A Collection of Death and the Undead: C.M.'s Collections, #11

By C.M. Simpson

Not everything goes bump in the night. Some glide sorrowfully through castle halls and others stalk the dark, looking for prey. From monsters who died long ago and still walk our world, to creatures who herald death, to those mourning the loss of a king, or grieving a loved one, the short pieces in this collection are themed.

 

NOTE: This collection draws together short pieces from the flash fiction and poetry collections in this series, but includes a number of short stories that can only be found within its covers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.M. Simpson
• Release date: Oct 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215602881

C.M. Simpson

I spent the first twenty years of my life living in different parts of Queensland and the Northern Territory. My father was a teacher who liked to travel, so he took teaching appointments in all kinds of places. I don’t think I stayed in one place for more than four years at a stretch. I wrote stories for most of that time, drawing on the different landscapes we encountered and giving a hyper-active imagination somewhere to run. Seeing so many different places gave me a lot of food for thought as I stepped into the world of adulthood and took my first full-time job, and I never stopped writing and exploring the worlds in my head. So far, I have written four collections of short stories and poetry, and a number of novels, with many more to come. I hope you have enjoyed this part of my journey.

Book preview

In the Silence

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Written on June 6, 1996, this is an early attempt at flash fiction. It first appeared in 365 Days of Flash Fiction.

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In the silence, the old man waits. Silence is golden and so is the sunlight that dapples the table before him. He listens, his ears straining to hear the slightest murmur of movement.

That murmur will be the only warning he will have of the arrival of those for whom he waits. He must not be caught unawares.

His foe is crafty, constantly breeding and setting its young against him. Sometimes he thinks it hopes to wear him down through constant bombardment. Sometimes he thinks it is only testing him, taking notes for its own attack. It has been taking notes for a very long time.

Soon, the old man thinks. Soon you will face me and, this time, the battle will be your last.

The wind whispers in the empty corridor outside the room in which he sits. The old man smiles; they are coming. He had locked the corridor against the wind's intrusion.

There is a sudden rippling eddy of wind and the door is abruptly open. They are here. The old man turns to face them. He does not bother to stand. Standing makes no difference. His chair is set against a wall and the table is a barrier between them.

Not them, she, it, he corrects himself as he looks up.

The creature was his only love until her betrayal, and embracement of the dark.

Now he does stand. For her, it, standing makes a difference. He braces himself trying not to feel the chill of her presence in the air around them. His hand gropes for the sash of hidden curtain that will bring down the false wall at his back. He had known this confrontation would be difficult. He had not known it would be the last.

The beast leaps. He tries not to think of it, as a woman any more. It is quicker than he, and fingernails that have become claws grip his throat. Teeth snap just behind them, put off their aim by his sudden backward movement.

He pulls, hard, on the sash. There is a ripping sound, then a crash, which he barely hears as he falls. The creature's scream pierces his fading mind, but barely, and he does not feel his landing.

He comes to, minutes later. There is blood on his throat. His hand comes away wet with it. Trembling, he fumbles in his pocket for a mirror to see if he has been bitten.

It’s halfway up to his face when he stops. He is lying in a pool of sunlight. The dapples from the fallen curtain have gone. The golden light bathes and warms him.

A fine coating of grey dust falls away as he struggles to rise. It is all that remains of the creature, and he is not tainted, for he is still whole in the sun, not dust as she has become.

It could have been worse, he thinks. It could have been as I expected; there could have been two piles of dust.

He turns away, reveling in the golden touch of the sun, rejoicing in the gentle whisper of a cool breeze that he no longer has to fear.

It is summer again, even though he has reached the autumn of his years. It is summer and he has earnt his place in the sun.

The Buried Blade

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I wrote The Buried Blade sometime in 1998, and it was first published as a stand-alone short story, and then in the now out-of-print Anthology of Blades.

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The sword sang in the darkness. It sang through the rubble that buried it. It sang through the bones of skeletal fingers that had wrapped themselves around it.

The song could not be heard through the muffling shroud of earth covering the sword although it echoed throughout the ancient citadel that was imprisoned with it. The song seeped through the earth for an age, pushing upwards and infecting the soil as it went. It was inevitable that, where the song forged the way, the ghosts would follow.

Nature tried to sound a warning but its guardians were gone, driven out or sleeping or unaware of their powers—and the responsibility that went with them.

Animals fled the mounded earth beneath the grassy field. At least, they fled it where they could. The wild ones forsook it with the freedom that only they possessed, while those of domesticity's prison could only show their reluctance for the field, before their masters forced them into it.

*   *   *

Durned beast! Willis Harran cried, bringing his willow switch down upon the milk cow's rump.

She was the last of the herd to be forced through the gate and, though she had been the easiest of them all, Willis was ready to send her to the knackery. He waved his switch at her once more as his niece closed the gate behind her.

Don't know what's got into them, he muttered, as he climbed the fence beside the field. They've been right skittish of late.

Amanda looked at her uncle. The cattle weren't the only ones who'd been skittish about the field. She'd watched the rabbits forsake their warren, and the morning fox skirt cautiously around the fence instead of cutting straight across the field as he usually did.

Even the birds had stopped hunting for worms within its bounds. Amanda said nothing of this to Willis. He wouldn't have believed her. He might even have laughed.

She followed his broad no-nonsense back toward the small house that served him and her aunt as home, the smell of breakfast driving the field's strangeness from her mind.

The sword's song kept upwards until the cattle began to lose their milk, and Willis's threats of both knackery and willow switch were no longer incentive enough to goad them through the gate.

The field's grass began to fade. Willis moved the cattle to another field and watched their milk improve. Amanda, interested by this unseasonal change, began collecting soil samples to take back to school. She was studying science and the soil in the field might provide her with a project for her final year.

It was what she found while collecting the samples that changed her interest from soil to archaeology. A pottery fragment had ridden the waves of song to a few centimeters from the surface.

Amanda found it when she was lifting another sample of dirt into a test tube. The metal spoon she was using chipped the dirt away from the fragment's surface, and blue paint gleamed brightly on the hillside. She rubbed at it, until the pattern became clear, and her soul leapt with excitement.

Willis! she cried, running down the hill, the fragment in her hand.

What? Willis cried in return, worried that perhaps his niece had hurt herself in her strange excursion.

Amanda was breathless when she reached him.

Look what I found, she said, holding the fragment toward him on her palm.

Curious, he took it. The pattern of blue was clear now. Willis frowned as he studied it.

The pattern seemed to weave before his eyes. A snatch of song whispered in his hand. He blinked uncertainly and handed it back to her.

That's a pretty stone, luv, he said.

Amanda looked at him strangely. Pretty stone? She glanced at the piece of pottery on her palm. It was still pottery and the design was as blue as it had been before. Pretty stone?

I found it on the hill, Uncle Willis, she said.

That's nice, luv, he answered, patting her on the head and walking away from the machinery he'd been fixing. You put it somewhere safe, now.

I will, Willis, Amanda told him.

He waved at her without turning around and walked through the back door of the house. Amanda watched the door close behind him and tucked the fragment in her jacket pocket, with the rest of her equipment.

The cool feel of the test tube's glass and the clink of it against the piece of pottery reminded Amanda of her project and she followed her uncle through the back door of the house.

Other fragments rode the waves of the song to the surface and the song protected them from Willis's recognition. Willis, it sensed, was a guardian. It could see the aura of his power lying dormant, beneath the surface of his mind.

A guardian. It hummed softly, reaching the tips of the grasses and climbing its way up the trunks of trees. It would have to find a champion for itself, if a guardian dwelt in its chosen domain.

Everything it touched began to blacken and die. The birds now flew around the field, no longer perching in its trees. Shadows gained substance as they lurked within its evening bounds.

Willis scratched his head as he watched the field die. He saw how the cattle in neighboring fields grazed further and further from its fence. It was strange behavior for creatures always seeking greener pastures.

He moved his cattle so there was an empty field between them and the infected land and he watched Amanda as she made her daily excursions onto the dead ground.

In the field, the song rose higher. In the soil, its influence spread wider. Now the neighboring fields were beginning to die, starting at the fence. The wild creatures were seen less and less amongst their grasses. Unnoticed by the humans dwelling nearest, the song's taint hung in the air. Amanda, constantly visiting the hill above the buried city, and digging in the soil that lay over the sword itself, did not notice when the sword reached hungry strands of music in her direction.

She was still finding the pottery. Now red was mingled with the blue. She couldn't wait for the holidays to end. Between the soil and the fragments, she knew she had more than enough project material to pass her final year. She might even pass with honors.

*   *   *

The sword lifted a bronze cup from the ruins of a nearby table, and pushed it upwards on the waves of its song. The cup arrived the day before Amanda left for school.

Amanda shouted with delight when she found it, but Willis saw only another, larger, piece of rock, and wondered at her fascination.

Surely you've enough bits of stone, he protested, as she packed it into her suitcase.

This'll be the last, Uncle, Amanda reassured him.

He noted the puzzled look she gave him and shrugged. Amanda carried her case to the car and loaded it carefully into the trunk. In the morning Willis took her to catch the train and the sword's music sought her in vain.

The seed it had planted while she had worked in its field grew into a vine of worries that made her restless and irritable. She completed her homework, and worked on the soil samples.

To her surprise, and her teacher's consternation, the soil appeared to be perfectly normal. Amanda planted seeds in the samples she had brought from her uncle's farm and, when they failed to flourish as the seeds planted in potting mix did, planted seedlings.

Within the week, the seedlings in the test soil had begun to fail while the seedlings in the potting mix were growing strongly. Amanda sought the answer in every agricultural text she could find and, eventually, went to one of the universities in the city.

The lecturer studied her notes with interest.

And you're sure you did everything as you've written it? he asked.

Amanda sighed.

Yes, sir. Exactly as I've written it.

He leaned back in his seat and stared at her,