see my Lego Man?” Maryann asked Amelia.

   “That would be fun.”

    When they got to where Lego Man was supposed to be behind the garage, he wasn’t there.

   “What happened to him?”

   “He couldn’t have just walked away,” Amelia said.

   They heard a car horn on Park Rd., tires screeching, and then another car horn. They ran down Trotter Ln. to Park Rd. and saw Lego Man tramping past the Cedar Glen Condominiums. He was nineteen feet tall.

   How did he get so big, Maryann wondered, and in a flash realized he was who had raided all her Lego building blocks. He was building himself. What she didn’t realize was that Lego Man had tapped into AI and was teaching himself how to make his own way in the world. Might Makes Right is what he had learned so far. After he found that out he decided it was all he needed to know. He shut off the modem that connected him to the internet.

   When Lego Man crossed Welch Rd. and got to the railroad tracks the gates were closing. He ignored them, lumbering through like they were matchsticks. When the train got to the crossing it stopped, the engineer took one look at Lego Man, and immediately turned the train around.

   Lego Man saw 1922 Coffee and Brew on the corner and stopped there for a take-out coffee. He ordered three gallons with lots of sugar. He had a sweet tooth. When it came time to pay for his drink he realized he didn’t have any money. He stomped the building flat.

   A Dollar General store was across the street. He needed more Lego building blocks if he was going to get bigger. When he found out Dollar General didn’t have any he flattened that building, too. He was learning to love Might Makes Right.

   He tramped down Madison Ave., watching cars swerve in all directions. Sirens sounded in the distance. The klaxonsdidn’t bother him overmuch, it was just hurley burley, but he needed to get bigger, regardless. He thought five hundred feet tall would be about right. When he got that big all bets would be off.

   Nothing was going to stop him. He thought he might get a red tie so everyone would know who he was. They would see the red tie and know he was the Great Lego Man. He went back to Dollar General and pawed through the rubble. He found a clip-on red tie. He also found an orangey wig in the style of a comb-over. He didn’t know what a comb-over was, but he knew what he liked. He slapped it on top of his head. He took a selfie and checked himself out. He thought he looked great. He felt great. He was great, no doubt about it.

   He plodded down S. Ridge Rd. He had grown so fast his balance was sketchy. He definitely didn’t want to fall down. If he did he would break apart into a million Lego pieces and his greatness would be all gone. He tightened the knot of his tie. He had to get bigger. He had to get so big that he would never fall.

   Lego Man slowed down when he saw the blockade ahead of him. It was the National Guard. They had taken a break from chasing immigrants. They were chasing him. He looked to his right. There was a forest. He wasn’t big enough yet to walk over the trees. He looked to his left. He saw a small church. It was the Church of Jesus Christ. Maybe if he knelt  down in front of the church and pretended to be saying his prayers they would leave him alone. 

   He put his hands together and signaled to the National Guard that he was going to church, but they sprayed him with a water cannon, taking him by surprise and almost knocking him over. Lego Man didn’t like that. He lumbered over to the water cannon truck and flattened it. 

   The National Guard sent for reinforcements, including flame throwers. Lego Man didn’t like flame throwers. Although he was made of ABS, a durable plastic that had clutch power and up-to-date SEBS, plastic was still plastic. It and flame throwers didn’t mix. He would melt in a flash.

   He retreated to the rear of the Church of Jesus Christ, but since he didn’t believe in the Ten Commandments, or anything like that. he flattened the house of worship instead of stopping in and repenting for the warpath he was on. Repentance was for suckers, anyway.

   He thought he might lose himself in the thick twelve foot high cattails behind the Canterbury Crossing Condominiums if he crouched down. He was doing just that when he saw the one hundred and twenty foot cell tower at the far end of the cattail field. Why was the cell tower so much bigger than him? He stomped over to it, pushed it with all his might, and pushed it over. When he did the internet went out all over the neighborhood, including Oliver and Emma’s house, whose back patio faced the flattened Church of Jesus Christ.

   Oliver and his sister Emma were the Monster Hunters of Lake County. The Lego Man didn’t know anything about them. He was going to have to face the consequences of his know nothingness.

   “What happened?” their father asked coming down from his home office on the second floor. “Did you kids do something to the internet?”

   Oliver and Emma had been having lunch, hashing out their plans for the rest of the day.

   “It wasn’t us. Maybe something happened to the tower.”

   The cell tower had been erected three years earlier, and although it was an eyesore, it made the internet reliable. Oliver looked out the sliding glass back door.

   “There’s some kind of gigantic Lego thing out there mashing the tower,” he said.

   “Oh, that’s just great. I’m in the middle of a project. Ollie, can you go out there and make it stop. In the meantime I’ll have to hotspot off my phone.”

   “OK, dad.”

   Oliver and Emma went outside. Lego Man was still on the warpath, throwing galvanized steel pieces of the ex-tower all over the place.

   “Who does he think is going to clean that up?” Emma asked.

   “And what’s with the weird hair?” Oliver asked. “We can’t let him do whatever he wants, like wrecking things.”

   “What can we do?”

   “Oh, that’s going to be easy” Oliver said. “The bigger they are the harder they fall.”

   Emma followed her brother as they approached Lego Man, who was breathing heavy from his labors. He didn’t notice them. Oliver snuck behind him and pulled a single Lego brick from the back of his right heel. When he did Lego Man begam to wobble. He swayed back and forth. His right foot disintegrated, Lego bricks littering the ground. When his foot was completely gone he completely lost his balance. He fell over and fell apart, Lego bricks scattering everywhere. Lego Man was no more. It took the National Guard the rest of the day to pick up all the pieces.

   “Why do you think he was wearing a red tie?” Oliver asked as they walked back to their house.

   Emma was two years older than him. She was his right hand man. He knew she knew almost everything.

   “Red is supposed to stand for power and authority,” she said. “Maybe he thought he didn’t have enough of it, so he wore a red tie to make himself believe he was powerful. It’s the kind of thing grown-ups do.”

   “Oh, right,” Oliver said. “What about the hair?”

   “I’m in the dark about that. Anyway, I don’t know that I want to know, although I do know that was the color of Lex Luthor’s hair before he went bald.”

Illustration by Everett Schaser.

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street  http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

“Made in Cleveland”  

Coming of age in the rough and tumble of the 1960s and 1970s. A collection of street level stories set in Cleveland, Ohio.

Available on Amazon and Apple Books

A Crying of Lot 49 Production

Melon Heads

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By Ed Staskus

   Oliver and Emma were standing at the side of the road looking up at a sign. it was a road sign for Wisner Rd., which was in Geauga County, next door to Lake County where they lived. They were in Geauga County for the annual Maple Festival, which included rides and concessions, a lumberjack competition, and a parade through Chardon Square. Ricky & the Rockets played classic rock favorites on the Entertainment Stage.

   It was Sunday morning. Sunshine had been rumored since the  festival opened on Thursday. It had finally shown up. They had breakfast in the Pancake Tent and were looking forward to seeing Swifty the Clown, Jungle Terry, and the Grand Parade later on. In the meantime, they were  on Wisner Rd. waiting to high-five their father running in the five mile Sap Race.

   “They’re going to be coming right by here, right?” Olver asked. 

   “That’s what the map says” Emma said.

    “After that we’ll go looking for the Melon Heads.”

   “What if we find them?”

   Oliver pulled a homemade ray gun out of his pocket.

   “Did you ever get that thing to work?”

   “Sort of.”

   “That’s better than nothing.”

   After finishing their buttermilk pancakes, and while walking through Chardon Square, they saw a man at a booth selling a book called “Monsters of Ohio.” The man was J. C. Raphael. They stopped at the booth.

   “Are there any monsters around here?” Oliver asked.

   “There are the Melon Heads,” J. C. Raphael said. ‘If you go just a little ways down the road, you get to Wisner, which is sort of the epicenter of the legend. If you ask anyone in Geauga County about Melon Heads, they’ll have at least a story or they’ll know someone who has searched for them personally. I think there’s something exciting about that.”

   The Melon Heads were once children. A Geauga County doctor by the name of Dr. Crow had started treating some of them after World War Two. He lived in the woods off Wisner Rd. where he had a small institute. The children he treated had water on the brain. The large pockets of water in their brains made their heads look like melons. 

   The children lived with Dr. Crow. Nobody else wanted them. They were ostracized because of their big heads. Families, orphanages, and local authorities sent children to him. He studied them, explored remedies, and looked for a cure. He never found one and passed away of old age. His home and institute fell into disrepair. 

   In the 1980s a rumor made the rounds that Dr. Crow had performed medical experiments on the children, creating creatures with small, malformed bodies and even bigger heads. It was thought he had injected extra fluid into their heads to make them bigger. Some said the children killed Dr. Crow and ran away into the surrounding woodlands. One by one they went insane.

   When they did they started stealing pets and food. They attacked anyone who crossed their path. They had grown to hate human beings. Nobody went looking for them alone or at night. Most of the Melon Heads died off, but some had children of their own, passing on their deformities and insanity. Some believed they lived in a secret place beneath the ruins of Dr. Crow’s house.

   “That’s where we should start,” Oliver said.

   “Do you know where it is?” Emma asked

   “No, but Ralph said he would meet us here and help sniff it out.”

   Ralph was a honey badger who lived in the woods behind where Oliver and Emma lived in Perry. His favorite food was grubs and rodents, although he ate anything that came his way When he did he ate ail of the fur, feathers, and bones, too. Ralph wasn’t afraid of anything. If an insane Melon Head messed with him he would probably eat it, and  that would be that.

   They saw their father coming in in the middle of a long line of runners. He was easy to spot. He was wearing lime green Saucony running shoes. They waved at him and he waved at them. Ralph showed up a few minutes later and they tramped into the woodlands.

   The honey badger found the ruins of Dr. Crow’s house in ten minutes.

   “How does he do that?” Emma asked. “It would have taken us all day.”

   “He has a great sense of smell.”

   “He smelled the ruins out?”

   “I guess so,” Oliver said. “Anyway, the proof is in the pudding.”

   “Do you think there’s a secret place underneath there?”

   “If there is, Ralph will find it.”

   Honey badgers are excellent diggers. They have long, sharp claws. When they are away from home they dig burrows whenever they want to take a nap. It doesn’t take them long. The can dig out a hiding hole in a matter of minutes.

   Ralph sniffed out the secret place and started digging. He stopped digging when he found a passageway. Olver and Emma slid down into it behind him. Emma turned on her pocket flashlight, although Ralph led the way. They made their way to a warren. When Ralph saw it he nodded his approval and curled up in a corner to get some shut eye. It had been a long walk from Perry to Chardon.

   The Melon Heads weren’t what they expected. They looked like Ma and Pa Kettle. They were brother and sister. Pa Melon Head was in an armchair reading a newspaper. He was smoking a briar pipe.  Ma Melon Head was in another armchair knitting. She was smoking a pipe, too. It was a corncob pipe. Their heads were slightly larger than usual, but not by much.

   “Oh, we’re sorry to bother you,” Oliver said. “We were looking for the monster Melon Heads.”

   “You’ve come to the right place.”

   “No, the crazy ones with gigantic heads who terrorize everybody in this neighborhood.”

   “That’s us, sonny.”

   “But everybody says you’re dangerous.”

   Pa Melon Head coughed politely. Ma Melon Head laughed. 

   “We’ve heard all kinds of tall tales about us,” she said.  “One of them is that Dr. Crow and his wife were arguing, hepushed her, she hit her head on a cabinet and died, and that we then maliciously killed him and burned down the house. That didn’t happen. He wasn’t married anymore.”

   The house  burned down a long time after Dr. Crow’s death. Teenagers were partying in the abandoned house and burned it down playing with matches. “Another tall tale is that we steal people’s children and eat them. That isn’t true, either. We are both vegetarians.”

   “They say we have deformed limbs, glowing red eyes, and  razor-like teeth,” Pa Melon Head said. “I wear dentures and they are the least razor-like anything about me. Ma’s eyes only glow red when she hears the lies about us.”

   “Rumors are spread by fools and accepted by idiots,” Ma Melon Head said. “Especially in this day and age.”

   Oliver and Emma were chagrined. Oliver poked Ralph awake, who started looking around for something to eat. He was always hungry. “We are very sorry to have bothered you,” Emma said.

   “You won’t say anything about us to anybody, will you? We enjoy our privacy.”

   “Our lips are sealed,” Oliver said.

    They had just crossed Wisner Rd. on their way back to the Maple Festival when a woman stopped them, asking if they were looking for the Melon Heads.

   “We were but we found out there aren’t any.”

   “That’s good, foolish children are a nuisance,” Rosemary Richards said. “I know all about the crazy stories, but what can you do?” Trying to undo a crazy story is like trying to unring a bell. 

   “You could call it defamation of character, but we don’t care now that he’s gone.” Dr. Crow was Rosemary’s great-uncle. “I don’t know what he would have thought. He might have laughed about it, he might not. My cousin always said, don’t think about it, don’t even try to do anything about it.”

   “My dad always says never complain, never explain,” Oliver said.

   “Are you on your way back to the square?” Rosemary asked.

   “Yes, we don’t  want to miss Swifty the Clown.”

   “In that case, you had better hurry.”

   Oliver and Emma set off. Ralph led the way. He knew for sure there would be rich pickings at the fairgrounds, There were always scraps of fried pickles, fried cheese curds, and fried onion rings on the ground all over the place.

   “How he doesn’t gain weight is beyond me,” Emma said, looking down at Ralph going at a deep-fried Oreo.

   “He’s got a hollow leg, for sure,” Oliver said, biting into a slice of  muskmelon. It was juicy with a pungent aroma.

   Just then their father walked up, sweaty and flushed. 

   “Guess what kids, I think I saw a Melon Head behind a tree during the race.”

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street  http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

“Made in Cleveland” by Ed Staskus

Coming of age in the rough and tumble of the 1960s and 1970s. A collection of street level short stories set in Cleveland, Ohio.

Available on Amazon:

A Crying of Lot 49 Production

Front Lawn of Fear

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By Ed Staskus

   Oliver had heard about the house with the front lawn full of life-size skeletons, but had never seen the Halloween display himself. It was down Canyon Ridge Dr. on the east side of the street. The street was about a ten minute walk from where he lived. “There‘s a bunch of skeletons carrying some kind of hatchet and one really big one who’s the leader of the pack,” Tommy One Shoe said. “They’re all chained together, but they’ve been getting loose in the middle of the night the closer it gets to fright night.”

   “If they’re carrying something, it’s probably a scythe,” Oliver said.

   “What’s that?”

   “A farming thing from long ago.”

   “Oh.”

   Oliver knew which house it was, at least he knew the backyard of it. He had seen it many times looking up from Masons Landing Metropolitan Park on the Grand River where there was a bend and a stretch of bank. He could see it from the bank. It was the only house on the street with a side yard. It was the only house with a sweet gum tree. The fruit of the tree was a hard spiky ball he called a monkey ball. Nobody wanted to step barefooted on a monkey ball. He knew that from personal experience.

   “What do you mean they’ve been getting loose?” Oliver asked.

   “They get loose from their chains somehow and roam around at night waking everybody up. Their bones rub against each other clicking, clacking, and rattling.”

   “I guess that might be a nuisance,” Oliver said, “but it doesn’t sound menacing.”

   “That’s not all they do.”

   “What else do they do?” 

   “They swing their scythe things at shrubs, the mailboxes, and cats on the loose. All the shrubs look terrible, like a really bad haircut.  A bunch of mailboxes have holes in them. One cat ran up a tree and wouldn’t come down for two days.”

   “That sort of sounds like teenagers on the loose.”

   “Maybe it does, but last night a lady was walking her dog. It was late. She was looking one way, the skeleton was looking the other way, and they bumped into each other. She ran home and the dog chased the skeleton to South Ridge Rd.”

   “The skeleton ran away?”

   “That’s what she said, and she said the dog came back with a scrap of black fabric stuck in his teeth.”

   “I see,” Oliver said. “Can you sneak out tonight and meet me across the street from the skeletons?”

   “What time?” 

   “Let’s say three. My parents don’t get up at three in the morning for anything.”

    “No problemo,” Tommy said. “Mine don’t get up for anything between midnight and sunrise, unless maybe the end of the world was happening.”

   That night at three in the morning Oliver and Tommy met across the street from the front lawn of fear. Both of them were wearing jeans and dark sweatshirts. Oliver had a flashlight with him. He would have brought his sister Emma for back-up, but she was at a sleepover in Painesville. Tommy had a plastic Ninja Sword he had gotten from the Spirit Halloween store in Mentor. He whacked the bark of the pin oak tree they were hiding behind.

   “You’re going to break it,” Oliver said.

   “No, that’s some tough bark.”

   “I meant the sword, and besides, we need to be quiet.”

   “What’s the plan?”

   “The plan is to throw some light on whoever it is in that house who is pretending to be a skeleton, and why.”

   They almost fell asleep. It was nearly five in the morning when they were roused by a car coming down the street. Oliver had been wool-gathering the new ray gun he was inventing. The car pulled into the driveway of the house where they were hiding. They squeezed close together behind the pin oak tree. A man in a uniform got out of the car. He had a rolling carry-on suitcase and a flight bag full of manuals, a headset, and an iPad. He was a Southwest Airlines pilot.

   He was fumbling in his pocket for his house keys when Tommy saw a skeleton wielding a scythe crossing the street. He was heading straight for the pilot, one determined step after another. A full moon illumined him. It wasn’t a real skeleton. It was man dressed in black tights and a form-fitting long sleeve spandex t-shirt.  The bones had been stenciled on the fabric with glow-in-the-dark paint.

   Tommy poked Oliver in the ribs.

   “Hey,” Oliver grunted.

   “Look,” Tommy said.

   “I thought it was going to be something like that,” Oliver said.

   When the skeleton got close to the pilot he raised his scythe.

   “Oh, my God, put that thing down and take that stupid mask off,” the pilot said. “Who do you think you are, the Grim Reaper? I just got in from Hawaii and the last thing I need to do is fool around with you.”

   “The last thing I need is you fooling around with my wife anymore,” the skeleton said.

   “I wouldn’t be doing that if you spent more time fooling around with her.”

   “I told you to stop, but you didn’t. Now I’ve got you where I want you. Everybody on the street thinks my skeletons have been coming to life. No one dares to be out at night anymore. There aren’t going to be any witnesses and everybody will chalk it up to the supernatural.”

   “That’s crazy,” the pilot said.

   “Crazy as a fox,” the skeleton said and advanced on the pilot. He raised his scythe and swung it down at him, who raised his ballistic nylon flight bag to parry the blade. The blade cut through the bag like butter. When it did the force of the swing, its trajectory altered,  carried the scythe downwards towards the skeleton’s feet. The front point of it pierced his left tennis shoe, sinking an inch deep into the top of his  foot.

   “Youch!” the skeleton cried out, going to his knees and reaching for his foot. He tore his tennis shoe off. Blood gushed out of his foot, soaking the grass. The pilot staunched the bleeding with a spare shirt he pulled out of his carry-all.

   “Who knew skeletons could bleed,” Tommy said, dumbfounded.

   The pilot called 911 and an EMS truck showed up in five minutes, followed by a police car. After the skeleton had been put on a stretcher and driven away, a policeman asked Oliver and Tommy what they were doing there. 

   “We heard there were skeletons walking around at night,” Tommy said. “We wanted to see what was going on. We saw the skeleton come across the street and swing his scythe thing at the man in the uniform who came home, but he missed, and cut himself.”

   “What do you have to say?” the policeman asked Oliver.

   “The same thing,” Oliver said.

   “All right, go home, and stay there.”

   They started up Canyon Ridge Dr. The moon was setting. Dawn was on the horizon.

   “What was that all about?” Tommy asked. “All they talked about was fooling around, although the skeleton sounded mad, and the other man looked annoyed, and the next thing you know the skeleton was trying to slice and dice that man.”

   “I don’t know,” Oliver said. “Grown-ups confuse me. Sometimes they seem more crazy than not.”

   “I know all about that,” Tommy said. “My parents are totally crazy.”

   They were exchanging shaggy-dog stories about their parents, aunts, and uncles, and were so absorbed in their critique of grown-ups they didn’t see the Headless Horseman, who was carrying his severed head on his saddle, go past them at the crossroad of Canyon Ridge Dr. and South Ridge Rd. on his way back to the Perry Cemetery.

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street  http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

“Made in Cleveland” by Ed Staskus

Coming of age in the Midwest in the 1960s and 1970s.

“A collection of street level short stories blended with the historical, set in Cleveland, Ohio. The storytelling is plugged in.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books

Available on Amazon:

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication

Busting Out of Franklin Castle

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By Ed Staskus

   “Well, well,” the Grim Reaper said. “What have we got here, Hansel and Gretel?” He grinned looking down on them and then laughed like a hen with hiccups.

   “Oh, oh,” Emma said, looking him up and down. She didn’t like what she was seeing or hearing. Who laughs like a hen with hiccups?

   “No, we’re not Hansel and Gretel,” Oliver said. “Who do you think you are? It’s not Halloween. And what’s with the laugh?”

   “Who do I think I am? I am the Prince of Darkness, Lord of the Flies, and Old Nick all wrapped up in one. I am Scratch and that’s no Halloween nonsense. I am the Grim Reaper.”

   “All right, Mr. Grim, but what’s with the laugh?”

   “I’ve got something in my craw I just can’t shake.”

   “Would that be the Angel of Life?”

   “Never you mind, young man.”

   “Why are you calling us Hansel and Gretel? Do you think you are going to eat us?”

   “I ask the questions around here,” the Grim Reaper said. “What are you doing in this castle?”

   “We have a professional interest in Franklin Castle,” Oliver said. “We’re the Monster Hunters of Lake County.”

   “Have you lost your way? This is Cuyahoga County. On top of that, you’re nothing but children. What kind of professional interest could you possibly have in anything? Are you half-pints even in school?”

   “I just started middle school, I’ll have you know,” Emma said.

   She had seen the Grim Reaper in a history book, a long-haired skeletal figure from the 14th century wearing wings and carrying a scythe. His black clothing went back to the early 19th century, when people started wearing  black at funerals. The full Monty, hooded skeleton, black robe, and scythe, became common around the mid-19th century. That’s what he looked like in “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens, wearing a dark cloak with only a single gesturing hand to be seen. 

   “People fear me, you know,” the Grim Reaper said.

   “I once heard a song called ’Don’t Fear the Reaper,’” Oliver said.

   “All our times have come here, but now they’re gone, seasons don’t fear the reaper,
nor do the wind, the sun, or the rain.”

   “That was some tough talk by the Blue Oyster Cult,” the Grim Reaper said. “Do you know what their new album last year was called?”

   “No.” 

   “It was called ‘Ghost Stories.’ That’s what they’re going to be sooner or later. I saw one of their shows. After the show I made a joke, asking them, ‘What did the chicken say to the Grim Reaper?’ The drummer was like you. He asked me why I was asking. I told him because I was death myself.”

   “What did he say?” 

   “He said, ‘I’ll talk louder then.’ He was half deaf from his own loud music and misunderstood what I said.”

   “What did the chicken say, anyway?”

   “I should have looked both ways,” the Grim Reaper chuckled.

   “What’s with that stick with the curved knife at the bottom?” Oliver asked.

   “It’s not a stick and it’s not a knife. It’s a scythe. It’s for harvesting souls like a farmer harvests crops.”

   “Farmers use tractors, not that scythe thing.”

   “The scythe is what farmers used to work their fields with.”

   “Well, they don’t use them anymore. You should get a tractor.”

   “That’s not the point,” the Grim reaper said, annoyed. “It’s a symbol.”

   “Symbols don’t put food on the table,” Emma said. “Dad has to go to work every day and mom just got a job so we will have money for college. We are buying a new house soon, too. Does the FBI know you carry that scythe thing around? It looks like a deadly weapon. Is it legal?”

   The Grim Reaper was not used to being peppered with questions. “Why me, why now?” is what he sometimes heard, although most people were scared stiff and didn’t say much of anything. Whenever they asked he always said, “Life is for the living but then I arrive with my scythe and you are done with life. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be glad it happens in that order.”

   “Did you hear what I asked you, Mr. Grim?” Emma asked. “Is that thing legal?”

   The Grim Reaper was losing his patience. He was normally very patient. Life spans, however, had been increasing century by century and appointed hours had become long in coming. The trend was taxing him. These children questioning his tools of the trade were irksome. Their appointed hour wasn’t close at hand, but if they kept it up he might lose his composure and go after them.

   “You should put that thing away and get some nicer clothes,” Emma said. “That robe has  got moth holes. It’s really dirty, too. Do you ever wash it?”

   That was all the Grim Reaper could stand. He raised his scythe and swung at Emma. She jumped away from the swing. She was a quick girl on her feet.

   “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” Oliver shouted. “Leave my sister alone.”

   The Grim Reaper swung his scythe at Oliver, who dodged  the sharp blade, grabbed Emma’s hand, and pulled her towards the door. The Grim Reaper weas fuming. He never swung and missed. Was he getting old and feeble? That couldn’t be. He was ageless, after all.

   “This house has thirteen fireplaces,” he shouted. “ When I catch you I will burn you both in all of them.”

   He ran after Oliver and Emma, his bones clacking and the scythe hissing. He wasn’t fast enough. Oliver and Emma pushed the ballroom doors open and ran down the stairs. The Grim Reaper followed, making up time by straddling the handrail and sliding down it. 

   Oliver and Emma ran past the reading room on the third floor where a book was reading itself. It was a one thousand page weepie. Tears were splashing onto the pages. They ran past Hannes Tiedemann’s office on the second floor. The ledgers in the office had long since turned to yellow dust.

   By the time they got to the ground floor the Grim Reaper was hard on their heels. A voice called out to them, “Come this way.” It was the ghost of Hannes Tiedemann. “Get in this barrel,” he said, pointing to a barrel. They got in it. Hannes Tiedemann fitted a circular lid on top of the barrel.

   After coming from Germany as a boy Hannes Tiedemann had worked as an apprentice barrel maker before getting into wholesale groceries and later into banking. He liked money well enough, but never lost his fondness for barrels.

   The Grim Reaper searched the ground floor, the foyer, parlor, and dining room. He searched the toilet room. He came up empty. Gnashing his teeth he went up and came back down the servant’s stairwell. He was standing in the foyer when he noticed his reflection in a full-length mirror. Looking himself over he thought maybe the brat was right. He was looking shabby. He needed a new robe. He checked his wallet. He had enough cash to get something nice. He went out the front door and disappeared down Franklin Ave. towards the stores on W. 25th St.

   When Oliver and Emma were sure he was gone they got out of the barrel and ran outside to where they had left their Lime e-scooter. It wouldn’t start, however. It had timed out. Neither of them had a credit card. Neither of them had ever had a credit card. They pushed the e-scooter off the sidewalk and leaned it against the wrought-iron fence surrounding the house.

   It was a long walk back to St. Ignatius High School. They were very tired by the time they got there. Their father put them in the back seat of their Jeep SUV. He drove north to Lake Erie and took a right. He took the Shoreway back to Lake County. Oliver and Emma slept like the dead all the way home.

Previous: Franklin Castle Walkabout

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street  http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

“Made in Cleveland” by Ed Staskus

Coming of age in the Midwest in the 1960s and 1970s.

“A collection of street level short stories blended with the historical, set in Cleveland, Ohio. The storytelling is plugged in.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books

Available on Amazon:

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication

Franklin Castle Walkabout

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By Ed Staskus

   Emma almost jumped out of her bobby pins when the voice behind them said, “Who has broken into my castle?” Oliver, however, kept his nerve. He turned around and said to the eight-foot tall man spirit,  “Can I see your deed to this place?”

   The man spirit looked like a butler from an old movie. He was wearing a black suit with a white dress shirt, black bow tie, and a waistcoat. He had a long face and a nose that was as sharp as a hatchet. 

   “I don’t have a deed,” he said.

   “Then it’s not really your castle, is it?”

   “Well, no, but I live here.”

   “We heard the castle is haunted.”

   “You heard correctly, young man. There are ghosts and phantoms in every room.”

    “Are they mean?”

   “Not all of them, but you would be playing with fire if you thought otherwise.”

   “Can you show us around?”

   “No, I can’t. I have to return to my quarters.”

   “Are they upstairs? Maybe we could follow you.”

   “No, my quarters are in the carriage house in the back.” He pointed through a window. “There is an underground tunnel that runs from the basement, under the rose garden, and to my quarters.”

   Oliver and Emma looked through the window. There wasn’t a rose garden or a carriage house in the backyard. When they turned back to the butler, he wasn’t there anymore. There was a pile of sand where he had been standing.

   “Where did he go?”

   “Maybe he went down to the basement.”

   “Let’s go look.”

   The basement was dark and musty. It had a smell they didn’t recognize. They didn’t know liquor had been made in the basement during Prohibition. A whiskey still was still in a hidden room of the basement, behind a sealed panel in the wall. They saw a trapdoor in the floor.

   “Maybe he went down there,” Emma said.

   When they pulled the trapdoor open, it went nowhere. There wasn’t a tunnel, or anything, just loose-packed dirt. It was a dead-end. Worms were slithering in the dirt.

   “Oh, gross,” Emma said. 

   “I like glow worms the best,” Oliver said.

   “I like gummy worms the best,” Emma said.

   They went back upstairs. There was a large oil painting in the living room above the fireplace. The painting was of Hannes Tiedemann, his wife Louise, and their children, Dora and August. Every time Oliver looked at it out of the corner of his eye he thought they were moving their heads and looking at him. He stopped looking out of the corner of his eye. They stopped looking at him.

   There were built-in bookcases on both sides of the fireplace. The shelves were packed with books.  All the books were moldy except for one. The book looked new. It’s title was “The World Without Us.”

   “Let’s go upstairs,” Oliver said.

   The stairs were wide and the handrails were dark brown wood. They felt damp and sticky. There was a small round table on the landing halfway up. There was a recently lit cigar in an ash tray on the table. Smoke like a garden snake curled up to the ceiling.

   “That smells terrible,” Emma said.

   “It smells like old armpits,” Oliver said, stubbing the cigar out.

   When they got to the top of the stairs a wall of fog materialized in front of them. It was a green and yellow fog. Emma took a step into it. She began to lose her way. Oliver pulled her back.

   “I thought I was going to pass out,” she said, rubbing her eyes.

   There were four bedrooms on the second floor. There was a collection of small colored glass bottles full of liquids on a side table in the first of the bedrooms. The bottles were labeled. One said, “This Will Make You Larger.” Another one said, “This Will Make You Smaller.” 

   “It’s like Alice in Wonderland,” Oliver said.

   Only one bottle was made of clear glass. It said, “This Will Make You Disappear.”

   “I could use that on some bullies I know,” Emma said. She reached for the bottle. Just as she was about to put it in her pocket it disappeared. A voice whispered in her ear. “That’s not for you.”

   In another bedroom the outside shutters were loose. They banged against the window frame when the wind blew. When Oliver opened the window and reached for the shutters to secure them, they shut and locked themselves. As soon as he walked away they unlocked themselves and started flapping in the wind again.

   “Things have got a mind of their own in this house,” he said.

   The next bedroom had spiderwebs in every corner. There was fossilized cordwood laid in the fireplace grate. There was a bed and there was a sofa, too, big enough to sleep in. Rotting curtains rustled even though the windows were closed and the air in the room was fetid. There was a diary on the bedside table.

   “Let’s take a look at this book,” Emma said. “Maybe it will tell us something about this house.”

   When they opened the book, however, as they flipped the pages they crumbled into yellow fragments. A shred of a page whispered, “Whoever reads my journal, beware of the creature below.” The yellow fragments sprinkled themselves all over the floor. When Oliver and Emma turned to leave, the fragments gathered themselves and  transformed into an arm that reached for their legs. The fingers were long as carrots. They ran out of the room.

   When they opened the door of the last bedroom it was inky black inside, even though the curtains were pulled back and they could see through the window that it was sunny and bright outside.

   “Let’s not go in this room,” Emma said.

   “This house is creepy but it isn’t really any more creepy than that abandoned amusement park in Chippewa Lake dad stopped at last year,” Oliver said. “The one where he said they filmed the movie ‘Closed for the Season.’ The Ferris wheel, remember how it was all rusty, and the Fun House, some of the old walls were still there, painted in Day-Glo green, it was kind of sad.”

   “It was closed forever,” Emma said.

   “That’s a long time,” Oliver said.

   They took the stairs to the top floor ballroom. It was put in by Hannes Tiedemann to cheer up his wife, Louise, after the tragedies the family suffered. He thought she might dance her sorrows away. The ballroom was large, stretching the length of the house. When it was added to the house so were turrets and gargoyles. It was what made the house look like a castle.

   The ballroom was empty. They walked the length of it, their footsteps echoing behind them. The echo was behind time, always a few seconds behind their footsteps. When they turned around to go back the way they had come the echo was gone. There was a specter blocking their way. It was a skeleton wearing a black hooded cloak and carrying a scythe. It was the Grim Reaper.

   “Well, well,” the Grim Reaper said. “What have we got here, Hansel and Gretel?”

Previous: Breaking Into Franklin Castle

Next: Busting Out of Franklin Castle

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street at http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

“Ebb Tide” by Ed Staskus

“A thriller in the Maritimes, out of the past, a double cross, and a fight to the finish.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books

Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CV9MRG55

Summer, 1989. A small town on Prince Edward Island. Mob money on the move gone missing. Muscle from Montreal. A constable working the back roads stands in the way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication

Silent Cal Sounds Off

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By Ed Staskus

   Emma met Calvin the day after she got back from a week at a piano camp in Oberlin. Her brother Oliver was still in Lithuania with their father, who had gone there on a working trip. Their father was an electrical engineer.  Oliver was on his summer vacation with him, scaring up shadows in the Baltics. He was the Monster Hunter of Lake County.

   His sister was still disgruntled about the piano camp. She didn’t even exactly like the piano anymore. The clarinet was her thing. She was getting good enough on it to make it sing and shout. She played it in the school band.

   Emma was eating two hard-boiled eggs and licking teaspoons of hummus  at a round table on the outside patio when their neighbor’s dog started barking. It was a Toto terrier kind of dog. The neighbor was an old Italian lady who always dressed in black. She tied Toto to a stake  two or three times a day outside her sliding back door for twenty or thirty minutes. While he was outside he barked at anything that moved, including insects. He once barked a coyote out of the neighborhood. Her father resented the dog and the neighbor. He worked out of the house two days a week and said the dog drove him nuts.

   “I don’t want to talk about it,” he told his wife. He wouldn’t talk to the old Italian lady and had long ago given up trying to reason with the dog.

   Emma put her second egg down when she saw a boy come out the back of the house and flop down on the grass next to the dog, who was barking at a bluejay. The bird was barking back at him. Neither understood what the other one was saying.

   “Hi,” Emma said. 

   “Hi,” the boy said.

    “Are you our new neighbor?”

   “Yeah.”

   “Are you the boy who started school with us just before summer started?”

   “Yeah.” 

   “And are you the one who everybody calls Silent Cal?”

   “Yeah.”

   Calvin had moved in with his grandmother at the end of April. By mid-summer hardly anybody in the neighborhood had even spoken him. It was partly the dog’s fault and partly his own fault. The dog was too loud. HCalvinwas too quiet. The neighbors were disgruntled by the noisy dog. They didn’t notice Calvin, who was quiet as a mouse. 

   One day at lunch just before school let out for the summer, a girl sitting across from Calvin in the lunchroom said, “Everybody says you never say more than two words. I bet I can make you say more than two words.”

   “Bet what?”

   “I bet my chocolate chip cookie.”

   “You lose,” Silent Cal said reaching for the cookie.

   “How come you don’t talk much?” Emma asked.

   “Because my dad said so.”

   “He told  you not to talk?”

   “Yeah.”

   “How come?”

   “It was after my mom died,” Calvin said. 

   “Your mom died?”

   “Yeah.”

   “That’s terrible. How did it happen?”

   “She was driving me to school when we lived in Brecksville. A car in front of us rode over some kind of pipe and it went flying. It hit our windshield and killed my mother.”

   Emma didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t imagine it happening to her mother. The only dead people she had ever seen were grandparents. They were never killed by pipes. Grandparents wore out and one morning didn’t wake up.

   “My dad went back into the army and they shipped him away to where Arabs are fighting. When I asked him when he was coming back he told me to shut up. He said he didn’t want to hear a word from me ever again. Then he dropped me off here at my grandmother’s house.”

   “Is he coming back?”

   “I don’t think so. I think he hates me.”

   “How could that be?”

   “Whenever I tried to talk to him, even before mom died, he was always telling me what to do, even if I wasn’t talking about a problem, or he would start yelling at me for the bad choices he thought I was making. He was always talking down to me. I tried to tell him I wasn’t a kid anymore but he wouldn’t listen. When I asked him to listen, he looked like he wanted to hit me.”

   Emma’s parents could be bossy and strict, but she knew they would never do that. They never had. She knew they never would.

   “Did your mom listen?”

   “She always listened. We had great talks. I miss her so much.”

   “You can still talk to her if you want. She’s not here but she’s still here. My  brother Oliver is always talking to ghosts and spirits. They talk back whenever they have something to say, although you can’t always understand what they’re saying since they don’t always speak English.”

   “Oh,” Calvin said.

   “My brother didn’t talk for a long time after he was born. When he wanted something he would point to it and make funny sounds. Finally, our mom pretended to not hear him when he was doing that. She ignored him until he started talking. Gosh, now we can’t shut him up!”

   Calvin looked thoughtful.

   “Are you going to live here from now on?” Emma asked.

    “Yeah, I think so.”

   “Well, if your dad isn’t here to tell you shut up, maybe you could start talking. That’s how to make friends. When you don’t talk it makes the other person feel bad. They feel like you don’t like them. They don’t know what you’re thinking, what’s going on. It makes it seem like you don’t care. How can I be your friend if you won’t talk to me, know what I mean”

   “I think so, but what is there to talk about?”

   “What flavor popsicle do you like?” 

   “Grape.”

   “I like orange. What games do you like?”

   “I like kickball.”

   “ I like checkers. I always beat my uncle. He said he’s going to bring a chess board the next time he visits, but I told him I don’t know how to play chess.”

   “What did he say?” 

   “He said, all the better, whatever that means.”

   “I played checkers with my mom. She was better than me, but I won sometimes.”

   “How old are you?” Emma asked.

   “I’m 12.”

   “Oh, that’s the same as me. When were you born?”

   “In September.”

   “What day?” 

   “September 1st.”

   Emma was flabbergasted. She was born on September 1st the same as Calvin.

   “You’re a blue moon baby, just like me.”

   “That’s what my mom always said. She said I was a blue moon baby because there were two full moons that month on the first day and the last day of the month I was born.”

    “What’s your dog’s name?”

   “I call him Ziggy.”

   “Do you want to take him for a walk. There’s a trail through the woods back there. We could take his leash off. He could run around. Maybe he wouldn’t bark so much if he could run around once in a while.”

   “Maybe he’s trying to tell us something,” Calvin said.

   “I know, but his barking makes my dad say bad words. Let’s go and get it out of his system.”

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street at http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

“Ebb Tide” by Ed Staskus

“A thriller in the Maritimes, out of the past, a double cross, and a fight to the finish.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books

Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CV9MRG55

Summer, 1989. A small town on Prince Edward Island. Mob money on the move gone missing. Two hired guns from Montreal. A constable working the back roads stands in the way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication

Bird in the Hand

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By Ed Staskus

   Oliver was watching a black-billed magpie eat worms, beetles, and caterpillars. It was a three course dinner. He had seen magpies forage for berries and grains in the fall before they went away somewhere. He didn’t know where they went during the winter, but he knew they always came back to the wild garden his father had planted in the backyard.

   It was the last week of March. The month used to be a cold month in northern Ohio, but lately it had turned into a warm month. Everything was budding and going green sooner than ever. The magpie’s better half was building a nest in a tree next to the garden. The nest was cup-shaped and lined with grass and mud. Sticks were sticking out all over it. There were two entrances to it.

   “Just in case,” the lady of the nest said, enlarging one of the entrances. She wasn’t a licensed carpenter, but she knew what she was doing. She was going to be laying six or seven eggs soon enough. When that happened, she would keep the clutch warm. Once the eggs hatched and came to life she would be more than busy keeping them in line and fed. In the meantime, she would take care of her incubating chores.

   Magpies are one of the world’s most intelligent birds. Like people, and unlike almost everything else, they can recognize themselves in mirrors. They make and use tools and work in teams. They play games and can imitate speech. They are particularly well known for their squawking and singing, especially ‘Three Little Birds’ by Bob Marley and the Wailers.

   The man of the nest, who was snacking on mayflies, looked at Oliver. “Is that maniac still living down the street?” the bird asked him.

   “Yes,” Oliver said. “Dad said he probably will never move away.”

   “We appreciate your father talking to him.”

   “He’s a man of few words. I think he just told him to stay out of our yard.”

   Their neighbor was a man by the name of Gilbert. Oliver and Emma, his sister and right-hand man, called him Sour Head. He was always complaining about something. He was married but hardly anybody ever saw his wife, except when she was mowing the lawn or washing the car. She did the grocery shopping and Home Depot shopping, too. They had children but nobody ever saw them. They lived in another state. Gilbert had been a businessman but was now retired. He watched FOX News day and night. “In this corner, still undefeated, is Gilbert with his long-held beliefs.” He had nutty opinions up the wazoo. He didn’t like magpies, among other things.

   Magpies are black and white birds with long diamond-shaped tails. Their coloring has a glossy sheen to it. They are loud mouths. Somebody who talks obnoxiously is sometimes called a magpie. Gilbert had a chatterbox neighbor he called a magpie. “Idle chatter is for the birds” is what he said, never mind his own idle chatter. What got his goat more than anything was their thieving. 

    “They’re kleptomaniacs” is what he said. “There was that woman in Chardon who lost her engagement ring three or four years ago. A bird watcher found it in a magpie’s nest. Then there was the man in Fairport Harbor who was gardening, took off his watch so it wouldn’t get dirty, and then watched a magpie fly away with it. My wife keeps some colored crystals on the window ledge and they are always pecking on the glass trying to get them.”

   “That doesn’t mean they are kleptomaniacs,” Oliver said.

   “Then why is there some opera some Eyetalian wrote called the ‘The Thieving Magpie’ if they aren’t kleptomaniacs?” He believed seeing a magpie brought bad luck. “One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a funeral, four for birth, five for heaven, six for hell, seven for the devil, his own self,” is what he said, even though he didn’t know exactly what it meant.

   “Italians are always writing operas about one thing or another,” Emma said. She played the piano and was in the school band. She played the clarinet in the marching band. She knew more about music than anybody in their neighborhood.

   “You think you’re so smart,” Gilbert said. He didn’t like Emma because he knew full well she thought she was smarter than him, even though she was only twelve years old. He wasn’t far off the mark, the mark being she was smarter than him. The only thing Gilbert knew anything about was making money, by hook or by crook. He was a miser by another name. He suspected Emma didn’t care all that much about money. He didn’t like that. He resented it.

   “If you’re so smart, how come you don’t know the magpie is the only bird who didn’t mourn for Jesus when he was crucified? Not only that, it was the only bird who didn’t go into the ark with Noah. Instead, it sat on top of the ark and cursed up a storm while the world was being drowned.”

   Oliver and Emma looked at each other. Emma threw up her hands. “You are kind of weird, mister,” she said, brushing aside his scowl. 

   It wasn’t long before Gilbert got what he thought was a great idea. He knew the magpies were laying eggs and before long there would be a flock of them. Even though he had been warned to stay out of Oliver and Emma’s backyard, he decided he would sneak into it, steal the eggs, and throw them into the garbage for the racoons. That would show the magpies who was boss.

   The next night, after everybody had gone to bed, he carried his ladder to their house, made sure no lights were on anywhere, and propped the ladder against the tree. He saw the nest. He pulled on a pair of antibacterial gloves. He knew their nest was full of germs, or worse. They weren’t even real Americans. They had snuck into the United States from Asia or some other foreign place. He started up the rungs. When he got to the nest he pulled a disposable bag out of his back pocket. He reached for the eggs but was surprised to see that they had hatched.

   No matter, he thought, I’ll just stuff them birdies into my bag and drown them in the Grand River.

   No sooner did he come up with his new plan of action than the lady of the nest began putting up a racket. She struck at him with her long beak. Gilbert tried to brush her aside. He didn’t see the man of the nest swooping down on him. The magpie wasn’t about to let Gilbert threaten his nestlings. He had survived many hardships, struggled to lay hands on some real estate, and been able to find a partner. He wasn’t about to lose it all to a bloodthirsty peddler.

   The magpie swooped and jabbed at Gilbert. He wouldn’t give up. Gilbert waved his bag at him. He swooped again. After Gilbert was pecked several times, he gave up. He had always been all about easy money. He started down the ladder. He was fuming and sputtering curses.

   One of the chicks leaned out from the nest. He was blind and pink. He was pink as a Barbie doll. His eyes would open and downy feathers appear in about a week. He farted and pooped. The poop went over the side and splatted on top of Gilbert’s bald pate. When he reached to wipe it off, the magpie swooped at him one more time. Gilbert waved him away with his other hand, the hand that had been holding on to the ladder. When he did, no hands were left holding on to the ladder. He fell off and landed on his butt, yelping when he bounced. Lights started going on in nearby houses. The Perry Police arrived and cited him for trespassing.

   The next morning Oliver and Emma found the ladder still propped against their tree. Oliver went up it to check on the birds. He gave Emma the high sign. “Hey, let’s go find some wood and build a bird feeder,” he said. “They look hungry. And let’s get rid of this ladder in case Sour Head comes back.”

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street at http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

“Made in Cleveland” by Ed Staskus

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A Crying of Lot 49 Production

More Dead Than Alive

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By Ed Staskus

   The night that zombies invaded Canterbury Crossings everybody except Oliver and Emma locked their doors and telephoned the governor in Columbus pleading for the National Guard to be called out. Oliver and Emma climbed a ladder to the top of their roof instead of calling anybody. They pulled the ladder up after them so the zombies couldn’t reach them. They didn’t necessarily have to since they knew zombies didn’t know how to climb ladders, but they didn’t want the neighbors joining them. The pitch was severe. Not all of them had a good sense of balance. Many of them were hidebound. If too many joined them, the roof might even collapse.

   Oliver and Emma straddled the gable roof and watched the zombies lumbering towards their house, which was the last house at the turnaround at the end of the street. They looked out at the field behind their house. A young man was taking selfies with some zombies, at least until they reached for and dragged him away. His red-rimmed sunglasses fell off his face. One of the zombies mindlessly stepped on them.

   “Why was he wearing sunglasses?” Oliver asked.  “It’s nighttime.” The only reason the night wasn’t dark as a tar pit was because there was a full moon.

   “That’s Noah from the other end over by Naylor St.,” Emma said. “He has photophobia.”

   “Is he scared of light?” 

   “No, his eyes are just very sensitive to it.” 

   “Should we go down and help him?”

   “We don’t have to. Once they get to the woods the zombies will be getting more than they bargained for and Noah can run away as soon the fighting starts.”

   “Oh, right, I see what you mean.”

   Their friend the honey badger lived in the woods. He had many “No Trespassing” signs posted. Some people ignored the signs, to their regret. The honey badger was very tough. He had strong claws, a powerful bite, and a fearless attitude. He could fight all day if he had to. He was tireless. He was immune to just about everything, including snake and scorpion venom. It wasn’t long before the zombies who had dragged Noah away came stumbling and bumbling out of the woods, licking their wounds. Noah took a picture of them fleeing the wrath of the honey badger.

   “There’s no sense in asking for it,” Emma said. “You always get what you ask for when you bell the cat.”

   Oliver nodded, although he wasn’t paying attention. He was peering through his binoculars at more zombies entering the condominium complex from the approach off S. Ridge Rd. Their faces were the color of dried mud.

   “Where are they coming from?” Emma asked.

   “I am guessing they found a secret passage out of the land of the undead into the land of the living through Perry Cemetery,” Oliver said. The cemetery was a quarter mile away around a bend.

   Zombies are reanimated corpses, the living dead, who are always looking for something to eat. Their favorite meal is people’s brains. There is no negotiating their menu choice. Their clothes are moldy and their flesh is rotten. Nobody ever cuddles up to them. They are slow on their feet, shuffling rather than walking. They are slow-going as infants crawling on all fours. Somebody would have to be standing still, like Noah had been, for a zombie to be able to catch them.

   The problem wasn’t outwalking them. The problem was that zombies never stopped. They didn’t need to rest or sleep. They were like the Energizer Bunny. They didn’t like daylight, though. It made them even slower than they already were. They were careful of direct sunlight. Too much of it would make them burst into flames.

   When the National Guard arrived in their tactical vehicles and deployed, they started filling the zombies full of bullets until they didn’t have any bullets left. The  bullets penetrated the zombies but had no effect. The soldiers would have been better off bringing chainsaws. When the zombies started marching towards them the soldiers retreated.

   “What can we do to help?” Emma asked.

   “Didn’t mom plant pennyroyal in the backyard last year?”

   “What’s that”  

   “She calls it pudding grass.”

   “Oh yeah, the stuff with purple flowers that smell like spearmint. Mom likes the smell and she likes that none of the animals around here eat it, not even the honey badger. She said It keeps snakes away from the house.”

   “It’s not just snakes,” Oliver said. “Fleas and zombies both hate the smell of pennyroyal.”

   “Are we going to chase them away with the purple flowers?”

   “Not exactly,” Oliver said. “You go get your clarinet and I’ll crush lots of the flowers into a pile.”

   Emma played the musical instrument in the school band. Her favorite clarinet player of all time was Benny “The King of Swing” Goodman. Her favorite clarinet song was George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” although in her opinion it could have used even more clarinet.

   Dawn was starting to happen. They climbed down from the roof when the zombies weren’t looking. Emma ran into the house and got her clarinet. Oliver ran into the garage, found a pair of gardening gloves, and ran into the backyard. He wore the gloves because he knew the oil of the pennyroyal flowers was poisonous. He tore purple flowers off their stems and crushed them with his hands until he had a soccer ball-sized pile of them.

   “Do you know how to play the song ‘Sure Shot’ from the movie ‘Shrek’”?

   “Of course.”

   “That’s great,” Oliver said. “Here’s the plan. You be the Pied Piper and I’ll bring up the rear with the pennyroyal. We’ll be like sheepdogs and herd them back to Perry Cemetery.”

   It was easier than they thought it would be. The zombies were enchanted by the clarinet and repelled by the pennyroyal. They followed Emma while Oliver waved handfuls of pennyroyal at stragglers. They herded the zombies down S. Ridge Rd. to the Perry Cemetery on Lane Rd. The boneyard, like most of the town of Perry, was shaded by many trees.

   “Ollie, I have a better idea,” Emma said once they got to the cemetery.

   “What’s that?”

   “Let’s take them across the street to that big open field off River Rd.”

   “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?” Oliver asked.

   “Hurry up,” Emma said. “The sun will be coming up any minute.”

   They highballed the zombies down River Rd. to the big open field. When they got there they herded the living dead into a tight circle. They looked tired from their forced march. A pack of dogs passing by helped Oliver and Emma make the zombies behave.

   The sun came up just as the zombies were getting restless. By that time Tommy One Shoe  had joined Oliver and Emma. They split the pennyroyal up among themselves and kept the ghouls corralled. When the zombie apocalypse happened it happened fast. First, the greasy hair of one of them burst into flames. Then the mossy shoulders of more of them burst into flames. Before long all of them were on fire and melting. They melted down to the ground, the ground opened up, and they were swallowed up by a hole that immediately filled itself back up.

   “Thanks for your help,” Oliver told Tommy.

   “That’s what friends are for,” Tommy said.

   When they got home they found their father making breakfast and their mother staring at what was left of her pennyroyal. They had slept through the zombie invasion. Their mother gave them a long look.

   “What happened to all my pudding grass?”

   “It’s a long story,” Emma said. 

   “It better be a good story,” the head of the household said, tapping her foot.

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

“Ebb Tide” by Ed Staskus

“A stem-winder in the Maritimes.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books

Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVDP8B58

Summer, 1989. A small town on Prince Edward Island. Mob money on the move gone missing. Two hired guns from Montreal. A rookie RCMP constable stands in the way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication

Sea Change

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By Ed Staskus

   The Sandspit Amusement Park is in the town of Cavendish, on the north shore of Prince Edward Island, about a ten minute drive on the Gulf Shore Parkway from the Coastline Cottages in North Rustico where Oliver, Emma, and their parents were staying for two weeks. One of the rides is the Cyclone roller coaster, the longest coaster in Atlantic Canada. There is a 70-foot high Ferris wheel. There are the Paratrooper and the Tilt-a-Whirl. If you are feeling brave, strap into the Cliffhanger.

   The fun is close to the Tourist Mart, where Oliver and Emma went to find a cold drink after racing  go-karts in the hot sun all morning. Standing in the shade of the store’s overhang, downing their drinks, they noticed Grandpa’s Antique Photo Shop next door. They went inside.

   There were costumes and full-scale sets. Some of the costumes were from the old west and others from the roaring 20s. Some of the sets were an RCMP jail and Klondike Kate’s School for Young Women. “Never mind that school thing,” Oliver said. It was a way to go back in time. There was even a pirate ship.

   “Can we be pirates?” Emma asked.

   “Of course.”

   Once they were dressed as pirates and on the set, while the photographer was arranging their Kodachrome moment, he asked, “Do you know Captain Kidd left buried treasure on Holman Island back in the day?”

   “No, where’s that?” Oliver asked.

   “It’s an island off this island, tucked in the bay south of Summerside.”

   “Who’s Captain Kidd?” Emma asked.

   “Just the most fearsome pirate known to man, young lady.”

   Emma didn’t like being called a young lady, but bit her tongue about it, although she said, “My brother is the Monster Hunter of Lake County and he could make any old pirate walk the plank.”

   “Where is this Lake County?”

   “That’s where we live.”

   “I see.”

   Pirates have been around for a long time. They raided the shipping lanes of ancient Rome. In the Dark Ages the Great Heathen Army, otherwise known as Vikings, were the number one pirates. The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas divided the New World between Spain and Portugal. The English didn’t agree to the divide. They decided to do something about it. Queen Elizabeth allowed her sailors to attack Spanish and Portuguese ships, steal their cargo, and bring it back. The crown got a cut of the proceeds. Almost everybody called it piracy, but in England they called it privateering and it made you a hero, like Captain Kidd, until it didn’t make you a hero anymore. When it didn’t make you a hero anymore, it made you a villain, like Captain Kidd.

   “How do you know there is buried treasure on Holman Island?” Oliver asked.

   “When he was nearing the end, before the Royal Navy hauled him back to London where he was hung for his villainy, Captain Kidd let it be known some of his treasure was buried on a small island off the coast of a big island, He said the big island was long, narrow, and of a crescent shape. The soil was red, just like here.”

   “Has anybody ever found it?”

   “Not to this day, young man, although not for want of trying. Every spring for years, when the ice had melted, treasure hunters rowed out to Holman Island with picks and shovels. By the end of the summer, they were always bitter and disappointed. But one summer some children, who were messing around on the island, stumbled upon a handful of gold coins. They turned out to be Spanish pieces of eight.”

   “Did they find the rest of the treasure?”

   “God knows they plugged away. Horses and ploughs were transported to Holman Island. When a gang of workmen discovered a sea-chest buried twenty feet deep in the sand, they fastened a cable around it. A team of horses started to pull on the chest with a cable, but the cable had other ideas. The horses and workers were pulled down and swallowed up, never to be seen again!”

   “Oh, my,” Emma said.

   “Since then, the Curse of Captain Kidd has kept most folks away.”

   Staying away became the watchword. “Double, double, toil and trouble.” Very little good ever comes about when a curse has been cast.

   Oliver and Emma struck a pose, the photographer’s camera flashed, and the next instant the brother and sister found themselves on the deck of the Adventure Galley. It was Captain Kidd’s ship. When the pirate first got it in 1696, and was sailing it down the Thames River to the North Sea, he neglected to salute a Royal Navy ship at Greenwich, as was customary. The Royal Navy ship fired a shot over his bow to make him show respect. Captain Kidd’s crew lined up on the starboard side, turned around, leaned over, and slapped their bare backsides.

    No sooner were Oliver and Emma on the Adventure Galley than three of its cannons boomed. The stench of gunpowder filled the air. It smelled like sulfur and charcoal. The cannonballs fell deliberately short. It was Captain Kidd’s way of saying “Put up or shut up.” The Adventure Galley was more than ready to do battle with the Quedagh Merchant, an Armenian merchant ship.  A Jolly Roger flag was flying from  the stern and another black flag that said “Surrender or Die” in white letters was flying from the bowsprit. The pirate ship was equipped with thirty four heavy cannons and crewed by one hundred and fifty men. It was fitted with oars, making it more maneuverable in battle when the wind had died down and other ships were dead in the water. 

   Oliver and Emma ran to the whipstaff where Captain Kidd was standing on the topmost deck above his helmsman. He directed the helmsman through a hatchway. He looked down at Oliver and Emms and snorted, “Get those wee ones the hell away from here.” A pirate with one hand and one eye stepped up.  The missing hand was a hook and the missing eye was covered with a patch. He snagged Oliver with his hook, gave Emma the evil eye, and dragged both of them away. He tossed them onto the poop deck.

   Pirates were jumping up and down at the gunwales, yelling their heads off, waving their pistols in the air, and firing them off. Some of them swung cutlasses. The captain of the Quedagh Merchant wasn’t intimidated. He had enough crew to put up a fight. He commanded them to bring their swivel guns to bear.

   That was too much for Captain Kidd. He ordered his crew to aim for the sails, yards, and rigging. Within minutes the Armenian ship was dead in the water. The pirates launched two boats, covered by musket fire from the Adventure Galley, and boarded their pigeon at both the bow and stern. They knocked out the ship’s captain, even though he was an Englishman with a hard head. The battle was fearsome, but over in just minutes. They took the surgeons, carpenters, and coopers prisoner. Those who agreed to be pressed into service were spared. The rest got the consequences explained to them.

   Oliver and Emma were appalled. The noise, confusion, and violence wasn’t like any pirate movie they had ever seen. Nobody looked like Jake and the Neverland Pirate. They didn’t look like Errol Flynn, who was the intrepid Captain Blood, or even like Johnny Depp, the cunning Pirate of the Caribbean.

   Captain Kidd wore a feathered hat and a silk scarf tied around his neck, but the rest of the pirates looked like goons dressed in rags. Most of them were barefoot and bearded. They stank like they had never taken a bath. They all had bad teeth. Some of them had hardly any teeth at all. Oliver and Emma looked more like pirates than the real pirates did. No schoolbook had prepared them for the awful spectacle.

   Before they knew it, they were being marched mid-ship. “We have no use for them,” Captain Kidd said. “Throw them over.” Hands reached for them, tied weights to their ankles,  and in an instant they were thrown overboard. 

   They started to sink right away, but the next thing they knew they were back in Grandpa’s Antique Photo Shop. They were soaking wet. When they were getting out of their soggy costumes a gold coin fell of Oliver’s pocket and rolled under a table.

   “Did you have an exciting time?’ their photographer asked, quietly reaching for the Spanish piece of eight.

   “Too exciting!” Emma declared. “The past isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.”

   When they got back to the Coastline Cottages their father grilled burgers while their mom steamed mussels. Bill and Michelle, the proprietors who lived in a blue house on the other side of the swimming pool, had brought them three pounds of the shellfish. They had dinner on the deck in the dusk. Their mother and father shared a bottle of white wine vinted on the southeast end of the island while they had soda water flavored with lemons. A flock of cormorants flew past on their way to bed.

   “All right, let’s get everything cleaned up and get to bed,” their father said. “We’re going home tomorrow. We have a long drive and another long drive back to Ohio the day after that. Have you two enjoyed yourselves here?”

   “Yes, dad,” Emma said. “When are we coming back?”

   “How about you, Ollie? Are you up for that?” 

   “You bet! Grandpa said we could get a ride in a gangster getaway car next summer. I can’t wait.”

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

“Ebb Tide” by Ed Staskus

“A stem-winder in the Maritimes.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books

Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVDP8B58

Summer, 1989. A small town on Prince Edward Island. Mob money on the move gone missing. Two hired guns from Montreal. A rookie RCMP constable stands in the way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication