The Serpent and the Succulent

“I can pick it up?” Marcella asked, gazing down at the little statue standing directly on the clean bench top.

Leo smiled and straightened his back. “Go ahead.” As his sister gently picked up the stone-carved statue of a snake wrapped around and resting in the thick leaves of a succulent, he explained. “This is one of the flawed replicas, so Doctor Valdez talked someone into letting us have it—or at least borrow it. They probably won’t use it in the exhibit.”

Marcella held the statue up and peered into the snake’s glassy blue eyes. She slowly turned it one way and then the other, studying the shapes and details of the painted leaves. She no doubt was wondering what species of snake it was, and what variety of succulent. One of the leaves still had thorns and little bulb-like protrusions along the edge. But most of those delicate details had fallen off the original carvings.

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The Infernal Bargain House

A gray shape darted past me to my right. I turned to the ragged bushes entangled with dried weeds. One of the stems shuddered and I heard a rustling. But the overgrowth was too thick for me to see what was moving around in there. Back home—my previous home—I would have guessed it was a lizard. But here, in my new home, it could have been a rabbit. A wild rabbit.

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Draugamunninn

Legend says that the draugamunninn were once human.  They were a practical but severe people who after suffering one terrible winter too many, and after failing to feed themselves with their own hands and their own labor, began to pray to their old gods for relief.  But their prayer was not answered by a god.

It was answered by a demon.

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Mausefalle Manor

Naomi clicked on her recorder, took a deep breath, and asked her grand-aunty Z about the one thing that her mother and grandmother told her to never, ever, never, never, ever ask her about.

“Aunty, what did you see when you went into Mausefalle Manor?  And how is it that you got out when so many other people never did?”

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