 Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast. PART ONE The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees. The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas. The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, And the highwayman came riding-- Riding—riding-- The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door. He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin, A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin. They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the thigh. And he rode with a jewelled twinkle, His pistol butts a-twinkle, His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky. Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard. He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred. He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter, Bess, the landlord’s daughter, Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair. And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked Where Tim the ostler listened. His face was white and peaked. His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay, But he loved the landlord’s daughter, The landlord’s red-lipped daughter. Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say-- “One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize to-night, But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light; Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day, Then look for me by moonlight, Watch for me by moonlight, I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.” He rose upright in the stirrups. He scarce could reach her hand, But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt like a brand As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast; And he kissed its waves in the moonlight, (O, sweet black waves in the moonlight!) Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west. PART TWO He did not come in the dawning. He did not come at noon; And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon, When the road was a gypsy’s ribbon, looping the purple moor, A red-coat troop came marching-- Marching—marching-- King George’s men came marching, up to the old inn-door. They said no word to the landlord. They drank his ale instead. But they gagged his daughter, and bound her, to the foot of her narrow bed. Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side! There was death at every window; And hell at one dark window; For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride. They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest. They had bound a musket beside her, with the muzzle beneath her breast! “Now, keep good watch!” and they kissed her. She heard the doomed man say-- Look for me by moonlight; Watch for me by moonlight; I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way! She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good! She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood! They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years Till, now, on the stroke of midnight, Cold, on the stroke of midnight, The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers! The tip of one finger touched it. She strove no more for the rest. Up, she stood up to attention, with the muzzle beneath her breast. She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again; For the road lay bare in the moonlight; Blank and bare in the moonlight; And the blood of her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to her love’s refrain. Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horsehoofs ringing clear; Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear? Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill, The highwayman came riding-- Riding—riding-- The red coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still. Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night! Nearer he came and nearer. Her face was like a light. Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath, Then her finger moved in the moonlight, Her musket shattered the moonlight, Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death. He turned. He spurred to the west; he did not know who stood Bowed, with her head o’er the musket, drenched with her own blood! Not till the dawn he heard it, and his face grew grey to hear How Bess, the landlord’s daughter, The landlord’s black-eyed daughter, Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there. Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky, With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high. Blood red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat; When they shot him down on the highway, Down like a dog on the highway, And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat. . . . And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees, When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, A highwayman comes riding-- Riding—riding-- A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door. Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard. He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred. He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter, Bess, the landlord’s daughter, Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair. Alfred Noyes is an English playwright, poet and short story writer who was one of the most commercially successful authors of his time. He as able to live off his writing and royalties. Published to the Kaidankai on May 25, 2022.
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 Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast. You peer around the ancient trees, askew and unnatural yet still alive. That feeling in your gut, honed by years of war and rescue, hasn’t settled. You fiddle with the volume knob of your radio as your eyes catch where the moonlight casts shadows over the contorted knots of the oaks. You can sense that lingering silence of death hovering over you, yet the girl sitting near you is still breathing. Although, if the emergency helicopter doesn’t arrive soon, you’re not sure how long that will be true. Kate’s been missing for two weeks since she got lost in these woods. Only you are experienced enough, or dumb enough in Mike’s case, to climb down the cliff into the old sinkhole. You’ve been called in a few times over the years to come check down here for lost hikers, but practically no one who’s fallen down this cliff has survived. Yet there she was, and here she is; sitting around the lantern with you and Mike, completely calm. She’s gaunt but otherwise unharmed, if you’re not counting the level of exposure shock she’s currently going through. Although the dried blood smeared on her arm and caking her shirt when you found her had initially made you question otherwise. She told you it was from a meal, which would explain why she’s not completely starved. And you know better than to question what someone had to do to stay alive. Kate ignores her blanket, allowing it to slip almost off her shoulder. That’s never a good sign. She grazes a thin finger over the pale scar running across her lower jaw from ear to ear. Her mother didn’t mention the identifying mark, but she could barely give the police a complete, non-sobbing, sentence. Panic is the enemy of accuracy. Kate’s voice is soft as if she’s still hiding from the bears and other predators that prowl this forest, while her gaze remains blankly watching the nothing in front of her. “I heard that people used to come out here to hunt for scraps of proof on the legend stalking these woods. No one has ever told me the gruesome parts of the story, but being out here… I think I deserve to know the whole thing. Could you tell it to me?” Mike practically lunges forward, released from his forced silence, and gets right up into the lantern’s light. He really is untrained. He shouldn’t try to scare someone during trauma, let alone someone in shock. You focus on the rustling of the leaves overhead, listening for the whirr of the helicopter blades. The warning in your gut grumbles back to life. You disregard it but stay alert. Maybe, at this rate she should at least have a last wish granted. Mike lowers his voice and speaks with the slow eeriness only found around late-night campfires. “There is a legend of a creature that roams these woods, responsible for all the people who have vanished here over the decades. It was created by a clan of magic-wielders long ago to hunt mankind to extinction. They gave it retractable claws, a second mouth jutting from its neck filled with needle-like fangs, and the ability to take on any appearance it wants. It was released into a village only to be met by gunfire, so it returned to these woods and hunted its creators instead. When it ran out of its prey, it learned to use its abilities to trick new victims. If it comes across you in its woods, it will take on the form of the person you love most, bloodied and dying. When you approach to help, it uses its claws to gut you alive. It will watch, saliva dripping from its maw, as the life drains from your body before using that second mouth to swallow you whole. The only thing it fears is the guns which were its first greeting in this world. So, if you travel into these woods and hear the pained voice of your loved one crying out for you, you better be ready to fire first or face your death at the hand of the Dee’aymin.” The wind blows past as you clench the spot on your waist where your pistol is strapped in its holster. Mike manages to keep his face straight for only a few more seconds before he bursts into a cackle. “You should see the look on your face!” Mike doubles over, still pointing a finger at you. “Not too bad, though I must say some details aren’t quite right.” Kate’s voice is sleek and coy. Mike stops laughing. He turns to her, eyebrows raised. A crooked sneer slithers across her lips. You blink, thinking the grin is a trick of the light, but she’s gone, her blanket abandoned on the ground. The sound of a snapping branch comes from Mike’s direction as he bolts up. You try to ignore that alarm in your mind firing off all your nerves at once. “Did you see whe-“ Mike isn’t standing. He isn’t even sitting. He is strewn on the ground, limp. A puddle of blood pools under the place where his head used to be. That heavy aura of death you’d been failing to source since you got down here grows thicker. Kate, the girl, the creature stands over Mike’s body. Blood is smeared all along the scar on its chin, dripping down its neck, yet its face is completely clean. That scar breaks open, revealing a glimpse of sharpened ivory. Its voice, grinding from its human mouth like it is the more unnatural of the two, scrapes against your bones. “Thanks for the ‘rescue’.” You draw your pistol. It vanishes with the wind into the snarling forest, taking Mike’s decapitated body with it. Only leaving behind a pool of blood, a trembling figure, and a revised legend. Sam Kaufman is a writer from Connecticut. She started avidly writing in her sophomore year of high school doing both novels and short stories. She mostly writes dystopian tales but occasionally slips into fantasy as it is her favorite genre to read. Published to the Kaidankai on May 18, 2022.  Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast. I first saw her while shopping at the market. Passing her, I noticed her blue eyes, all the more striking because of her dark hair. We got into neighboring checkout lines. She turned and caught my stare. I looked away, feeling embarrassed. The next morning I was in the classic literature section of a bookstore, and there she was, in a tight-fitting outfit that outlined her slim figure. Though a bit nervous, I went up to her and she remembered seeing me at the market. We joked about running into each other like this, and then discussed 19th-Century Russian writers. One thing led to another and I gained her name, Jenny Parker. As we chatted, she was open enough for us to exchange numbers. Over the next few weeks we took walks in the park and strolled the city streets; the usual things couples do. We then began to spend time at my place, two-three times a week. It was best for her because she told me she lived with her invalid mother. All the while, we never... well, consummated our relationship. Jenny thought we needed more time. Not wanting to lose her, I went along with it. A few weeks later we were in my living room, where she suddenly clawed at me, hollering No, Jack, no! I hadn't been doing anything, and Jack was my father's name, not mine. Attacking me as she was, I shoved her away. She fell back. Her head hit the fireplace hearth. Blood pooled over the bricks. Her eyes were open, fading to red. God forgive me, I had killed her. I rushed out and ran down the stairs into the lobby. Got control of myself and called the police. “When you showed up,” I told the detective, “we came up here and— "Yes, Paul," Detective Ackerman interrupted, "Up here, where there's no body and no blood." Then asked, "Were you on drugs, maybe hallucinating?" "No, no, it was all too real, and I don't do drugs." "Before you called us, did you get rid of the body and clean up the mess?" "Absolutely not. I couldn't do a thing like that." A knock at the door and Ackerman's partner entered the apartment. "Sorry it took so long." "That's all right," Ackerman said. "Gave me a chance to do a thorough inspection and hear Paul's story." His partner opened a folder and handed it to Ackerman. As Ackerman read it, his expression turned grim. When done, he gave me a remorseful look. "I suppose you know about your father." "I don't know anything about him. He left us when I was two years old." Ackerman exchanged a glance with his partner, and then said: "That's when your mother legally changed her last name, along with yours." He drew a deep breath. "The reason was because back then your father had been executed for the murder of Jenny Parker." "I don't understand." Ackerman pulled a photo from the folder. He placed it on the coffee table. "This her?" I leaned forward and gazed at it, nodding slowly, stunned. My only thought: for the sins of my father… Phillip Frey is a published author with a history of screenwriting and acting. He is the writer and director of three short films and currently devotes himself to writing prose. Published o the Kaidankai May 11, 2022.  Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast. I am afraid to say that I am a monster, I have not been happy with that fact and I certainly do not set out to be such a vile thing! I have never once consciously decided to be a monster. Although, truth be told, I do enjoy being one sometimes, just for the variety, and, I confess I do love those few moments as a living being. For me though, they could be anything, they wouldn’t have to be ghastly creatures. The monster form just happens, when monsters are what they imagine, and that is all too often. For example, just now, one minute a man was standing there on the street corner, waiting, for what I don’t know. In my lighter moments I say to myself, ‘me, he was waiting for me!’ but I seriously doubt that. Who waits for me, for us, with such indifference? Anyway, there he was. I was just ambling down the dark street, still resplendent in my most recent form, when I saw him there, on the corner, bathed in the light of a street lamp. Well, like I said, it’s not a deliberate choice, it’s just the job. There he was, and then suddenly there he wasn’t! It seems I had grabbed him in my strong jaws, dragged him into a nearby alley, and eaten a good-sized chunk of him before I realized what I was doing. I came to or snapped out of, whatever state I was in, to find myself there, blood dripping off my protuberant fangs. My claws were covered in cloth and body matter, he had been wearing jeans and a hoodie. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but as always when these monster moments overtake me, I was extremely embarrassed and gazed about, hoping no one had seen. There was no one around, so I stood up, on four strong legs, and went out onto the street to find a big window. I wanted to catch sight of myself before the power of his imagination faded, as his life already had. The art of a person, their imagination, their spirit, whatever you want to call it, is the very last thing to go. I found something to see myself in, a big department store with almost nothing in it, spread over almost a third of a block. The windows were huge, the displays almost non-existent. There I was, in reflection, a huge cat creature, splendid in a striped coat, my fangs still dripping a little watery red, as the man’s blood had combined with my ancient saliva. A saber-tooth tiger, well, well. I had never been one of those before. I guess it made sense here, so close to Siberia. I twirled in front of the window to get a good look at the magnificent muscular body before it faded away, it was most impressive. Then, as usual, as the hovering soul finally departed for the other, my latest form departed too, and I was left, invisible, and feeling hollow and hungry again, my natural state, if I could be called natural, in any way, in this particular galaxy. I had returned to my area of ether, that in-between place, the space between atoms, and set to waiting for something to happen once more. It never took long, there are so many humans, and so few of us, we are always busy. Us monsters. We should not exist here. We began as wraiths I guess you’d call us. And we were caught, stolen, rescued, the three of us, from Sagittarius A. We weren’t supposed to be able to get away from that intense gravitational pull, but that’s the thing about being a spirit, one is not matter, nor is one anti-matter, we are other, we are the in-between, the unseen, but we can briefly take on material form. For very short periods, we undergo what in physical terms might be called a type of ionization, but that’s only a guess, we have not been studied by scientists, as they do not know we are here. We call ourselves spirits or shades, or lately just plain monsters, it’s easier. We have become a part of death. The fun part I guess. Every creature with enough self-awareness to know that Death is the ultimate consummation of life, pictures us, the harbingers of the end, as something different. They carry this image with them until that final moment. The man under the street lamp may have had a heart attack, but his most feared image was a sabre-toothed tiger, so…that’s what got him in the end. It’s interesting for us, the three shades of death, we get to play all sorts of characters, and get a few moments experiencing what it is like to be alive. We were doing fine, working alongside death, when the problem emerged. The problem was, we liked it too much, that little moment of life, and we wanted to find a way to stay in this ‘life’ longer. The physical reality of being big solid objects is glorious. The imagined creatures we are allowed to briefly inhabit, and more pertinently the humans, whose imagination forms them, have no cognizance of the invisible reality swirling around, in, and through them. We find it highly enjoyable to be so solid for a bit, and restful to be a creature so convinced that reality is only what it can see and hear and touch. What a lovely, simplistic life these earth-surface dwellers have. We, us three, had been swirling around in our galaxy, all too aware of many planes of reality for eons, and let me tell you, it was as boring as! Then, luckily, we were caught, stolen, rescued, by Death. She brought us to where she worked, to this solar system, to this middling star with a beautiful planet orbiting it. We were surprised to find something so special in this far-flung part of the universe. Death of course is as big as all the galaxies and as small as the smallest quark. We are in awe of Death and work with gladness with, and for, her. If it weren’t for Death, we would never have had the opportunity to experience life. That is the wonder that is at the core of this world. But, we wanted our times of living to last a bit longer than they usually did. So, we decided, we, the three shades, to ask Death to take a holiday. And Death said yes! We all agreed to become the monster our first customer imagined, and while we played at mortality, Death said she would have a nice rest. While we monsters went back to earth for our longer experiences of life, Death would not walk the planet. No, she would sleep. Nothing and no one would die, or cease to be. Nothing. No fish nor fowl, no stick nor stone. We would still consume our customers, our prey, in acts of Death, for that is the nature of us monsters in this realm. But no one would have the release of the ultimate finality. After granting us our longer mortal moments, Death yawned and said the world would miss her terribly, but she needed a nap after all these years. We clapped our metaphorical hands, and went in search of our dying customers, taking on the forms these people visualized as their death, in all their different guises. We didn’t realize, what we had created, was hell. I ended up in a slithering serpent form, one of my sisters became an insect thing, and the other, an amphibious shark-like creature. Customers, prey, victims of our desire to experience life, were everywhere. They were people waiting for release. We were caught and held by the first ones we found. Mine was in a factory, he had been trapped in some machinery and the contraption had at first just mangled his hands, it was part of a conveyor belt, so from his hands, it went on to tearing up the rest of him, dragging him, constricting him, soon his whole body was caught up in it. The life was painfully crushed out of him. But, it had nowhere to go, as Death was sleeping, there was no ultimate release. The pain and fear and misery only repeated. There was nowhere for his life to escape to, he was trapped, painfully dying, over and over again. His addled mind had turned the conveyor belt into me, a great serpent squeezing the life out of him. But, without dear Death, the life just rushed back in, and the whole process was repeated over and over ad infinitum. It was fun in the beginning, to be alive so long, but after a while, I got very bored, what with the echoes of pain, and the man’s gasping and pleading, and whinging and moaning. I just wanted it all to be done. Surely there was more to life than this? This could not be what my sisters and I had in mind. To my relief, he slid into some comatose state and was no longer able to imagine me, so I gladly left him being mangled and went to find my sisters, before he came to and I had to start again. The first sister I found was in an amphibian form, and very impressive it was too. She was thrashing a big grey tail and tearing at a fisherman’s arm. He was slowly being torn apart and drowning. The blood in the water had brought a number of frenzied real sharks. At my behest, she released the still-living body and left the job to those real predators, they were, after all, the nightmare that he had imagined. We went together to find our other sister. She was dealing with a most imaginative customer. Her client, customer, victim, was a soldier who had stepped on an incendiary device, and this soldier’s fear was complicated. She imagined an enormous insect tearing her body apart, spitting shiny film from its mandibles, wrapping each separate body piece in the sticky stuff, and hanging it in a tree to age. The woman, still alive, but with only her head and torso left, watched in horror. After hearing our plan, our sister happily left the noisy woman there on the ground. She would remain, bleeding profusely from her wounds, contemplating the bits of her own body dangling above her, until the process began again. We assured our sister she would be back in time for the beginning again if our venture proved fruitless. She had nodded, grimly, this deathless life that was so horrible and sad for mortals was very boring and repetitive for us. The woman was at the end of her imagining, shrieking in high decibels of fear, and moaning in pain. My sisters and I were glad for an excuse to leave the cacophony, at least for a time. We decided, we had to wake Death up. Clearly, we couldn’t experience life without her. Death was not pleased. “I was having a lovely dream,” she said. But we explained, and then we wheedled, and then we downright begged. “Oh, all right,” said Death. And she got up out of her bed and washed her deathly face and brushed her deadly teeth.“Off you go then,” she said irritably, “go experience life, but know, you must return to me.” And we did. While Death stalked the world again and released her subjects from their suffering. We, for a short time, were no longer imprisoned by other creatures’ imaginings. We wore our favorite flying forms, we soared high into the sky and overtook the wind. We dove into the oceans and played in the deep dark recesses there. We roamed the earth on the back of the sun, and in the face of the moon. We saw flowers and jungles and great waterfalls, we saw babies and puppies and butterflies, and we cried, how we cried, knowing each beautiful thing would fade and then die. And we realized then, what we truly were. We were not just three horrible monsters delivering death. We were there for the humans, we made dying an adventure in a haunted house, we were three good reasons to strive to stay alive, we were the monsters under the bed. We were helping to make life worth living. And we were satisfied then, each one of us, to have just a moment of life, as we heralded dear Death, to one dying creature or another, so that other life could live. We saw that we were helpful, that we were beautiful in our way. I was happy enough then, to be a monster. Melissa Miles is an American who lives in New Zealand. She had many professional iterations--acting, teaching, film-making--but is now focusing on her writing while caring for her aging menagerie. Published on the Kaidankai on May 3, 2022. |