Haunted MTL Original – When The Sun Sets In The East – Kate Alsbury
“When The Sun Sets In The East” by Kate Alsbury
Around this time of August, I always find myself wandering back to that strange event of so many summers ago. The carnival was late—just one week before the start of school, which seemed to cut further into our warm days of freedom every year.
It felt so small when vacant, but now it was filled with sensation. Fresh popcorn, french fries, music—mingled with a touch of exhaust, wafting through the field that stretched the back of town. But it wasn’t the same as every year. Something was different.
On the last night of the carnival I sauntered to the edge of the encampment, not sure where to go first. The sky played cloudy and mysterious, darkening quickly the way it does that time of summer when you’ve grown accustomed to warm blue light hanging above for hours, only to find inky blackness upon you in a few minutes. That evening it was especially so. No moon, no stars.
I lingered for a moment in the middle of the fairground, spellbound by humming engines and the colorful glow of brightly lit food stands. Then it stopped. All of it. The lights went out, rides halted. Someone at the top of the Ferris wheel shrieked. A brief streak of panic weaved through the crowd. Low voices grew louder, questioning. It came back on just as suddenly, and curiously, began to rain at exactly the same moment. A light, pleasant kind of rain.
As I walked through the maze of entertainments, something came to me. Strange as it seemed, all the people were different. Not one person manning the booths or carnival goer was anyone I knew—or anyone that had been there the previous evenings. I usually saw at least one or two people from town, but not that night.
I leaned back against the lemonade stand—the usual meet for Chase and me—to escape the rain. A short awning provided just enough cover. I waited. Drank a lemonade. Then watched what seemed like an unending number of five-year-olds win goldfish. Where was he? It wasn’t like him not to show, not the last night. He’d been looking forward to this even more than I had. Tired of pancaking myself against the wagon, I started back towards the Ferris wheel when a scraggly old woman leapt out of a maroon tent a few feet away—one that was definitely not there last night, and grabbed my arm. Her eyes, stormy grey with peculiar black lines stemming from the pupil locked onto mine with such dominating force I couldn’t look away. “Don’t you want to see your future? I thought all boys wanted to know what hides in the shadows,” she said with a smirk.
Before I had time to protest, I was in the tent. It was small and sparsely furnished. The only light came from a small table where sat the quintessential crystal ball between two simple wooden chairs. Worn, antiqued, the finish finely scrubbed away as if they had been through every sandstorm in Arabia and the Great Flood of China, surviving to end up under this small spread of fabric. She twisted her finger in the direction of one chair and took the other herself. Honing in on the sparkling globe I noticed it wasn’t just a crystal ball—something was moving inside, like a snow globe but more. Strings of glittering colors. Blues and greens, gold and silver swirled in mesmerizing shapes. Dragons and serpents burst into fireworks; scenes from my past shifted to things I’d never seen before—just as the old witch had promised, the future. Or a future anyway. Shining sports cars, dinner at the best restaurants, grand houses on golden shorelines. A hint of desire slithered within me. Once again, I found it hard to look away.
The longer I stared, the darker the room became. Creeping in peripherally until nothing was visible except for that shining glass ball, now almost blinding. Caught in a spin, I could feel myself being pulled further and further into those hypnotic scenes. It was cold, but a golden haze tingled my skin—the way the sun does in early afternoon.
An inferno leapt up around me. Hot blue-orange light towered, but like standing in the eye of a hurricane, I was untouched. Something stared from within the flames—it was hard to make out. They flickered, beat each other back, split apart in a wild frenzy, then merged again. A face, that much I could tell. Familiar, yet, I couldn’t quite place it. Like someone I knew but hadn’t seen since I was small. A half memory.
Wherever I was, it began to shake violently. Now truly alarmed, I struggled to force myself from the vision. As soon as I was convinced of the chair beneath me and feet in my shoes, I darted out of the tent and back home as fast as I could.
The next day I asked my friends, then neighbors, then just about everyone else I knew if they’d been to the carnival the night before. For one reason or the other none of them had. A sudden fever, the car blew a tire—you get the idea. Chase was the only one I found who had been there and he was beyond annoyed when I told him I’d been waiting for hours to meet. “I was there! I waited too. It was you who didn’t turn up!” shouted Chase. And after nearly accusing me of being a two-faced liar I told him what happened; the rain, the thunder, the old woman—he cooled. He hadn’t seen any of it, but my sincerity and the fantastic nature of the story seemed to win him over.
I haven’t come up with too many explanations for what happened. How Chase and I could have both been there but had completely different experiences. Just as perplexing was that much of what was revealed to me that night came true. I ended up with the big house and sports cars. But as I grow older, the face in the flames returns to me, and the mystery fades.
Kate Alsbury is a writer and marketing consultant. Find her on Twitter @KateAlsbury.
So I’ve been working on more painting into found art (as seen here before) and I thought I’d share a newer one, based on the song The Devil Went Down to Georgia by Charlie Daniels. But first let’s make like my She Wolf post enjoy a couple variations of the song, shall we?
First we have Charlie Daniels, the writer of the song which was inspired by the beautiful poem by Stephen Vincent Benet titled The Mountain Whipporwill. You can read the poem on Your Daily Poem here.
Then we have to watch my favorite version, the animated music video by Primus. I know there are claymation-haters out there who find the effect bit too “uncanny valley” but how can you not just love those chickens?
Anyway, without further ado, here is my painting, incorporated into a found still life, original signed L. Harady.
Here The Devil is defeated, crushed along the lower edge of the artwork beneath the fiddle and lamenting his loss. The bow jabs into his sneering nose as if to add insult to injury, but his eyes still glow, alight with the prospect of coming back for another round. (They actually do glow, I have acquired some blacklight reactive nail polish to use in these pieces now.) I suppose I may go to Hell for this portrayal (or for defiling yet another painting) but alas, such is the price of art sometimes. I guess I’ll add it to the list…
Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or on her writing, fine art, and conceptual projects websites.
If you missed the beginning of this pregnancy horror story by Jennifer Weigel, you can catch Part 1 here.
Jayden’s stomach turned. Who or what was this creature standing before him, and what had it done with his wife? Claire proceeded to eat more than half of the jar of eggs in a fury of consumption; Jayden finally retreated to the office alone unable to watch any more. He heard a sloshing sound as she finished the jar and proceeded to drink the brine before retreating to the bedroom and crashing into their bed, presumably to pass out. Again. Later that night, he crept in to find her sleeping, clammy and sweaty, nervously twitching. Her body made the most abnormal guttural sounds as her internal systems groaned and sputtered. It was definitely getting worse. Jayden resolved to call Dr. Randolph the following morning; this had gone on for far too long already.
The next day, Claire awoke with a start from another bad dream that she couldn’t remember. Crying uncontrollably, she clutched her swollen belly, still ripe with child, and hurriedly exclaimed, “Blood sausage! I must have blood sausage!”
Jayden woke from his curled-up safe haven beside her and muttered, “Wha… What is that? I’ve never even heard of such a thing.”
“Go!” she snapped. “I’m starving. Go now! Return with blood sausage.”
Jayden staggered over to the dresser, threw on some clothes, shuffled into his waiting shoes, and gathered himself to duck out the door in the well-practiced gesture he’d become so accustomed to. “I’ll stop on my way home from work, I guess,” he mused, making his own plans. Claire seemed to settle down a little as she woke further, but it was little consolation.
“Thank you Sweetcheeks,” she said. “You’re the best.” She blew him a kiss.
While at work, Jayden managed to secure an appointment with Dr. Beth Randolph, Claire’s primary physician since before he had known her, for later that day. He took off early and rushed home to gather his unwilling wife. She was going in, whether she liked it or not.
He opened the front door and peered inside. The house was dark and quiet, as he’d come to expect. He crept in and stole upstairs to the bedroom to rouse Claire from sleep. He’d tell her where they were going once he got her in the car, no sense in making this even more difficult than it already was. Unsurprisingly, there she was, a shadowy form hunched over in the bed, her back to him with the covers pulled up over her eyes. He peeled away the comforter and blanket to reveal a tangled mess of white knitted yarn; Claire was nowhere to be found. He looked around, trying to focus on the darkness of the bedroom that enveloped him. That unsettling feeling had returned, like he’d had at Maresh’s shop, sinking into his gut. Claire was here idling, watching, waiting; he could sense her presence sizing him up as if she could read his mind and was on to his plan. But why was her company so disconcerting? This was still their house, their home, their lives intertwined… Jayden felt his trust ebb, spine tingling sensing danger.
“Hey there Sweetcheeks,” Claire’s voice echoed from the darkness of the closet. “Do you have something for me?” She emerged into the room, her eyes wide, frothing slightly at the edges of her mouth. Tiny bubbles of drool burst forth from her quivering lips and trickled down onto her chin.
“I couldn’t find any… blood sausage… whatever that is,” Jayden lied through his teeth. He hadn’t even gone to the store. Claire should never have expected him back at this hour; apparently she didn’t even know what time it was. But that seemingly wasn’t a concern. She wasn’t herself. Something about her fragile frame, the way she rocked from side to side, reminded him of that crazy old witch doctor Maresh. He finally managed to connect the two; it was as though she were possessed. It was imperative that she saw Dr. Beth Randolph as soon as possible, if for no other reason than to sever ties to that crazy old hag and hopefully start to snap out of it. He simply had to get her to that appointment.
“No blood sausage!” Claire shouted, becoming more and more agitated. “No… blood… sausage!” Her breathing became less regular and her body shivered all over as she hulked towards him. “I am sooo hungry!”
She lunged towards him, stumbling into his arms and collapsing towards his feet laughing maniacally. Jayden reached for her instinctively, to lower her to the ground gently, and felt something sticky and warm envelop his hand. Feeling lightheaded, he glanced down as he fell to the floor beside her. Protruding from his gut was a long silver thread, no something pointedly metal and hard, oozing thick oil sludge all around. Not oil, blood. His blood. Claire continued laughing, her lightning-fast fingers quickly and methodically ripping their way into his tattered shirt and worming around within his wounded frame to pull forth bits of viscera, which she wrung in her hands and smeared up and down her arms and torso. As Jayden passed out, she mouthed each of her fingers in turn, sucking the precious liquid off of them one at a time, before she began to feast on his entrails.
Claire’s belly was finally full. The baby developing within squirmed and settled, as if finally satiated. She swiped a stray bit of flesh from her bosom, licked it off of her fingertips, and heaved a sigh of relief. Miracle Madame Maresh Meliasma was right; she just needed to get to the root of her cravings.
Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL. Or on her writing, fine art, and conceptual projects websites.
Here is Part 1 of Cravings, a pregnancy horror story considering darker cravings and changes in contrast to the glow that comes with the all-too-often toxic-positivity focus of carrying a child.
“Honey, I’m home,” Jayden’s voice echoed through the house like a bad 50s sitcom rerun for all that he didn’t watch those kinds of shows. The callout seemed equally rehearsed and hopeful but harbored a hint of fear in the way his voice cracked that didn’t bespeak Mayberry or the like. He waited for his wife Claire to greet him at the door. The house was still and cold with all of the heavy drapes drawn and no lights on anywhere. He glanced towards the dark bedroom where she must be napping, like the day before and the day before that, for weeks and months on end now.
Honestly, Claire hadn’t been the same since she’d finally conceived, following that witch doctor Miracle Madame Maresh Meliasma’s advice after years and years of trying to get pregnant. Now Claire was lethargic and succumbed to migraines, nightmares & morning sickness that kept her bedridden much of the time, screaming bloody murder because of her headaches if anyone so much as flicked on the lights. And she had barely even gotten into the second trimester. Jayden had read that it was supposed to get better but there didn’t seem to be any improvement; if anything she seemed to be getting worse. He tried to get her to see her doctor about it but she snubbed the idea. “After everything they put us through, all those years of fertility treatments, the invasive procedures, the bills… No way. To Hell with modern medicine,” Claire had retorted.
So now here they were, readying themselves for their first child. Maresh had foreseen that Claire would birth a healthy baby boy, and with all of the card readings, spiritual advice and herbal concoctions, Claire had fallen right in line, hanging onto the witch doctor’s every word. Jayden was still frustrated she wouldn’t consult with her normal doctor, but she instead visited with Maresh every day through Instachat online for about an hour and even invited the creepy old woman into their home once a week on Thursday mornings to supply fresh herbs, massage her aching joints and swelling tummy, and call forth healing realigning energies with elaborate candlelit rituals. Claire could focus on only one thing: anticipating the pending home birth and natural delivery of their firstborn child, still several months away.
Jayden wished his wife had never set foot in that weird alternative new age spiritual center, something about it had just seemed off. It wasn’t the crystals or candles or psychic energy books that seemed to line every surface; he wasn’t into any of that mysticism crap but it seemed pretty innocuous. He recalled small figures made of sticks, straw and mud, and giant Mason jars boasting exotic herbal remedies, and the lingering scent of something sickly sweet decaying, all of which was genuinely unsettling, but it wasn’t really that either. There was something decidedly sinister about the place that he couldn’t quite put his finger on, more caught up in the air surrounding and within the space itself. It settled into his gut like that feeling you get when you know you’re being watched by some unseen far away presence or when you meet someone you know deep down has ill intentions. And Maresh herself was just as disturbing; she only ever addressed Claire and had not uttered a single word to Jayden in the entire time. In fact, she acted as if she looked right through him without even seeing him.
As days turned into weeks into months, Claire became more withdrawn and more obsessed about the baby. She never left the house, locking herself away in the gloomy stagnant nest and occupying herself with the remedies, rites and rituals that Maresh suggested. Oh, and knitting. Jayden hadn’t realized that Claire knitted since he had never seen her do so before, but her hands were a frenzy of motion, whipping silver needles back and forth and pulling soft white yarn between them like a growing umbilical cord tethering her to the circumstance at hand like some sort of strange pregnancy lifeline. The so-called blanket she was producing grew larger and larger every day.
Jayden snapped out of his reverie to see his wife eyeing him from the hallway. She studied him up and down slowly, staring longingly at his body. She inadvertently bit her lower lip in anticipation, teeth striking flesh to cut forth a small droplet of blood. Her tongue eagerly danced across her pursed mouth and lapped it up before withdrawing again.
“Aw, what’d you bring me this time, Sweetcheeks?” Claire smirked; eyes alight with flame like a cat readying to pounce
She had been ravenous throughout the pregnancy so far, and her cravings kept getting stranger and more bizarre as time passed. The other day, Jayden had fetched boiled shrimp, and she had devoured over 2 pounds of the mud-bugs in less than an hour’s time, shell, tail and all, their little legs matted together like thick wet whiskers. Today she had requested pickled eggs, the kind that they import from Europe or Dutch-country Pennsylvania in those big almost gallon-sized jars, stained pink with beet juice vinegar. Jayden procured the giant jar of eggs from the paper bag in his arms. Claire lunged at him and grabbed up the prize, prying the lid off in one fell swoop. She reached in, pulled out a pink rubber-looking egg still dripping with brine, and shoved it in her mouth whole. She hadn’t even bothered to chew it before she grabbed another to meet the same fate. And another.
I hope you have enjoyed the first part of this story. Part 2 will air next time here on Haunted MTL. In the meantime, feel free to follow your cravings and order up some midnight munchies, or listen to this lullabye.
Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL. Or on her writing, fine art, and conceptual projects websites.
