\u201cOnce upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore… Oh what is this crap? It’s as occult as a cheeseburger. I wanted to do real magic.\u201d Tim’s nasal whine cut through the dark room.<\/p>\n
\tJacob answered. \u201cIt is occult, it’s from the witch trials of ancient North America. The writer of this got burned as a witch. That means it was occult.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cIt just sounds like bad poetry to me. Who talks like that now, really?\u201d<\/p>\n
\tAmanda glared at both of them. \u201cShut up, both of you. You’re spoiling it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWhile I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. `’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cHe must have been visited by a ghost!\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cYou’ll become <\/em>a ghost if you don’t shut up!\u201d<\/p>\n \tTimothy and Jacob withered under the glare, and Amanda continued reading from the book of occult lore. She droned on and on, her voice flat and unemotional, attempting an Old American dialect and failing miserably.<\/p>\n \tThe three teenagers sat in a room pitch black except for the dim candles at the five points of the pentagram. It was the basement of Amanda’s mother’s house, but it felt occult to the three of them. It was an old house, all concrete and steel and it never creaked once, and that always spooked the children at night.<\/p>\n \t\u201cOn this home by horror haunted – tell me truly, I implore – is there – is <\/em>there balm in Gilead? – tell me – tell me, I implore!\u201d<\/p>\n \t\u201cWould you children stop butchering my poem and disturbing my rest! I can’t sleep with you nattering on like this! And you, young lady, that is the worst reading ever attempted. Five year old school children have done better.\u201d Standing in the middle of the pentagram was the ghost of a dark gentleman, his forehead high and his face covered by a thin moustache.<\/p>\n \t\u201cWho… who are you?\u201d<\/p>\n \t\u201cWhat! You’re reading my poem and you don’t know who I am? I wrote The Raven, that beautiful poem you’re butchering. Are you children really sunken that far?\u201d<\/p>\n \t\u201cIt’s not a poem, it’s an occult spell that got a witch burned at the stake in North America!\u201d<\/p>\n \t\u201cOh dear… you have fallen far, haven’t you? No history, no nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\u201cWe know our history, and we’re right! It is an occult spell!\u201d<\/p>\n \tThe ghost shook his head. \u201cChildren these days… You want occult magic? Fine. I’ll show you real magic.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\u201cReally? That’s great!\u201d The children all squealed with glee.<\/p>\n \t\u201cOh yes.\u201d The ghost grinned. \u201cYour souls from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be lifted – nevermore!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cOnce upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore… Oh what is this crap? It’s as occult as a cheeseburger. I wanted to do real magic.\u201d Tim’s nasal whine cut through the dark room. Jacob answered. \u201cIt is occult, it’s from the witch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[36,4],"tags":[21,22],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pRIK4-42","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":480,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=480","url_meta":{"origin":250,"position":0},"title":"False Dawn","date":"April 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I was a writer when I set out to tell this tale, a writer of some renown in the world beyond these closed walls. That was, I fear, a great long time. Or so it would seem, for my experiences have reshaped my life, yet I believe chronologically little more\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flash Fiction"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":716,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=716","url_meta":{"origin":250,"position":1},"title":"The Last City – Part 5","date":"May 27, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Canere, having exhausted even his masterful powers of focus, had left the archives around the time of the morning meal, and then collapsed into bed until the chimes sounded for the first bell after noon. He then spent the next hour in bed, reading the notes that he had created.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Arhosa"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":76,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=76","url_meta":{"origin":250,"position":2},"title":"Nathan","date":"April 7, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A thanks to Selorian for providing the Story Starter for this one, although I didn't use it in the normal way. Nathan ran. He sprinted down alleyways, jumping over drunks and around waste, and yet the inexorable cloak came on. That was how Nathan thought of the man chasing him,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flash Fiction"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":411,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=411","url_meta":{"origin":250,"position":3},"title":"Breaking an Empire #15","date":"January 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The fifteenth installment of a 30k word short story set in The Four Part Land. It takes place 400 years in the past from the time of Tarranau and Chloddio, and details the collapse of Hymerodraeth Heula, the Empire of the Sun. Two days later, their turn came in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Four Part Land"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":130,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=130","url_meta":{"origin":250,"position":4},"title":"The Sky Rained Ash","date":"May 4, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The second piece in the JNY serial. This isn't standalone, so make sure to read the first short. The desert was cold, and the sky was ash. A week had passed since JNY-35197 had stared at the meteors. Half the grunts were dead, not that Jenny had known them well.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Other Writing"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":621,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=621","url_meta":{"origin":250,"position":5},"title":"Chloddio is Done!","date":"April 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I've finished the rewrite. The story now clocks in just a shade under 104,000 words. And it's a hell of a lot better than it was before this whole process started. For the first time in a while, I'm looking forward to editing it and getting it out the door,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Chloddio"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}