Devil is Fine

By Michael Bettendorf

I ain’t a good man, but that don’t mean I like doing bad things. Not everyone is afforded the choice. Not truly, anyhow, but I’ve accepted that one day I’ll be judged for what I’ve done. What I do. My lot in life didn’t leave me with a good family or much in ways of inheritance, but I was gifted with a decent mind and an eye for opportunity.

It’s how I’ve found myself huddled on the ground near some boy named Mitchell who’s convinced he’s a man just because he don’t live at home no more. But the boy’s so embarrassed by his lack of whiskers, he covers his face with a bandana all the time, like he’s playing bandit. Well if anyone is going to be suspected a bandit, I suppose it’s better Mitchell than me.

“It’s colder out here than I thought,” Mitchell says, poking the fire.

“The plains tend to trick you. Hardly any cover out in these parts. Makes any breeze feel ten times colder.”

Mitchell rubs his arms, hugging himself.

“It true you took that stagecoach yourself?” the boy asks. “That how you get that beautiful horse of yours?”

“Don’t know what you mean.”

“No need to be coy,” he says. “I heard you took a guarded stagecoach and everything in it all by yourself. Not a single breath of air left in anyone’s lungs. That true, mister Grant?”

“Just Grant,” I say. “And I ain’t interested in tall tales.” (Continue Reading…)

Keeping Up with the Conan Doyles

by Jess Whitecroft

From the Journals of the Society for Psychical Research. Interview with Angela Patterson, housekeeper of Latham Hall, present at the last séance of Neville Worth. 14th August 1956.

You want me to talk about the last séance? All right, but I must start at the beginning. I think it was around ’25 that her Ladyship began manifesting ectoplasm. It was definitely after the fairies incident. You remember the fairies, don’t you? Although of course you don’t – I doubt you were even born, or just a babe in arms. But you’ve heard about it, of course – Cottingley Glen?

Oh, we did laugh. Becky, she was a young thing like you. They kept her downstairs for years because Lord Latham objected to her Midlands accent – sort of a singsong about it. She was from Nuneaton. Don’t know if she ever went back there, but she disappeared after the… the incident. Anyway, I get ahead of myself – she had a brother who knew his way around a darkroom, you see. Took one look at the picture of the fairies and laughed fit to burst. “I don’t know what those fairies are,” she said. “But they’re not moving. Look. If they’re flying their wings should be going flap flap flap like a butterfly, right? But they’re not. Look at the waterfall behind the girl, Mrs P. See how it’s blurred? That’s shutter speed, that is. It’s faster than it was in the old days when you used to have to stand still as a statue for minutes to have your picture taken, but even then if you’ve got something moving fast – like a waterfall or the wings of a little flying creature – it still shows up on the photograph as a blur.”

When she pointed it out like that it was obvious, and it turns out the girls who took the pictures were quite the artists. Sir Arthur said they were too young and too common to pull off such tricks – “children of the artisan class,” he said. Shows how much he knew. I heard one of them even worked in a photographic lab, making composite pictures. Always dangerous to underestimate people, especially young women. (Continue Reading…)

All the Eyes That See

by Alan Baxter

Sitting on the neatly upholstered chair in the tiny office I try not to let my frustration show. “Really, nothing at all?”

“Not in town.” The real estate agent’s face is apologetic. “With the flower festival on it’s our busiest time of year.”

“There must be something.”

“It’s our own fault, Jim,” Mary says, putting a hand on my knee as she smiles at the agent. “We just don’t have distances like this in England. We under-estimated how far apart things are.”

Sydney to Melbourne is nearly as far as London to Glasgow, but it’s such a speck on the greater map of Australia. This continent is inconceivably huge. That realisation doesn’t help us now, late afternoon in the middle of nowhere. Our decision to take the scenic route has come to bite us. “Is this really such a small town?” I ask.

The man leans back in his chair, still smiling. “We’ve a little over five hundred residents, nearly half of that out on farms all around. In town there’s one hotel and one motel, both packed to the gills. Lots of people travel in.”

“For the flower festival.”

“What about the Carroll place?” (Continue Reading…)