From Midland to the Mothman

Brugger and I received our first COVID-19 vaccinations on last Wednesday, so we’re halfway there. Yay!

Saturday, March 20, 2021

At the ass-crack of dawn, we left Greensboro for a long-planned visit with Ms B’s folks in Midland, MI. Happily, Del & Fern got their rounds of shots several weeks ago, so, barring vile variants or other unforeseen complications, they’re well defended against death cooties. Regardless, Brugger and I isolated ourselves even more than usual for the past week or so. As on our previous trip this past September (see “Midland with a Twist”), rather than fly, we opted to undertake the long drive. This time, we took a slightly different route, which added a few miles but shaved some time. We stopped a handful of times for pit stops, a picnic lunch, and a scant few geocaches, and arrived in Midland just after 8 p.m. As is our custom, we sat up fairly late with Del & Fern watching programs about good food, this time, Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy. Kimberly and I particularly enjoyed this one, as it showcased a number of locations we had visited on our trip there in 2019.

The Rodan Mobile arrives in Midland right at sunset

Sunday, March 21, 2021

A beautiful morning, and there are tons of new geocaches in and around Midland, many right in the neighborhood. So, after a pleasing breakfast of pancakes and bacon, I hopped on the bike and pedaled around to a few of them. Quick finds, the lot of them. Following this little adventure, I made revisions to a new short story for the anthology editor. And then... lunch from China Palace, a tasty and non-trivial quantity of food.

Meijer. Whenever we visit the Bruggers, it’s family tradition to hit Meijer to stock up on supplies for the week. No breaking family tradition this trip. I found a Life Magazine Godzilla edition, so on a whim, I bought it. It’s evidently from 2019. Anyway, I’m sure it doesn’t offer a word about Godzilla I don’t already know (if you know me at all, you know I have been a devoted Godzillaphile since the age of four), but it seemed novel enough to warrant picking up. It’s almost funny that, after collecting daikaiju memorabilia for years, spending thousands and thousands of dollars in the process, this is the first Godzilla publication I’ve picked up probably in 25 years or more.

After the shopping, I hopped on the bike again, this time with Ms. B. accompanying. We rode over to nearby Plymouth Park, hunted a handful of geocaches (and met some friendly local geocachers), and then put in a few miles pedaling around the neighborhood. Another mellow evening in the family room for some quality family time, and my blood pressure is probably at an excellent level tonight.

Ms. B. at The Labyrinth at Plymouth Park. She casts a mean shadow.

Monday, March 22, 2021

It was another beautiful morning fit for bike riding, but today I had a slightly different plan. I needed to return to Meijer to pick up a couple of items, so I headed out in the Rodan Mobile, snagged a half-dozen caches around the Midland Mall area, and then did my shopping. Another family tradition is for me to play chef for a day, and today was the day. Del and Fern had seen pics of my recent bout with Bolognese and decided it was only fitting I should treat them to some. So I spent the rest of the morning in the kitchen while they went off in search of a new toilet for one of theirs that had decided to go south. It’s possible I got the better end of this deal.

And the verdict is in: the Bolognese was some pretty good shit.

After letting the big dinner settle, I finally headed out on the bike. Put in quite a few miles this go-round, and picked up several more caches. Ms. B. got a new laptop, so once I returned, we spent a little while getting things set up. Lord, Microsoft used to be a pain in the ass. It’s now a fucking ludicrous pain in the ass, getting in the way of almost everything you want to set up that isn’t specifically Microsoft. There were words.

Tuesday, March 23, 2021

I have put in some lengthy bike rides in Midland, but I believe this morning’s pedal set a personal record. I covered the entire northeast quadrant of Midland and then some, snagging 19 caches (and failing to find several others) in the process. Most of these were of the typical park & grab variety, though a few proved a bit more interesting. One of them had reduced some poor, unfortunate geocachers to naught but bones. At another one, I felt I was being watched the entire time I spent looking for it. Near there, at a church where the cache was hidden, a churchy muggle accosted me and invited me to come for a visit on Sunday. On my long ride home, I saw Ms. B. and the family in the car heading the other way — out toward Clare to visit some antique shops.

Rarely has a shower, leftover Bolognese, ice cream, and fresh hot coffee been more welcome.

For the afternoon, I made some forward progress in my newest Ameri-Scares novel, Georgia: The Haunting of Tate’s Mill.

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Although I woke to another beautiful Midland morning, there was no cycling on today’s docket. I had to deal with some of my brother’s estate business, which ended up taking more time than I expected (and I had expected quite a lot). Then our crew hit the road for Saginaw, the Brugger folk for antiquing, the old fellow for geocaching. Now, I would generally not associate a place called The Antique Warehouse with a fantastic Italian beef sandwich, but this place has ’em. We enjoyed an excellent lunch together and then parted company. Off I went for some caches. The first was right there on the store’s property — or, rather, it was supposed to be. After a lengthy search, I couldn’t find the damned thing. I did find ample evidence of severe flooding, so I suspect the container ended up in the Saginaw River or something such. However, from there, I went after several others, and succeeded admirably with these.

Once antiqued out in Saginaw, the gang wanted to visit Warmbier Farms, a big old gift store in Williams Township, about midway between Saginaw and Midland. I have cached around that area on other outings similar to this one, and I did the same again today. Only one cache required me to walk a significant distance. It was at this cache, when I had reached farthest point from the car, that the bottom fell out. Big rain. Big, BIG rain. Big, WET rain. Wet ME. Believe you me, I got wet.

Needless to say, as soon as I got back to the car, the rain stopped.

Before the rain: Old Rodan and the Zilwaukee Bridge over the Saginaw River

A fun fellow with ammo can we
discovered in the forest

Thursday, March 26, 2021

The morning turned out a bit gray and chilly, but Brugger and I went forth, as we had planned, to the Midland City Forest, a short distance north of Casa di Brugger. Over 20 miles of trails wind through the forest, and after a few trips out there, Ms. B. and I have set foot on quite a few of them. This morning, we headed for a section I had never explored before, so a good many caches awaited my attention there. I managed to find most of those I hunted. There were tough caches, easy caches, creative caches, fun caches. We found a man made of wood carrying an ammo can around; a meteorite; a diamond in the rough; a birdhouse that wasn’t; and a bridge with a troll under it. Well, there wasn’t a troll down there until I went under the bridge, but... well... there it is. Ms. B. got in a wee bit of nature photography, which she most enjoys. I tell you this, I have exercised on this trip like I haven’t exercised in a long while, and I can surely feel it — in a good way, of course, except maybe for the pain of it.

Afterward, we set a course for Mancino’s, which is one of those places you do not fail to visit when you are in Midland. Brugger ordered her usual Italian grinder, which, as I can testify, is one of the best sandwiches on earth. And I opted for a Mango Habanero Steak grinder, which, as I can now testify, is also one of the best sandwiches on earth. A worthy rival to the Italian beef sandwich I scarfed down at The Antique Warehouse on yesterday.

A little forward progress on the creative writing endeavors, a final trip to Meijer, and what a fine penultimate day of our Midland trip this has been.

There are some rough-looking trolls in Michigan.

And the occasional meteorite lounging about in Michigan.

If you look carefully, you might see Ms. B. checking out real estate in Michigan.

And if you listen, you might hear a chorus of peeping frogs making a mighty racket in Michigan.

Friday, March 26, 2021

After a wonderful, relaxing yet invigorating week, our time at the Bruggers’ in Midland had come to an end. Ms. B. and I rose relatively early, loaded up the Rodan Mobile, said our farewells, and hit the road, now bound for Point Pleasant, WV, home of the infamous Mothman. I had visited Point Pleasant in September of 2018 while researching my Ameri-Scares novel, West Virginia: Lair of the Mothman (see “Lair of the Mothman,” September 30, 2018). I had loved the place, the lore, and... of course... the geocaching! It made for a perfect overnight stop on the long haul back to North Carolina. A while back, I had made reservations at the historic Lowe Hotel, where I had stayed on my previous trip. After a long and less-than-relaxing drive — traffic was bonkers all the way down — we arrived in Point Pleasant late in the afternoon. Pronto, we bolted for the Mothman Museum, so we might spend a little time there before it closed. I had explored it in depth on my last visit, but Ms. B. was keen on checking out the plentiful paraphernalia, especially props from the film, The Mothman Prophecies. Once done, we walked across the street to the Lowe Hotel and checked in. Since I was a return visitor, the proprietor was kind enough to give us a suite for the same price I would have paid for a single room. (As an aside, on the Lowe Hotel website, the header image with the room key is actually the key to our suite — which is officially what room 328 now is: OUR suite.) I can hardly recommend the Lowe Hotel highly enough. The place is exceptionally clean (as it ought to be during the pandemic); requires masks (as it ought to during the pandemic); and is, above  all things, haunted. As on my previous stay, I saw no ghosts, but this hardly means they are not around. They simply don’t care to be traumatized by the character of certain guests, whose names shall not be mentioned here.

Once ensconced in our lodgings — and feeling the great starvation — we ordered a pizza from Village Pizza, which has its own connection to the Mothman. In 1966, the first individuals to witness the Mothman in the TNT Area, several miles north of Point Pleasant, fled the site and stopped at the location that is now Village Pizza. Our pizza? Well, it was fucken good. Once we finished our dinner, just after sunset, we hit the road once again — this time bound for the TNT Area, which had provided me with a big day of geocaching on my previous visit. Last time, however, I had experienced the place only in daylight, and I was dying to experience it after dark. We drove deep into the heart of the forest, once the site of a massive ammunition manufacturing/storage facility. From last time, I recalled the location of an open TNT storage bunker (these are called “igloos”) and made tracks for it. Sure enough, there it was, its doors still gaping wide, its interior as dark and creepy as all get out, just as I remembered (see accompanying video).

Interior of the Lowe Hotel, Point Pleasant, WV

Point Pleasant sunset, viewed from our window at the Lowe Hotel

View from Tu Endi Wei park of the bridge into Point Pleasant over the Kanawha River

View of the railroad bridge over the Ohio River from the Point Pleasant river walk

Since Ms. B. is less a geocacher than a sometimes-almost-willing accomplice, on this night, I figured I really should refrain from geocaching in earnest. However, one nearby cache looked particularly promising, so, once we quitted the igloo, I set my sights on it. At GZ, I found a huge, flat rock, as mentioned in the cache’s description. I located an opening underneath the rock that appeared perfect for a good-sized container. Then, upon aiming my flashlight into this gaping maw, I discovered, not a cache, but... a possum! Possum gives me a pretty scary leer, for he clearly had not expected visitors. Fortunately, he quickly vacated the premises. Seeing he was gone, I shone my light back into the opening, and this time spied the cache. Using my hiking stick, I was able to extract the container from its cubby. And once done, I re-hid it in a nearby, equally secure opening so that Possum could settle back in his preferred surroundings, if that was his desire. I hated to disturb him, and I really hope he doesn’t hold a grudge.

From there, we drove back to the hotel. Ms. B. was particularly keen on watching The Mothman Prophecies, so we decided to stream it on my laptop. The film diverges considerably from the “true” events, but it’s an exceedingly well-done movie, engaging to both emotion and intellect, drawing just enough from the source material to tell a compelling, original story. I love it. Along with Night (Curse) of the Demon and John Carpenter’s The Thing, it rates as an all-time favorite fright film.

And thus ended our week-long respite from the world. Our drive back to Greensboro turned out to be a bear — almost non-stop raging rainstorms, generating roughly 600 billion metric tons of human stupidity on the highways. But we arrived safely home, and this trip goes into my personal history book as one of our best ever.

And so, for now, I shall bid you good night.

Inside the Mothman Museum in Point Pleasant

Possum!

The Black Stone: Stories for Lovecraftian Summonings

The Black Stone: Stories for Lovecraftian Summonings is a new anthology of weird fiction, now hitting the streets. Edited by Raffaele Pezzella, the anthology features a reprint of “Threnody,” one of my earliest and creepiest short stories. You’ll also find tales of terror by 26 other noteworthy authors, including David Agranoff, Glynn Owen Barrass, Ramsey Campbell, Edward Morris, Konstantine Paradias, Pete Rawlik, Brian M. Sammons, Lucy Snyder, Sarah Walker, and more.

From the cover: “The tales of H. P. Lovecraft touched on primal fears of the dark unknown, with great effect, and now, nearly a century on, the spirit of the Lovecraftian tale is still with us, courtesy of a group of literary explorers willing to forge through the dark matter of our hostile home and write of their experiences and travails in the lightless places. These 27 epistles of horror and weirdness are presented as a testament to the fact that, as much as we’ve discovered since Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s time, there are still many more unknowns waiting to be discovered.”

The Black Stone is available in trade paperback and Kindle editions. Check it out here.

Dark Discoveries

Terror of Octobernomicon!
Golden Goblin Press announces the Kickstarter campaign for a new set of original scenarios for the Call of Cthulhu^® Role-Playing Game from aspiring new authors. Among the stretch goals is a fiction anthology, titled Dark Discoveries, edited by Brian M. Sammons & Oscar Rios. This will feature new stories by Glynn Owen Barrass, Peter Rawlik, Edward Morris, Andi Newton, Joshua M. Reynolds, and... me. It’s a brand-new tale — completed only last week — titled “The Devil Flies in Strix.” Set in the Old West, the story showcases one of the creatures created for the RPG. No giving away the secrets here.... Not yet!

The cover has been designed, and here is a mockup provided by Golden Goblin Press. The final art will be in color.

Visit the Kickstarter page for the project here.

No Burial Without Permission & Others

Don’t do it.

Geocaching has led me to a number of signs like this over the years. They're kind of disappointing because, sometimes, you just need to dispose of someon—er, something—quickly.

The weekend was busy, productive, mostly enjoyable. Friday evening, Brugger and I went to Martinsville and had friends Stephen & Samaire over for dinner and drinks. Given the agreeably mild weather, we were able to socially distance ourselves on the front porch at Pleasant Hill. We picked up dinner from Third Bay Cafe, which was, as always, first-rate. Yesterday, upon our return to Greensboro (by way of Danville for a couple of geocaches), Ms. B. and I spent the better part of the day working on our kitchen renovation. Tiring, of course, but highly satisfying.

This morning, Mr. Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott) and I got together to check out the trails and a number of caches at the Spruce Pine Lodge, along Flat River, just north of Durham. The weather was perfectly splendid for hitting the woods — clear skies and temperatures in the high 50s/low 60s. Prior to coming out here for geocaching, I knew nothing of this lodge, which dates back to the 1940s. It is available for meetings, events, and gatherings of all sorts. The nature trails offer scenic views and easy hiking, although most of the caches ended up taking us pretty far off-trail.

We found some good ones this trip. We discovered one container in the hands of a hopelessly malnourished fellow; a couple of well-stocked ammo cans; and a couple of smaller caches up in trees. Sadly — for me, at least — these did not require climbing but specific tools of the geocaching trade.

Scott appears bemused by this chap suffering from extreme malnourishment.

My favorite cache of the day, “Waterfall Overlook” (GCQE55), took us out to some high ground above one of the rocky, rushing creeks that flow into Flat River. Outbound, we found a narrow stretch with plenty of stepping stones to facilitate our crossing. After claiming the cache, we returned by a different route, which put us high above the stream, at a wide, rocky, and far more treacherous point. However, being the spirited, foolish daredevils we (sometimes) are, rather than detour, we decided to soldier on. Not far downstream, we found a big fallen tree above the deepest, rockiest part of the creek, so one of us (raises hand) unilaterally decided to use it as a handy-dandy footbridge. As we soon discovered, the log had a wee wobble, but neither Scott nor I fell off of it. Well, I didn’t. And it wasn’t so much a fall as a slide, which culminated in a relatively small splash. Not very spectacular, Scott.

On our way home, we stopped for a handful of other caches, including one at a very old church graveyard, where we discovered the sign in the image at the top of the page. Graveyard caches almost always elicit a smile.

Just don’t bury any bodies there without permission. Don’t do it.

The Spruce Pine Lodge in Bahama, NC, just north of Durham

View of Flat River from the nature trail at Spruce Pine Lodge

Outdoor amphitheater near the nature trail

One of the scenic little waterfalls we discovered on our hike

Our makeshift bridge across the stream. So it was a little wobbly. Scott and I both survived, though one of us
might have ended up a bit wetter than the other.

Ameri-Scares: Georgia: The Haunting of Tate’s Mill

Having put New Hampshire: Ghosts From the Skies to bed, I am currently plotting my next entry in Elizabeth Massie’s Ameri-Scares series. This one will be Georgia: The Haunting of Tate’s Mill.

In the mid-1950s, the US Army Corps of Engineers built the Buford Dam on the Chattahoochee River and created Lake Sidney Lanier, which covers portions of Hall, Forsyth, Dawson, Gwinnett, and Lumpkin counties. Upon the dam’s completion, 625 billion gallons — give or take an ounce or two — of water submerged 56,000 acres of land, which consisted of several small communities, hundreds of farms, an auto racetrack, and innumerable graveyards. No one knows for sure how many dead bodies lie in those dark depths. In the intervening years, hundreds of people have drowned, died in boating accidents, or simply vanished in Lake Lanier’s waters. In 1958, a car plunged off a bridge into the lake, killing two young women. Since then, a ghostly apparition, known as “The Lady of the Lake” — supposedly, one of the women who died — has frequently been sighted wandering the roads and bridges along the lake (although I never saw her). In its six and a half decades of existence, Lake Lanier has earned its reputation as the setting for grim happenings.

From the early 20th century until the lake’s creation, my mom’s family — the Bell family of Gainesville, GA — owned a mill, called Bell’s Mill, just outside of Gainesville. Mom spent much of her childhood at the mill and told my brother and me many stories about her happy times there. And me, I experienced the best days of my youth in Gainesville at my grandparents’ place. We often went to Lake Lanier, sometimes to swim, sometimes for family reunions, and, on occasion, to visit the site of the old mill — or as close to it as we could get, since the lake had long since claimed that land. Several years ago, on a visit to Gainesville, Ms. B. and I hunted a geocache, aptly titled “Old Bell’s Mill,” close to the mill site. Plus I spent a couple of years at the University of Georgia in Athens, less than an hour from Gainesville. Indeed, I do have a long personal history in this area.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, a family named Tate lived across the street from my grandparents, and my brother and I enjoyed playing with the Tate kids whenever we visited Gainesville. They were a fun, quirky bunch, and it seems only proper that the Tate name should be woven into my upcoming novel. And thus, Tate’s Mill it is.

While the events of the book will be completely fictitious, they are very much inspired by the spooky legends that have arisen around the lake, as well as my decades of personal experience here. As of this writing, I have contributed four novels to the Ameri-Scares series, and I really, really look forward to developing this new one.

Do stay tuned.

Old author at the site of Old Bell’s Mill at Lake Lanier, Gainesville, GA

“It Can Only Kill Us Once....”

First thing this morning, The Socially Distant No-Dead-Weight Irregulars, today relegated to only friend Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott) and me, headed out to the Horton Grove Nature Preserve, just north of Durham, NC. About twenty geocaches are hidden along the preserve trails, and we figured they would make for us a good day’s work. As it turned out, another cache, relatively nearby — “On the Face of It” (GC9742F) — was brand new, just published in the past couple of days. As yet, no one had logged a find on it. However, after some discussion, Scott and I decided to stick to the original plan of hunting the older caches in the preserve rather than go after the new one, which lay to the east, across the Flat River. The recommended parking for that one was a couple of miles south of the cache, and we rightly felt, for that much hiking, we could find considerably more caches in the preserve.

We made it several miles through the preserve on its well-traveled trails. Once we reached the northernmost cache within its borders, we paused and pondered the feasibility of getting to the new cache across the river. We knew there was about a 90% chance such an endeavor would fail, but that reality could hardly dissuade the likes of us, being so brave, dedicated, and foolish, don’t you know. I told Scott we might as well give the journey a shot. “It can only kill us once,” I said. Happily, one other cache — “Ceilidh’s Delight” (GC8MQA7) — lay along this most arduous route, so we stopped for it along the way (and it turned out to be our favorite of the day). At last, we discovered a small utility road, which led eastward through the dense forest, so we followed it — straight to the dam on the river that creates Michie Lake.

Here, though, our suspicions were confirmed. Massive torrents of water roared over the top of the dam, feeding a rushing, raging river. Given such prodigious rainfall over the past few weeks, this came as no surprise. Ever hopeful, we trudged a considerable distance downriver, looking for any potential crossing that didn’t involve being swept away to the Atlantic. Alas, no reasonably safe passage presented itself. So, we decided we would have to forgo that oh-so-tantalizing first-to-find opportunity, return to the preserve, and snag a few more caches along the trails before packing it in for the day. Frustrating, yes, especially in that, at one point, we stood only 85 feet from the cache; regardless, that trek through the thickest of woods out to the dam made for the day’s most enjoyable and stimulating experience. And we ended our outing with nineteen cache finds under our belts.

That, I would say, is far better than being killed even once.

A wee, trickling stream through the Horton Grove Preserve — far less violent than the nearby Flat River

A coupla old farts on the prowl for geocaches

High Haw, High Haw

A few new geocaches along the Haw River, just north of Burlington, came out this week, so the Haw River Trail looked like the perfect destination for a relatively lengthy hike today. Sadly, of the Socially Distant No-Dead-Weight Irregulars, only friend Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott) was available, though he did bring his faithful cache hound Tink with him. After ungodly amounts of water dumping from the sky for two weeks or more, the trail might have been a little muddy. Tink particularly enjoyed the myriad temporary pools and ponds; by the time we were done for the day, the Diefenbaker duo was in need of a good scrubbing.

The morning started out foggy and chilly, but in short order, the fog broke and the temperature rose. There are several older caches along the trail, which I had already found but Scott had not, so we stopped for those as well as the new. As is often the case along the Haw, the cache hunts took us to some cool locations, including a set of massive concrete supports for a couple of long-gone propane tanks, now overtaken by woods. That is the kind of stuff I love finding in the woods. Along the way, we ran into friend tbbiker (a.k.a. Todd) heading in the opposite direction, so we enjoyed chatting for a spell before going our separate ways. Then — shades of last Sunday at the Cane Creek Mountains (see “Rusty Wreck & Others”) — as we made our way back to our vehicles, friends David & Diana (a.k.a. David & Diana) came along, intent on hitting the trail themselves.

 

At the end of it all, we found four caches (a handful of extras for Scott), put in a good four miles in messy, mucky terrain, and burned a few hundred calories. Plus I did a good deed and repaired one of friend Yoda Rob’s caches, which needed some serious TLC.

Not at all a bad day’s effort.

The morning started out foggy and chilly. It didn’t stay that way very long.

Concrete supports for old propane tanks, now swallowed by woods

Clearly, this is an antique Confederate rocketship, all set to take off for the moon.

It doesn’t pay to go speeding through the woods in one of these things!

Scott trying not to be seen

Tink, the very muddy cache hound

Old Rodan and the very muddy Haw

Darrell, the Bigfoot of Eden

Behind me. THAT is Darrell the Bigfoot. I do not have the big feetz. Nor am I so two-dimensional. Well, that’s what I say, anyway.

Darrell resides in the town of Eden, the outskirts of which I pass through regularly when traveling between Greensboro and Martinsville.. I rarely go into Eden’s downtown (it actually has three, but that’s whole ’nuther story), but geocaching led me there today. A recently published Adventure Lab cache sends hunters to five separate locations in Eden that feature noteworthy works by local artists. Last night, I had to head to the old hometown for an appointment this morning, so on my way up — despite a torrential rainstorm — I stopped at three of the cache’s five stages (yes, I got wet; yes, I had fun). The weather turned out considerably better this morning, so on my way back home, I stopped at Darrell’s place — a shop called Sophisticated Rubbish — to make his acquaintance.

Previous caches have drawn me to this location, but those were prior to Darrell taking up residence. He is, indeed, flat — a near-life-size piece of sheet metal attached to a mural on the side of the shop building. This little corner of Eden has really undergone an agreeable transition, with numerous shops and places to dine. The pandemic certainly does not have impacted local businesses too negatively.

Any town that welcomes Bigfoot as a resident is all right by me. Thanks, Eden.

Just across the way from Darrell’s residence, you will find a little park with a mural promoting the town. There have been a handful of different caches placed here over the years.  An earlier mural here, called “River Boat Men: Dan River Trading, 1792–1892,” depicted black men rowing batteaux on the Dan River. It was changed in 2020, when some members of the community objected to it for glorifying of a part of history they felt best relegated to the past.

Coming Soon: Ameri-Scares: New Hampshire: Ghosts from the Skies

A little while back, I finished my newest Ameri-Scares novel — New Hampshire: Ghosts from the Skies — and turned it in to Crossroad Press. Since I have provided images for the covers of each of my novels in the series to date, I’ve been toying with a few visuals that felt appropriate for this book. Last night, I made up a composite image, which you can see here. I reckon it might make a striking cover image, should Crossroad wish to use it.

New Hampshire: Ghosts from the Skies goes something like this....

Thirteen-year-old Heath Sutton invites his friend Patrick Brady over for a sleepover at his house in Exeter, NH. In the middle of the night, they wake up to see a cluster of brilliant lights hovering above the nearby woods. To their shock, the boys realize the lights are part of some gigantic flying object, which appears to leave something in the woods before it zooms away into the star-filled sky.

The next morning, Heath goes out to the woods to see if he can find what the mysterious object might have left behind. He discovers a weird, metal rod jutting from the trunk of a broken tree. Suddenly, the rod emits a strange musical sound, and Heath feels as if insects are crawling all over his body. In terror, he runs out of the woods, convinced that the weird sound must have been some kind of alien signal.

Heath tells Patrick about what has happened, and the boys decide to learn all they can about Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). Heath recalls that, in 1965, large numbers of people—including Heath’s Grandpa Dan, then a young boy—reported seeing flying saucers in and around Exeter. In fact, on that same night, Grandpa Dan’s younger brother, Gene, disappeared without a trace. Heath feels certain that, all these years later, there must be some connection to that tragic event. Hoping to learn what that connection might be, he goes to see his grandfather. While there, he glimpses a shadowy figure lurking around the house, seemingly spying on them. Nervous about this strange visitor, he returns home, only to find his parents and sister gone for the day.

However, he quickly discovers is not alone in the house. He hears footsteps coming down the stairs from the second floor. And to his shock and horror, the figure that appears to him turns out to be something unexpected. Something not human.

An alien.

To his relief, Patrick appears at the door, and the weird, alien figure vanishes. But Heath’s relief is short-lived, for something about Patrick seems different. It takes only a short time for Heath to realize that his friend is no longer his friend. In fact, Patrick, it appears, is no longer even human....

To get the rest, you’ll need to get the book. It’ll be coming soon from Crossroad Press, and you can be certain that I will announce it to the high heavens as soon as it’s here.

Last Night, the Stars Fell All Apart

Although my brother didn’t professionally record many of his tunes, he did release a few songs on vinyl, CD, and MP3. His best-known song would probably be “Orange Kid,” which goes back to his Industrial Soldier days, mid- to late-1980s. In the early 1990s, he recorded it and released it as an orange vinyl 45 rpm record, with a superb tune on side B called “A Smash” (the lyrics to which I shall endeavor to transcribe when I can). In more recent years, he recorded and most frequently performed “Last Night, the Stars Fell All Apart,” another moody, melodic ballad that speaks of his personal experiences and feelings. His vocals on this one are particularly heart-rending.

You can listen to the audio file of “Last Night, the Stars Fell All Apart” here.

Last Night, the Stars Fell All Apart
©Phred Rainey/Joe the Fireman

Honeysuckle came and went
Faraway evenings spent
In my castle without a moat
Smelled just like May-times do
And midnight lovers do
When they’re lucky enough to have and hold

Couldn't send a message far enough
Just waiting around for you to call my bluff

Last night, the stars fell all apart
It means a man don’t dream
It means man will cry
For stars to fill an evening sky
If only just to break your heart

Back then when pigs could fly
I rose above that other guy
I was willing to flash and burn
Like Red River fireworks fly
I stole a kiss and let it ride
Before I lost my nerve and lost my turn

There’s no better time to feel like a winning man
Could it be to cheat myself was part of my plan?

That night, the stars fell all apart
It means a man don’t dream
It means man will cry
For stars to fill an evening sky
If only just to break your heart

Then on the beach your pleasant hand
Told me that I’m the man
To make or break or take you home
Then I sang a September song
But the names and dates were wrong
Too much, too soon, and all alone

There’s no more waiting now, my cover’s blown
Twelve hundred miles away, I guess you're on your own

Last night, the stars fell all apart
It means a man don’t dream
It means man will cry
For stars to fill an evening sky
If only just to break your heart

Rusty Wreck & Others

It’s almost a pity the geocache wasn’t way up yonder on that fire tower. Well, emphasis on “almost.” I’m always keen on a good physical challenge, and I’ve been up a rickety-ass fire tower before (see “Beating the Devil and Haw, Haw, Haw,” 12/22/2013), but with four flights of stairs missing and only a bit of rust holding the girders together, this one might have been a little dangerous.

With the weather blessedly again conducive to a geocaching outing (a tad warmer than yesterday, at that), the Socially Distant No-Dead-Weight Irregulars — Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott), Fishdownthestair (a.k.a. Natalie), and I — decided to go after three relatively new geocaches at the Cane Creek Mountains Natural Area, not far south of Burlington. We rendezvoused at the parking area at 10:00 this morning, where we discovered friends David & Diana (a.k.a. David & Diana), NCBiscuit (a.k.a. Linda), and Ms. Biscuit’s cache hound Dotty on site. Their caching plans turned out to be identical to ours, so we resolved to combine forces and attack the trail with guns a-blazing. At two of the three caches, all those guns came in handy. Sadly, not at the first of them, which has, by all indications, flown the coop. Happily, we did find the other two, and those, at least, took us to a couple of interesting locations. See the fire tower image above.

The most fun one was “Rusty Wreck” GC95K2D (which wasn’t actually the fire tower). Since I started geocaching in 2008, I have marveled at the sheer number of cars and trucks that appear to have spontaneously grown in the deep woods. The one we found today must have been there a long, long time, as it appeared to be 1950s vintage. The cache itself proved quite a challenge, but find it we did, and we loved the hunt. Nearby, there was a ramshackle shelter, no doubt for the drunken-most set, given the massive number of beer cans congregating around it. It’s literally right next to the trail, so I hope it is not regularly inhabited.

And all that made for another much-needed, very welcome outing in the woods. We put in something between four and five miles in rather rugged terrain (particularly on our way to the fire tower, which required a very long, very steep ascent), so this old not-quite-a-geezer has the sore feets and wee bit of tired.

Laters.

One guess where this guy got his driver’s license....

Somewhat less than five-star accommodations here

A view from high atop the ridge

Back down in the lowlands

Still Life with Old Fart and Fire Tower

I Axed for It!

Many days of nasty weather has about had me going stir crazy, so it was nice to have a beautiful, if cold, Saturday morning. It was just right for heading up to Fairy Stone Park to hunt a relatively new geocache. After so much rainfall, I was surprised to find the trail as dry as it was. In a few low-lying areas, it was waterlogged — or, in many places, ice-logged. The temperature hovered right at freezing, so the wind made for a very brisk walk, but I needed to get back out on the trail. The cache lurks at one of the familiar overlooks above the lake, so I didn’t need to pull out the GPS. A quick look around, and I had the cache in hand. After a helluva week, an enjoyable morning on the trail was just the ticket.

Not just the ticket was another of those annoying first-world problems that have been hitting me non-stop over the past couple of weeks. I needed to head to the old homestead in Martinsville last night, so I figured I’d just order dinner from one of the nice local restaurants and have Doordash deliver it. In most cases, in recent days, Doordash has been a godsend; I have had very few problems and some excellent experiences. Not so much last night. I placed an order, the delivery person picked it up, and the GPS map showed him approaching my (very well lit) house. So the dude drives slowly by, clearly not sure where he is. Drives past the house, turns around, comes back, drives slowly past the house again, goes down to end of road, comes back yet again. By now I’m out in the yard waving at the driver, who passes slowly by, starts checking out other houses, eventually gives up, and drives away. Pleasant Hill is not a goddamn difficult place to find — particularly when it’s lit up like a fucking Christmas tree — and if you’re working for Doordash, you hopefully have a GPS, and/or a phone by which one can communicate. Nope; this chap provided no contact info. Above and beyond my personal inconvenience, this kind of stupidity hurts Doordash, since I’m less likely to use them in the future. Pity they can’t really give the drivers a test to determine whether they are morons. Fortunately, Doordash does give immediate cash credit, which I’ve received, but for the love of god... this particular driver clearly ought not be working as a driver.

I ended up ordering dinner — an excellent ribeye steak — from The Third Bay up the street and picked it up. At least it proved fantastic. And there was enough left for me to have a trail snack this morning. Better than the typical beef jerky, I must say!

Cin-cin.

After so much rainfall, I was surprised to find the trail mostly dry. I did encounter icy patches here and there. 

One of my favorite and most familiar views of Fairy Stone Lake from the trail overlook

Blobs, Rebels, and Rogues

It has not been a particularly cheery week, what with ice storms, power outages, tax time, technology issues, dealing with my mom’s and brother’s estates, unexpected bills (big), and being generally indoor-bound. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen this much water fall from the sky, frozen or otherwise. Whatever passed for my front yard is a partially frozen lake. Geocaching has been right out. And although I’ve been exercising like the dickens, inasmuch as I can in the house, my old body hasn’t felt altogether right after a week and some change of no hiking. Thirty-six hours of the past weekend were spent without power at home, so I took up residence at Brugger’s place (make no mistake, I count my every blessing that, at least for the moment, I had the luxury of a place of refuge as the temperature dropped). This morning, as the latest ice storm moved in, I lost power for several hours; thankfully, it was restored, though the sky is once again falling and the temperature is dropping. It ain’t over yet.

In the plus column, I finished a brand new short story for an upcoming anthology. I’m pleased with it; the plot involves an “Owl Man,” which is kind of like the Mothman’s first cousin. I sent it off to the editor last night, and now the waiting game begins. Also, the very welcome news has come down that I, and the rest of the office staff, now have the option to work at home for the long haul. It’s a far, far better option than commuting out to the badlands every day.

For last night’s entertainment, I put on the original The Blob, which I hadn’t seen in a good while. Frazier and I enjoyed it as always, though Droolie appeared nonplused, probably because he thought that, based on the title, the movie was about him. Alas, no.

So maybe I’m an even bigger Star Wars geek than I realized. A while back, just for shits and giggles, I put on the animated Clone Wars series. I can’t say I expected it to grab me, but guess what. It grabbed me. Really grabbed me. So then I went straight into Star Wars: Rebels, which — again — at its start failed to tweak the right nerves, but then suddenly it did. So I ended up compelled to watch that whole series. Tonight, having finished Rebels, I kicked back with Frazier and Droolie for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which has been among my favorite entries in the series since I first saw it. The guys enjoyed it quite a bit, as you might infer from the photo above.

I don’t anticipate a sudden turnabout of fortune or mood, but I haven’t kicked off the planet yet, so that’s something for the plus column as well. Cin-cin.

The High Life Beckons

My brother Phred was a flawed angel; some would say with an emphasis on flawed. He struggled mightily with his own foibles, and sometimes, even when he won against them, he did so only to introduce a set of unforeseen side effects. Per his custom — his drive — he described these things in his songs, bluntly and without whitewashing. He kept so much private, yet he confessed his very soul to his listeners. I knew much of what was going on in Phred’s life at any given time, but it was only after hearing him sing that I felt I could truly understand what he was going through. “The High Life Beckons” is a perfect case in point. Here are his lyrics.

“The High Life Beckons”
©Phred Rainey

Some night sharp, and some nights dull

Some half empty, some half full

If I could only drink wine

     But not all the time

And not fall from grace

     Or on my face

But that just ain’t to be

     Such is me

Sometimes I think I’d rather be in handcuffs

Strolling down the avenue in handcuffs

     Whistling a merry tune I’d be

     Wondering what it’s like to be free

Each night I let the bottle down

And every single bar in town

It’s part of the daily grind

     My body aches for wine

The comfort that it brings

     And not those other things

But that just ain’t to be

     Woe is me

You people ought to see me in my handcuffs

I’ll never get out of these handcuffs

     A wretched life awaits if I do

     So hard to believe, but it’s true

Back for Swing

I’ve long said that attempting to psychoanalyze or ascribe specific motivations to an author based on his or her work is an exercise in futility or outright mistake. Some years ago, my depiction of a character in a short story prompted a reviewer to accuse me of antisemitism — which I can only decry as a baseless and utterly foolish claim, far more revealing of the reviewer’s prejudices and preconceived notions than the author’s. However, songs — poetry in general — and straight fiction are wholly different animals. My brother, Phred, used his lyrics to reveal his deepest feelings, undisguised, vividly painted and paired with his most wistful, poignant melodies. I so hope to get some of his recordings preserved digitally, though I fear that even high-quality analog versions will prove few and far between. There is still much material to sort through.

“Back for a Swing” is one of Phred’s most revealing compositions, a brutally honest confession of his own objective glimpses of himself. This song — a beautiful ballad that rings of something between Neil Young and Tindersticks — makes me weepy every time I listen to it.

Back for a Swing
©Phred Rainey

Take a pull on that wine
And pull on my sleeve
You know that I
Would never make you leave

That’s what I want you to say
It’s what I dreamed about
It’s what I want you to say
That’s what I want to hear
All I want to hear

My clothes on the floor
A dead car in the yard
All those things that you see

It shouldn’t be so hard
To change the things that you see
And get a spark out of me

You want to change what you see
To get the most out of me

It shouldn’t be so hard
To make a man out of me

You see I don’t come across
Like a normal man
I keep too much to myself
As much as anyone can
But I can’t hide anything from you
Can’t hide anything from you

I wish I could say you’re responsible
I wish I could say you’re impossible
But it’s too easy to
And God knows it ain’t true

I took what I saw
I didn’t think you’d care
I thought of laying them back
I saw you lying there

You shouldn’t be so hard
You’ll make a man out of me

I tried to walk through a swamp
I tried to make my own way
It’s just the things that I do
That make a lie of what I say

I can’t hide anything from you
Can’t hide anything from you
I can’t hide anything from you
Can’t hide anything from you

If I Were a Carp & Other Unpopular Opinions

It’s a song I particularly enjoy, although it is a bit fishy.

This week, I have had a regular moment (or several) of grief for my brother’s death each day, usually in the morning while I am working and listening to music. So much of what I listen to (mostly eclectic tunes on Pandora or Amazon Music) is due either directly or indirectly to my brother’s influence, or it reminds me of certain times together with him. But the feelings are not quite as raw as they were the previous week. Well, at least, most of the time they are not. I have no deadline or expectation for grieving. Grief comes as it will, and I embrace it right now. It feels...necessary.

Yesterday morning, I awoke to find a new geocache had been published in town — at UNCG, in one of the parking garages, which do tend to be challenging, since they frequently offer a choice of levels for hunting. Initially, I did not read the cache description as thoroughly as I should have (shameful for a writer of such ill repute!), and thus I ended up spending considerably more time and energy on the hunt than was necessary. In the end, I did find my quarry; in fact, I snagged the almost-coveted first-to-find slot. As I was logging my find, a group of geocachers I had never previously met (they were from the Raleigh area, it turned out) showed up on the scene. Sadly for them, they had missed out on the FTF, but they appeared to have an enjoyable time on the hunt. They clearly found it in far less time than it had taken me.

Later, Ms. B. came round to put in a shift working on our kitchen upgrade project. On a trip to Home Depot, we stopped for another newly published cache, which I managed to find in short order. But as with the other cache I found this day — both created by the madman known as cachecredit (a.k.a. Ken) — accessing the log required some additional time and effort (although this one proved less complicated than its brethren at UNCG).

Unpopular opinion time:

I have very little appreciation for the "classic" 1961 film, The Innocents, based on Henry James’s “Turn of the Screw.” I had never much cared for it on previous viewings from many, many years ago, but having found the recent The Haunting of Bly Manor a brilliant, masterful work, Ms. B. and I decided to revisit The Innocents and give it another look. Despite exquisite cinematography and extraordinary performances by the two kids, the film itself is one of the most unengaging, overwrought, self-conscious works ever. There are perhaps two scenes that qualify as “creepy.” The characters, to the last, remain too distant to relate to, their identities largely defined by how much noise and blather they can emit — so unlike the sensitive portrayals of emotionally traumatized individuals in Bly Manor. It’s exceedingly difficult to resist comparing The Innocents, not so much to Bly Manor, but to Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963), which is, to my mind, a classic that gives The Innocents a pounding rivaling Abigail Crain’s cane on the walls of Hill House.

Between last night and this morning, we had significant precipitation, some rain, some snow, some sleet. Mostly, it made mud. Today, I spent some time working on a new short story for an upcoming anthology. Since the sun came out midday and the temperature turned out tolerable, I took a nice break and headed out to Triad Park to hunt a trio of relatively new caches. I went, I saw, I signed logs. A fine outing, to be sure. And now it is back to the story, for our deadline, she be tight.

Despite mucho precipitation during the night and early morning, the afternoon
weather turned out perfect for geocaching.

The cache was not in “there,” but the pipe made for a nice, muggle-free environment to sign the cache log.

That Lucky Old Moon and I

My brother, Phred, was a songwriter. He composed and performed dozens, if not hundreds, of his own compositions over the years, usually under the moniker Joe the Fireman. Sometimes Joe the Fireman was a band, comprising widely varying personnel; other times, Joe the Fireman was Phred going solo.

Phred’s songs tell his life’s story. Sometimes, they’re in cryptic code; sometimes, they spell out, in raw, graphic fashion, every struggle of his oftentimes troubled soul. Since his passing a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been reacquainting myself with his music, inasmuch as it is possible. I have a few cassette tapes of his songs, some performed solo, some with a backup band. I don’t know whether he ever wrote out lyrics, or set down chords, or left any kind of record, other than random tapes, a couple of vinyl pressings, and a few digital files that can be found here and there. I’m taking it upon myself to transcribe as many of his lyrics as I can manage, so that in some fashion, at least some of the story he related via his music may yet be preserved for posterity.

Here are the lyrics to “That Lucky Old Moon,” which rates high among my personal favorites.

That Lucky Old Moon

©Phred Rainey

I guess I might like the things she did

At least the things that I thought I saw

Rolled out the carpet, at least I think I did

Was purely open-hearted, that’s my tragic flaw

Came time to split the difference

Pared down to half a pair

I found a color to match her name

Fit her eyes like it filled the skies

Saw it brighten and I saw it fade

She wandered off and I wondered why

Came time to feel the distance

Who was I not to know the difference?

That lucky old moon and I

Get to count the stars at night

And count the reasons why

Fall in the lake

Hide in the hills

Then the spotlight became my friend

And lit the things that I turned to see

A brighter color and a brighter end

And got me off the ground that could bury me

New time to feel the difference

I found passion, no despair

Now that lucky old moon and I

Get to count the stars at night

And smile at the reasons why

Float on the lake

Make love in the hills