#AScareADay - October Reading Challenge Days 28-29

Only 2 days to catch up with now, so this is a shorter episode! I tried my hand at fragment writing, and also a web comic style story with photos I took, and stock photos I found in Canva. So these two days are both a bit experimental! You can find them on cmrosens.com and all the challenge stories listed on romancingthegothic.com if you want to find them.

CW for body horror

Intro/Outro Credits:

"Danse Macabre - Busy Strings" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hello And welcome back to Eldritch Girl.

Today we only have two days, day 28 and day 29

to catch up on. So this is going to be on the

shorter side tonight. Day 28 of A Scare A Day

was 10 excerpts from an annotated bibliography

on the cannibal women of Ratnibar Island by

Nibedita Sen. And this is genuinely one of my

favourites from the challenge so far. I love

this one. This is incredibly rich and layered.

I loved its take on cannibalism. I loved the

fragments of academic writing, biography, letters

that go into making the story. I love that we

got to piece together the situation and the discourse

surrounding the Ratnibar. I thought this was

really powerful, actually. And also the biting

humour in the titles of the academic papers.

Gaur, Shalini, The Subaltern Will Speak If You'll

Shut Up and Listen, Interviews and Intersectionality.

The title of that invented article, for those

who don't know potentially, is a play on the

title of a seminal 1985 paper, Can the Subaltern

Speak? by Chakravorty Spivak, which is credited

with transforming the analysis of colonialism.

And I think Nibidita Sen must have enjoyed coming

up with the titles and author names of each fragment

because they are so well done. Like, I just really

loved it. I also really enjoyed the engagement

with diaspora identity and literary criticism

within the story. And there is a kind of narrative,

but it's so jigsawed together. It's really interesting.

There are so many layers to this one before we

even get to the content, which touches on young

love, which is lesbian love. The giving of flesh

as a non -Christian sacrament rooted in other

traditions. The way the English girl didn't perhaps

understand the tradition. she was trying to enact

and that she did it without the knowledge of

her Ratnabar lover. The ideas of motherhood and

consumption, matriarchy and nourishment, othering

and exoticisation, creating layers of legend

and sensationalism. It goes on. I just... Loved

it. I thought it was so rich. It's available

free online. I've linked it in my post for day

28. So you can go follow that. It's also on romancingthegothic

.com's list for the scare a day challenge. I

definitely would like to read more by this author.

She has an author spotlight in the 2019 issue

of Nightmare Zine, if anyone else would like

to know more about her. And more of her work

for Nightmare specifically is also linked in

that post. If you like the style of invented

papers and fragments as a way of storytelling,

I have something like that for werewolves. So

I thought I would put that out there as my little

creative response to this. and it isn't anything

like as good as today's use of it and much more

frivolous in tone but i thought it might be worth

a repost here and i've lightly edited it a bit

so it's kind of a repost but it was the only

thing that i had i could only think of um it's

the only time so far that i've tried out this

style to explore something so i thought i would

pop that here as a kind of thing i'm playing

with Historical notes on the village of Hanging

Stones, West Yorkshire. 1518. A strange happening.

Extract from REE Stubs, Hangingstones and Other

Villages. A short history. Published 1898. 1518.

three days after they hanged widow harding at

the hanging stones there came upon the village

near by a terrible storm so great the roof of

the church fell in and the tower crumbled several

of those huddled inside were killed but those

who escaped reported tales of a large black dog

with deep red eyes like the burning pits of hell

who came amongst them and tore many limb from

limb Indeed, it was reported there that when

the bodies were recovered from the church, they

showed signs of tearing rather than crushing,

as if they had been rent asunder by a wild, ferocious

beast. Of the survivors of this terrible atrocity,

it was said that they were never themselves after,

and that on the nights of the full moon they

could be seen on the tour capering around the

stone circle there, and shifting their shapes

to roam the moors as beasts. There came a certain

priest to that place to see if what was said

was true, but he came away saying there was nothing

to the tale but superstition and tragedy. But

the priest himself was rumoured to have the power

to shift his shape at will, a slur against his

character levelled by the Protestants, and he

was later burned at the stake for refusing to

recount his Roman Catholicism. Nevertheless,

the superstition has arisen that every hundred

years or so, for these things are never terribly

precise, the black dog with burning eyes is seen

again, plaguing travellers and locals alike,

sometimes to blame for the deaths of livestock

and for spooking horses along the road, at other

times driving people to madness, and still at

others taking vengeance if called upon for this

purpose. 1620 A curious tale from Yorkshire,

another extract from REE Stubbs, Hangingstones

and Other Villages, a short history. While in

Lancashire the Pendle Hill witch trials were

ongoing, in Hanging Stones there was a coven

who danced with the devil on the tour, so they

say, and they called upon the demon keeper of

the hounds of hell to release one of his creatures

to protect them from the witch finders. After

their dark rites beneath the full moon, a howl

rang out across the moors like the call of a

mermaid or siren, irresistible and beautiful

and terrifying. They followed the sound of the

howl like ones possessed, witch -hunters and

witches alike, leaping and dancing under the

stars, and went straight into the gorge at devil's

drop and were never heard from again. But that

very night, and for many nights afterwards, travellers

spoke of a large black dog roaming the moors

that spooked their horses, and farmers lost many

livestock. 1735. A Gothic Mystery. Extract from

the published journal of Dr. L. Fairweather,

Volume 2, travels through the North Country,

1730 -37. 28th August, 1735. A certain curate's

daughter, Alice Thompson, vanished from her home

on the night of Wednesday last, after receiving

a note from a stranger to the village. The stranger

stayed the night at the George Inn, but no trace

of him has been heard or seen since his sudden

departure in the night. No blame could ever be

attached to such a pure young lady as Miss Thompson,

and her frantic parents and friends expect foul

play. the circle of standing stones on the tor

above the village where in the past miscreants

from the parish were hanged upon the gibbet set

there are a gruesome and sinister sight and scraps

of bloodied cloth were discovered therein upon

the grass which appear to be part of a lady's

nightgown with a fine lace collar her mother

has identified the lace as belonging to the missing

lady Nobody has yet been recovered, but a local

farmer claimed that he saw a large black dog

with blood -red eyes upon the road, and that

this was the very night that both Miss Thompson

and the stranger vanished. Their connection to

each other is still quite unknown. 9th September,

1735. Regarding the tragic tale of Miss Alice

Thompson that I recorded previously, the remains

of a young man were later recovered from Devil's

Drop, mauled and savaged beyond recognition.

In his pack recovered from the grisly scene,

there were pieces of Miss Thompson's jewellery

and an ivory fan. Miss Thompson's fate remains

a mystery. 1826. A Tale of Terror. local newspaper

report a terrifying tale from yorkshire has set

the imaginations of our most sensible gentlemen

on fire of late with several astonishing stories

emerging from the survivors of sir william armytage's

hunting party the party of experienced gamekeepers

and less experienced gentlemen became lost on

the moors of the gamekeepers only mr daniel heywood

was left staggering over the tor with sir thomas

r whose leg was very badly wounded They were

with a young beater purported to be Mr. Hayward's

son, Master Samuel Hayward and Sir Charles L.

None of these eminent gentlemen are given to

flights of fancy and are considered to be most

sensible, redoubtable fellows, and yet the tale

they told of a great devil dog hunting them across

the moor and devouring their hapless companions

was fit for the most lurid of publications. 1919.

Murder on the Moors. Local newspaper report.

For some, the horrors of the front are no mere

memory. Lance Corporal Samuel Thackray was shot

dead last week in a tragic case of shell shock,

a common affliction among the returning men.

It is reported that Private Charles Bennett,

who served in Thackray's regiment during the

Great War, was running wild on the moor in pursuit

of the imagined enemy, and that the Lance Corporal

was shot attempting to bring Bennett to his senses.

For several days prior to the shooting, neighbours

alleged that Bennett had reported hearing howling

on the moors and seeing a girt black hound watching

his cottage at night and believed it to be a

death omen of some kind. Bennett was seen limping

after a dog bite, apparently blaming the black

hound. Bennet, who had grown increasingly disturbed

since his return from France, became agitated

after a small boy let off a firework on the village

green, causing him to commence snarling, shouting

and threatening passes by. He accused Lance Corporal

Thackray, whom he did not appear to recognise,

of being a German officer and many other fantastical

things besides, before drawing his pistol and

shooting the Lance Corporal in the head. The

curious detail learned by this reporter is that

Bennett shot Thackray with a silver bullet and

no one can account for how he came by it. 1940

Ghost Stories and Death Omens of the North C.

B. Pickering Red Cross Books 1940 There is a

curious set of superstitions around the village

of Hangingstones. The village is most isolated

one, even in these days, with the No. 5 bus from

Halifax going through it but once a week, on

a Tuesday. It contains one public house, and

a village shop that doubles as a post office.

Of the tea -room and other such attractions for

the day -trippers it has never heard, and is

in no hurry to acquire such frivolous accoutrements.

Its denizens are a curious lot and quite taciturn

in their way, but their favourite stories to

tell the curious are all to do with the girt

black dogs that roam the moors. Not only are

these death omens for anyone outside the village,

but it would seem every villager has seen one,

or has their own personal black dog, whose description

differs ever so slightly from that of their neighbour.

one man on the number five bus told me rather

jovially that he would not set foot in the village

for all the tea in china and what was more on

the late night bus one fateful night in october

the previous year he had found himself passing

through hanging stones to the full moon high

in the sky I kept my head down and prayed we

wouldn't stop, said my travelling companion,

in a strong Yorkshire accent I would do a disservice

to transcribe. And I don't mind telling you,

a chill went right up my spine. Seems like every

house has a dog, and every dog was in the garden.

And it shook me right up it did, as every single

one was about the same size. Big they were, and

dark fur, and all stood in the front gardens

of the houses, dead silent like, watching the

bus go by. Indeed, if one were to listen to the

gossip of the villages dotted round about in

these lonely windswept parts, Hanging Stones

is a village of the damned, of apparitions and

of family curses, passed down in a long line

from parents to children. 1989. The View from

the Tor. Private memoir of a country doctor,

published anonymously in the West Riding Gazette.

It is no easy task to take off one's skin. First,

because the skin you see is different to the

skin you do not see, and it is much easier to

peel something tangible from your body than it

is to detach your very essence. Second, because

it hurts. Observe a field in the witching hour,

once deserted, now crawling with stripped bodies.

Silver light gleams on a mass of undulating skin

writhing in the dark. the expanse of grass is

now a lake of spines and cresting bodies moving

in waves and ripples of cracking lengthening

shifting bones peach white and gammon pink meets

and merges with earth tones and stone tones golden

rich mottled grazed stippled with psoriasis and

acne smooth and supple Among the neat stacks

of clothes on the field's edge humanity has been

put aside, folded carefully with the shirts and

skirts and jeans and shoes, the shape of each

person carefully stowed between layers of polyester

and cotton. Upturned buttocks, reflecting the

roundness of the orb above, undulate in various

stages of painful eruption. A second hole opens

above the anus, where there was a coin -shaped

scar, now a coin -sized opening. The tailbone

erupts through it, pushing to the surface and

breaking the skin. Lengths of fur unfurl like

fern fronds, feeding through the broken holes

where the skin is already raw from last month's

turning. a forest of tails curling and dark some

glinting with aged grey and some with youthful

white blossom upwards small ruby spots fleck

the raised round cheeks drips of claret leaving

the curves tear -streaked ribs expand and crack

it is hard to breathe when the body knows it

should not be this shape this size Reconfiguring

contortions sweep the gathering, causing billowing

humps of groaning flesh to surge and subside,

slick with perspiration. One final push relieves

them of their burdens, gives them full and final

release. And now the pack shake damp fur and

trot into the dark, leaving their human layers

behind. There we go. um that's that a scare a

day day 29 was the portrait of sal pullman by

lonnie nadler and abby howard this was a web

comic and i really liked it It's brilliantly

creepy. I love the art. I love the play on Lovecraft's

1927 story, Pickman's Model, Mary Shelley's 1818

novel, Frankenstein and the Modern Prometheus,

and Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel, The Portrait of

Dorian Gray. So I think it's a very appropriate

subject matter to depict in comic format. It's

the story of an artist who paints his... self

-portrait believing it to be a monster and he

sees it as a monster but nobody else does everyone

else sees it as a beautiful wonderful work of

art that is his best work yet and then of course

the monster escapes the picture and he ends up

swapping places with it and he sees this horrible

monstrous creature in his place with his family

while he's looking out from the portrait and

becoming the real life painting of himself and

I thought this was just such a really interesting

take on I don't know like self -actual self -realization

or self -awareness being a scary monstrous thing

I don't know like Pickman's model is the tale

of an artist who paints the most horrendous monsters

and it turns out that they're not from his twisted

imagination they're from real life and I made

that connection first and then read on as the

tale morphed into this tale of self -fulfilling

prophecy and one of terrible consequences. And

the black and white line art really lent itself

to the story. I thought the style meshed really

well with the prose. Really liked that. I think

what really struck me most with this was the

sense of twisted self -image and that just made

it really incredibly sad and poignant for me.

And I kind of, I guess I was thinking about Lionel

Pickett -Johnson's Dark Angel in the poem for

day 10, like the idea of some dark part of you

being given its own life outside yourself, becoming

an adversary to conquer or be conquered by. So

I was drawing those parallels as I was reading

it. I think you should definitely check this

out. If this sounds like your thing, go to terrortown

.com and check out The Door in the Kitchen as

well or their version of O 'Whistle and I'll

come to you, my lad. That's terra -town .com

For this story, I thought I would have a go at

telling a short spooky yarn via a different medium

to my usual prose format. So I was inspired by

a photography poem, You Are the Sky, which can

be found at youarethesky .co .uk, which was intended

to be a webcomic but took on a life of its own.

And then that, for me, kicked off a deeper appreciation

for its creator, who was one of my Twitter followers

back in 2014 -15. And long story short, we're

married now. So anyway... The video embedded

in the post is the comic form of a story I wrote

called The Condemnation of Starling Lane which

was originally written for a Monstrous May prompt

in 2023. Monstrous May happens every May and

the prompts are created by Johannes T Evans.

I've also got individual panels with alt text.

and a link to view directly on canva for larger

slides yeah so that was quite fun so all i did

with that was i took some photos and then i took

some stock photos and manipulated them a little

bit with some photo blurring and pixelating tools

And then added some text and put them into a

comic strip template. And that was quite fun

to do. It didn't take me very long. Yeah, so

I quite enjoyed that. So it's an abridged or

truncated version of the full story. I've also

posted the full story in prose version below.

And this is the full prose story that I'm going

to read out. The Condemnation of Starling Lane.

My neighbour has been dead for days. but I can

still hear him coughing through the wall. It

is a hollow, hard bark of a cough, forced from

his chest cavity and vibrating over his voice

box, but it isn't him doing the breathing. Starling

Lane is a long street behind a disused train

track that once branched from the main line to

the Barker Mill and curved along past the village

of workers known as Barker Crescent, which is

several streets in curved rows set a short distance

from the town, and arcing down to Pagham -on

-Sea Docks, not to be confused with the historic

Pagham Harbour, which only shares the first part

of the name. I moved there in the summer of 2007,

when there were 58 terraced cottages, two for

sale, three rented. It wasn't a bad little place

to live. It had storage heaters and hadn't been

decorated since 1984. Authentically retro, the

estate agent said to me. I saw some mould in

the attic. Don't worry about that, the surveyor

said. It's not dangerous. The houses on the end

of the row seemed to disagree. Whenever I walked

by, the curtains were speckled grey with it,

hanging in the windows like limp rags. Paint

peeled around the door frames. I never saw anyone

go in or out of numbers 1 to 4 Starling Lane,

and after a couple of years, I started noticing

that 5 to 8 were also eerily quiet. No music,

no dogs, no kids, no arguments. The lights stopped

coming on. The cars remained in the parking spaces,

but one day I got home from work and three of

them were missing. Then another four cars. Gone.

Other neighbours parked there instead, leaving

gaps for my Nissan Micra. I never parked in front

of those houses. I couldn't tell you why. Some

sixth sense, perhaps. Well, I know now. In 2010,

they knocked down numbers 1 to 10. There were

skips in the street and around the corner, and

I had a nose through some of the items. They

were throwing away all the good stuff. Coffee

tables, kitchen appliances, curtains, bed linen,

bed frames, bookcases. I took a few things from

my house. I thought nobody would mind. I should

have suspected something then, when my eczema

flared and got worse, spreading over my hands

and elbows and arms in rough, bleeding patches.

But it settled down and responded to treatment,

leaving white, rough splotches behind, and I

tried not to think about them. I covered up,

kept them dry. I saw a specialist when my skin

began to change, when it began to harden, when

small growths appeared. They were like boils,

but solid, and underneath the hump of hard, bleach

-white skin was a layer of translucent jelly

that clung into my flesh with tiny fibres. I

managed to peel one off with a butter knife,

the flat blade slipping in the gap and prising

it away, leaving a shallow, bloody pit. It hurt,

but it healed. I didn't want to see another doctor.

My skin didn't want me to, so I didn't go. Nothing

filled the gap the condemned houses had left

behind. Number 11 was empty, unsold. The people

at number 12 moved out six months later, then

number 23. I never knew them. At night I thought

I could hear a moaning sound, like someone in

pain. A long, drawn -out groan in the early hours,

right above my head. The attics connect, you

see, all the way along. They're all partitioned

off, but the terrace was built in one long line.

Dividing walls put up on a shared foundation.

Maybe the coal cellars all connect too. Mine

is a concrete box, far too damp for storage.

I did investigate the moaning. I assumed at first

it was someone's TV, but couldn't fathom what

they'd be watching that sounded like that. I

went up to my attic with a torch, and it was

coming from the other side, but how far along

I couldn't tell. I went back downstairs and came

out of the house in a dressing gown and slippers,

walking slowly along the street in the dark.

There wasn't anything to hear from outside. Nothing

except the scream of a vixen, strangled and eerie,

somewhere in the woods behind the terrace. There

was the rumble of distant traffic, reassuringly

human and modern and civilised. But there was

no moaning, no human -voiced groans. None of

the other houses had lights on. I went back home,

and the sounds had stopped. Not long after that,

numbers thirteen to fifteen had notices served.

I didn't actually see their tenants leave. Number

twenty -eight and number forty went up for sale.

I asked the lady at 40 if they were moving somewhere

nice. She just looked at me as if I had asked

her what the moon was really made of. I should

have gone too. But I didn't. I don't know why

I didn't. I blame my skin. When number 40 was

empty, things got worse. 16 to 27 were silent.

I never saw them. The moaning at night resumed.

But it sounded different. Less human. more like

the lowing of a cow but a cow with a human throat

i don't know i couldn't figure out where it came

from i picked off boil after boil that summer

packing the pits they left in constant pain with

a stinging that set my skin on fire My eyes began

to swell and itch. I found layers of the jelly

on the undersides of my eyelids eating into the

raw pink underneath. It detached as I pulled

my lower lid down in the bathroom mirror. Thin

and pale grey, but rooted at the bottom. I tried

to remove it myself with tweezers and it came

away painfully in gelatinous pieces. I couldn't

get all of it. And it came back. It rewarded

me only when I left it alone. My second eyelids

grew back after I tweezed them out, for that

was the best way I can describe what they are.

I had muscular control over them at first, two

sets of lids that blink independently of one

another. The lower set are now fused over my

eyeballs, and I still see, but in a grey filmed

glaze. It is restful, and better this way. Now

I do not have to look at myself, my skin, my

situation, and see what has happened to me. It

is easier to accept. And besides, there is no

I anymore. I am we, we are me, and yet there

is still some part that insists on an independent

sense of self. The part of me still encased in

this skin. They knock down numbers 11 to 30.

We had inspectors come to visit the other properties

from Environmental Health but I refused to let

them through the door. They said they'd be back

with warrants and legal permission and I called

their bluff on that. They wanted to know if I

had a skin condition. I shut the door. My skin

stopped hurting so much after that. I began to

nurture it. It liked me to moisturise. I stopped

picking out the boils. They only came back. My

toes fused first. Then my fingers, webs of skin

fragile and soggy, linked the digits together.

These were easily broken, like the thin covering

of a blister. But when broken, they itched maddeningly,

and the itching was impossible to relieve. I

let them be, aired them, dried them, and they

hardened. Only that brought relief. I noticed

now that the patches were changing colour. There

was a greenish -grey tinge to the skin. Some

of those bleach -white patches were darkening

to a kind of mushroom torp, while others mottled

into shades of light and dark, slate and lichen.

When I could not get out of bed any more, I knew

that they would condemn our houses too, that

this was not just me, but the whole street, and

we would all soon be gone. I clung to the seconds

of life like they were small eternities, moulded

to the mattress and sheets with the jelly of

my new flesh, feelers of it connecting to the

rest of the street. That's how I knew my neighbour

was dead. I could taste him, if I tried. I could

reach into his chest with my extremities and

pump his diaphragm as I feasted, keeping myself

alive just that little bit longer, until they

came for me. I could feel others, also still

alive, doing the same to my living body. We nourished

each other. It is strange that, in those final

moments, we never exchanged words, but we were

more in community than we had ever been on our

little street. Environmental health are back.

They have erected a cordon. My thick, spongy

hide is no protection from what they will bring

to finish us off. I am not afraid of the wrecking

balls and the flamethrowers, though. I am ripe

and ready. They do not yet know we need the heat

and the fire. My hide is bursting with nuggets

of life. They may destroy Starling Lane, wipe

it off the town map like it was never here, but

we will live on. Things like us always find a

way. And there we go. So just a short half an

hour episode today, but that's days 28 and 29

all caught up. Thank you for listening. Our very

last episode is on Friday. See you then for the

last two episodes. Bye for now.