Dave's Anatomy: My History as a Writer #24: Horror and History: "The Night Witches"

History is a gold-mine for horror. The cruelties and barbarities people have committed against other people rivals anything the most gruesome slasher or splatterpunk author might come up with. We often deplore the massacres and torture chambers of remote eras; but the modern world with its weapons of mass destruction, multiple genocides, and propensity toward perpetuating tribal, racial, and religious conflict rivals the old world. It was this vein of thinking that led me to write "The Night Witches."

Jewish slave labor in World War II

The night witches takes place late in World War II. A Jewish man who has been hauled d from work camp to work camp is finally taken out by three German officers to be killed--with eighteen others. He falls to the ground, hoping to fake his death, but knowing full well that the Germans will check to make sure everyone is dead. As they begin examining bodies, a reconnaissance plane flies by. The frightened Germans take shelter.

After a long while, he determines they have absconded and gets up, the only survivor of the group.  

 He secures as much as he can from his dead comrades and heads into town. The people there are wary but also sympathetic. Two men give him food and tell him he might hide out at an abandoned farmhouse. The Americans are near, they say, and the Germans are on the run. The older man of the two warns him to be careful:  the Night Witches are seen in that particular area. The younger man scoffs and says the older man is superstitious and the refugee should put no stock in his tales.

The man goes there, finds the place indeed abandoned, and rests. In the morning he searches the grounds and finds food. For the first time since he was taken by the Germans and sent to a work camp, he feels he might actually survive the war. But his first night there, he hears noises:  the sounds of swishing, laughter, talk. He goes outside and sees black shapes in the sky blotting out the stars, though he cannot make them out. The laughter and talk grow louder, the swishing sounds nearer.

In desperation he makes a plea to what he assumes are the supernatural creatures called night witches. He appeals for their help: “Sisters of the Night,” I whispered, “have mercy on a wretched man. Protect me from my enemies. I beseech you. If your power can be used for good, preserve me, I pray.” More laughter, then silence. He goes to bed wondering if the night witches heard his prayer. In the morning, he sees that they have not. A group of German soldiers have come to bivouac on the grounds of the farm. A young officer, quite distraught with fear and fatigue threatens him. They are particular worried about aircraft, he says, and asks "Does anything fly around here."

At that moment, the Jew, who still sees a slender hope of survival, notices three German officers who know him—under whom he worked at work camps and who killed his companions and (they thought) him. In response to the cruel irony of his situation, he laughs and says to the other German officer. "Only the night witches." The young officer is startled at his news and questions him further. He does not depart from the script of his humor, saying the night witches fly around here all the time. The young man seems alarmed and hurries over to talk with the three officers who know the Jewish man. They confer, turn, and order the soldiers off the property. The three officers do not see the man they certainly would have killed if they had laid eyes on him. The Americans show up and rescue him the next day.

Russian Women Pilots--"Night Witches"

Later, he finds out his salvation lay in the phrase "night witches." The locals meant supernatural creatures. The Germans used the term to refer to Russian women pilots who flew missions at night, bombing German encampments. They flew ancient biplanes that maneuvered well and often cut their engines and glided as they bombed and strafed the soldiers ("I can hear them swishing," he told the soldier). The Germans officer thought he was referring to the Russian women bombers, not to supernatural beings, and retreated 

immediately from the farm rather than risk being bombed by the night witches.

I've written stories about other horrific historical scenarios. It is a sad and bitterly ironic fact that we don't always need to make up horrors for our stories. They are all about us in abundance. Just pick up a history book; or turn on the news.

"The Night Witches" was published in an anthology that is now out of print. It's a great story, though, and eventually I may try to get it out as a reprint.

A new book, Le Cafe de la Mort, is available for pre-order at Amazon. Lady Death from Sandman would really like this book and I think you might like it as well.  

 For more titles take a look at my Writer's Page.

Dave's Anatomy: My History as a Writer #23: Appearance and Reality: "The Lighthouse Ghost"

Continuing to write horror and supernatural, I got the idea for a story I called "The Lighthouse Ghost" while visiting the north of my home state, Michigan. In Michigan, we have the Great Lakes, the Third Coast as we call it. We are surrounded by water and our state consists of two peninsulas. We have 3,224 miles of coastline, almost as much as Florida, Alaska, or California, and it's all inland and all fresh water. And where you have coastline, you have lighthouses. Where you have lighthouses, you often have ghosts.

"The Lighthouse Ghost" is the story of Berdine Hoffman, who lives in a small town in northern Michigan and works in clothing store. She is in a relationship with Lexander Tzortzinas (Lexi). Berdine's  parents do not approve of her sexual orientation or her relationship with Lexi, who is the older daughter of a prominent businessman in town. Berdine thinks Lexi truly loves her, but she has doubts—about their relationship and about her own identity. Lexi is wealthy and beautiful. Berdine struggles to get by week to week with her job and considers herself plain and ordinary.

One afternoon when she is having coffee and pondering this, she comes across a book called North Point Ghosts that mentions Lillie Palmerstone, who has appeared in spectral form to many people for many years near the Tarton Light House. Berdine is taken aback because she has seen the figure in the old photograph in a dream. She is even more startled when she reads the sidebar to the article:  Lillie Palmerstone, the “Lighthouse Ghost,” is an enigmatic figure in local history.  Could the thing that brought about her tragedy have been a same-sex relationship?

Berdine thinks little of this until, when she goes to the lighthouse to meet a school friend who is a docent and who gives her a tour, she sees the ghost. Later, the ghost appears to her and they speak. Lillie Palmerston asks her for blood so she can gain enough substance to call to her former lover, who drowned herself after Lillie committed suicide. Berdine eventually agrees, cuts her hand and lets the ghost spread the blood on her lips. She is reunited with her lover and goes to her rest.

Or does she?

 

The story draws on the appearance vs. reality trope—a literary technique that goes way back—one that Shakespeare especially liked to use. Does Berdine really see a ghost? Or is the entire thing happening in her mind? Is it a fantasy she invented to resolve the conflicts she feels? This is a possible explanation because all of the events—the dream, the visions, the conversation with the ghost, cutting herself—could be explained as resulting from psychological factors. The reader is left to wonder.  This is the strength of such stories.

Writers have used this technique frequently. H. H. Munro's horrific tale, "The Monkey's Paw" draws on this. Did the curse of the monkey's paw really cause the death of the couple's son, and did his ghost come to the door? The reader is not certain. Does the ghost of

Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights really "walk," or is it merely a local folk tale? The reader is not certain, and this is part of the story's appeal.

At the end of the story Berdine is convinced that Lexi will be true to her and does love her. Again, has she been able to arrive at this resolution through the intervention of the ghost—or was the ghost merely a mental construct, a feat of the imagination through which she was able to resolve the very non-supernatural dilemma with which she is dealing? Maybe yes. Maybe no. But why dichotomize? Could they not both be true if what postmodernism teaches us is accurate and we create the realities by which we live and find identity?

This sort of psychological horror appeals due to its ambiguity. In one of my blogs a while back I mentioned a story and noted that "the uncertainty, along with the darkness, squishing, screaming, and blood make for horror." In "The Lighthouse Ghost"there is fear, uncertainty, and a good dose of horror in the story's denouement. It is the uncertainty that appeals and opens the mind of the reader to thought, to possibility, and to consideration.

"The Lighthouse Ghost" appeared in a journal called Rivets, now defunct (not to be confused with Rivet, a journal still being published).

And marvelous news: a new novella is available for pre-order—Le Cafe de la Mort, Death's Café. Release date is September 30th, but advance copies can be ordered now and will be delivered to your Kindle on the last day of this month.

For additional titles check out my Writer's Page.

I want to hear your comments and insights. Have you written or read other stories that rehearse ambiguity and appearance vs. reality?

And one last note:  I think

the artist who did the cover

to Le Cafe de la Mort did an

outstanding job.

More to come on horror and

writing--my first book came

soon after I finished "The Lighthouse Ghost." Look for next week's blog.

Dave's Anatomy: My History as a Writer #22: Short Horror: You Are Here

Continuing to write horror, I tried to remember things that really scared me. When I grew up, one of the scariest shows on TV was The Twilight Zone. Now there were others. I remembered being frequently frightened by a program called One Step Beyond;  there were also Chiller and Thriller, regular prime-time shows that made me jump and want to sleep with the light on, but the Twilight Zone excelled them. That program was consistently scary.  

William Shatner in "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"

What was Twilight Zone horror like? It varied a lot. Not everything it had on was creepy. Some of the episodes, in fact, were funny. But there was what I would call a "brand" of horror that went with the show and that you saw consistently. It involved confusion. The protagonist in the story often did not know what was going on. Weird bizarre things took place and they baffled both the character and the viewer. As the show built to its climax, the inexplicable events grew more frightening and threatening. Then, at the end, came the denouement, the "unraveling," and both the character and the viewer understood what had happened—the ending might be redemptive, it might be horrific, but you only found out at the end; or if you didn't, you got a vague idea of what had happened.

A Twilight Zone Episode titled "The Hitchhiker" 

exemplifies this strategy of story-telling. A woman

driving cross-country begins seeing a hitchhiker. He asks for a ride, and is obnoxious, all but insisting she let him in the car. She refuses and drives off, but he begins to show up in different places. Once her car will not start and he begins slowly walking toward her. The car finally starts and she pulls off. Another time, she is stopped by a train, sees him standing there, looks around for a way to escape his presence, but finds he has disappeared. Another time, she asks a filling station attendant to tell him to leave her alone. Again, he has disappeared. Distraught, the woman calls her mother. She is informed that her mother is sedated after breaking down when she found out her daughter had been killed in an automobile accident three days ago. The woman goes back to her car. She turns the mirror down to see the Hitchhiker sitting in the back seat. "You are going my way," he says. He is Death 

and has come for her.

Lots of Twilight Zone episodes followed this pattern. I decided I would write one as well. The story was called "You Are Here."

In that story, a woman (named Felicity) goes into a highway rest stop. After using the bathroom, she notices the familiar push-pin on the map with the caption YOU ARE HERE has fallen down. She tells the janitor, who says he will fix it. She sees he has put it in the wrong place, goes to tell him, but sees he is not the same janitor as was working before. Soon she encounters people:  four young women dressed in sixties style. One of them has a turquoise transistor radio and listening to "Look Through Any Window" by the Hollies. Felicity goes outside and finds the parking lot empty

Back inside, she sees a new janitor, a woman this

time, who tells her that once again the YOU ARE HERE

pin has fallen down. Spooked, Feicity runs outside. She is relieved to see cars on the parking lot again, though they look old—she sees Studebakers, Desotos, and classic Corvettes but then is horrified to find them inhabited by decaying corpses of drivers and families. She runs back to the rest stop. Inside, a woman with an Obama for President button approaches her. Felicity is relieved that someone from her own era is there. But in the last sentence of the story, the woman addresses Felicity: “Could you tell me exactly where we are?” she asked. “I think the marker on the map must have fallen off.”

What will happen to the Felicity? You're not sure. But she is somehow trapped in a non-reality—or a different reality. You sense she will never escape. Is she like the retro girls, the janitor, the woman with the Obama button, trapped? Is she dead? The corpses in the parked cars suggest as much. The reader (and the author) are not sure. But something strange and frightening has occurred.

The Twilight Zone began with a monologue spoken by the show's creator, the late Rod Serling. The opening varied from season to season. Here's the one I remember most:  You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop, the Twilight Zone. In a different dimension, strange things can happen.

Uncertainty, the disruption of normalcy, and the fear this brings were key elements in this show that sometimes frightened me as a child so much I would hide in my bedroom and put a pillow over my head so I couldn't hear the sound from the TV in the living room.

This is the stuff of good horror.

The story appeared in Monster's Travel Anthology--no longer in print or available.

Read ShadowCity, paranormal fiction about love, darkness, and the light within you.  

 For more titles, check out my Writer's Page.

I would love to hear your comments.

Dave's Anatomy: My History as a Writer, #21: "The Grave of Cindy Darner"

I published two stories in Horror Through the Ages. The second one was "The Grave of Cindy Darner." I don't write cowboy or "old West" fiction a lot—in fact, this was the only cowboy-style story I think I've ever written (I watched too many Westerns as a kid). But it came as a unique idea. Once more, it is "soft horror," not "dark horror." Horrific and terrible things happen, and the supernatural elements are threatening, but in the end it works out for the best. Justice and good ultimately triumph over dark forces.

Once in class I asked my students what characterized Westerns. They said, horses, gunfights, saloons, shoot-out's, and, one student commented, "Always going to hang someone." Cindy Darner is a woman who is abused by her husband and decides to take matters in hand. She kills him and disguises the murder to make it look like someone from one of the native tribes in the area did it. Her ruse fails, however. She is charged with murder, breaks down in courtroom and confesses her crime. The townspeople are sympathetic. They know her husband beat and abused her and think she should get a prison term, but the judge sentences her to death. She will die by hanging.

After she goes to her death, complications arise. Executed criminals are usually thrown into a grave with no coffin and no rites. One of the women in town, however, who is sympathetic to Cindy, thinks she should have a decent burial and buys her a pine box. Another faction that is more critical of her objects. They can't prevent her being buried in a coffin, but they keep her out of the town cemetery. She is buried underneath the hanging tree outside of town where the bodies of other executed criminals lie.

Soon her ghost appears. At first she is seen by the town drunk, so the story is dismissed, but eventually more "respectable" people see her. The woman who bought her a coffin, Millie Browne, sees her and is able to speak with her. Cindy says the murderers buried all around her are trying to get to her. At night, they kick at her coffin and threaten her. She is somehow able to keep them at bay, but feels they will eventually break into her coffin and abuse her. She asks Millie what to do.

Millie is frustrated, thinks Cindy truly repented, and does not know why she can't go on her rest. Cindy asks what God wants her to do. Millie doesn't know and asks Cindy if she has any idea of what she needs to do. "I need to do justice," she says. "That's all I know." Millie can't help her and Cindy says she will resign herself to her fate and go to hell like Elsa Towner said she would. Elsa has tormented and vilified Cindy, saying she will go to hell for her crime. Millie tells Cindy how the bible says anger and slander are just as serious as murder. Cindy seems to respond to this, nods, and fades away.

The next day, Elsa is found dead, her heart crushed. Cindy appears again to Millie and says she did justice. No one has bothered her since and she can go on to her reward. With Elsa gone, Cindy's coffin is exhumed. It is battered, people note, as if someone were trying to break into it. She is reburied in the town cemetery with the epigraph from the bible (chosen by Millie), The Lord bless thee, O habitation of justice, and mountain of holiness. Jeremiah 31:23.

In my horror, as always, the dark forces do not win. They are not supreme. Cindy goes to her reward, whatever that may be. Elsa, who represents hatred and judgmental bias, is killed (by the way, I blatantly stole the heart-crushing scene from Stephen King's Carrie—but everyone from Homer to Shakespeare could tell you authors use other authors' material). Cindy Darner is vindicated. Her wrongdoing (it is wrong to murder someone) is paid for, but that payment is sufficient. No need for further punishment. And justice needs to be done—one last good deed. And is done.

Horror Through the Ages is available in print form. It contains a number of excellent stories from various periods of history.

This month, I am promoting my novella, ShadowCity. Scott's girlfriend, Jimena, is the guardian of a parallel world ("all related to string theory," she tells him). He follows her there. But her first act upon arriving in that world is to buy a slave; soon she tortures a woman who has betrayed her. Something is not right, Scott senses. Perhaps the darkness is starting to seep into Jimena's soul as well.

Check out my Writer's Page for further titles.

I would love to hear your comments.