Sunday 30 April 2017

Part 30 (Part A and B)

(I actually thought this year I would make it dead on 30 poems as i am sure you would but the finale poem below became apparent it would be two short poems rather than one.

Thanks for reading and see you next year for Ghost Story V. The link shall be here http://ghoststoryv.blogspot.co.uk/ and somepoint on Monday 1st May - an complete audio transcript shall appear on https://andyn.bandcamp.com/)


Thirty

(A)

‘He’s here, isn’t they?’ Brooks said.

The Man in Black nodded
Coughing over and over

‘Then it’s time isn’t it?’

Brooks spat out his cheeseburger
And cocked his pistol smiling responded
‘Let’s join the party then, shall we?’


(B)

And on the other side
Of the venue,
The Supernatural Unit
Waited and watched

Waited and watched. 

Saturday 29 April 2017

Part 29

(Yes. An old friend returns)

Twenty-Nine 

And from out of nowhere
In the mist 
Stood there hundreds of them.

Hundreds and hundreds.

All armed to the teeth.

All dead. 

Some recently dead 
With skin as pale as teeth.

Others with faces little more
Than skeletons barely standing. 

‘Who are they?’ Joe said. 

‘War’ Mandrake laughed 
Coughing blood
‘A big fucking war’

All lead by Andy. 

Yep me. 

Friday 28 April 2017

Part 28

(Yep. My birthday and I'm still going strong)

Twenty-Eight

After the death of the soldiers
The howling increased
Across the moonlight
Shattering the windows
Of the deserted bars,
And the burnt out buses
Before burying itself in the tunnel
At the edge of the sealed out area,

Distorting the mist
Into a broken red
Leaving Mandrake,
Joe,
Cherry
Stood there alone
As the vampires
Slowly started to hover around them


‘We’re doomed’ Joe whispered

‘Nope’ Mandrake smiled
And stuck his fingers in his mouth
And whistled. 

Thursday 27 April 2017

Part 27

( A short piece but a important one today)



Twenty-Seven

‘You knew they had no chance’
Michelle spat on the floor

‘And who would have listened to me?’
Mandrake stared at her
‘Just because you’re dead doesn’t
Give you executive powers’

‘It does now’
She looked at the Vampires
Stepping out of the building.

Towards them. 

Tuesday 25 April 2017

Part 26

(Part 26 is back to the gore at the beginning of the story.)


Twenty-Six

Ripped into pieces
Of course the government soldiers
Didn’t stand a chance
When the doors opened again.

Didn’t stand a chance
No matter what kind of bullets
They used.

Whether heavy duty
Or something they stole
From that spaceship crash
Ten years ago.

Whether silver which they had used
For slaying that werewolf
In the Picc Vic Project
(Hushed up of course).


They sprayed their bullets
Like confetti
Into the swarm of the undead
Which followed Mandrake
And the rest out
And then instead of running
Carried on shooting

And shooting

Until it was too late

And twenty more souls
Entered the afterlife. 

Part 25

(Cherry again today)

Twenty-Five

Diving past the pair of them
Cherry leap towards the door
Like a propeller taking down
The door screaming
They’re chasing us,
They’re chasing us
Don’t shoot,
Don’t shoot’
And much to all of their surprises
They didn’t shoot them
Signalling for the them
To get behind them
Clearly not recognising Mandrake.

Not that it mattered.


Monday 24 April 2017

Part 24

(They open fire)


Twenty-Four

Pinned down by the bullets
Which burst through the doors
As soon as Michelle left
Mandrake started loading
His fist like pistol again

Counting seconds
Until they paused
Thinking they must be dead
Before making his next move

‘Aren’t those guys on our side?’
Joe asked shocked

‘The only person on my side
Is me’

Mandrake snarled. 

Sunday 23 April 2017

Part 23

Twenty-Three

‘Not unless I see you there first’
Michelle smiled
Sliding through the door
Seeing the Soldiers
Positioned outside
Of course
Before the rest did,

Clicking their rifles
Like extensions to their fingers

Clearly full aware
Of the carnage
They had just gone through
The building all the way
Onto the street and then back
Into there again,


And despite her screams
Of Run away
She knew there
Was nothing
She could do. 

Saturday 22 April 2017

Part 22

(A tender love piece here NOT (: )


Twenty-Two

Broken into bursts of piped grunts
Mandrake snarled at Michelle
‘I’ll kill you,
I’ll toss you back into hell’,

To which both Joe and Cherry
Looked at each other
In confused tones
All the way out

Who should they trust?

Who did they want to trust?

And with a honest answer
To themselves
Without saying words
They both knew
They didn’t have a clue.

Friday 21 April 2017

Part 21

Twenty-One

Michelle looked at Mandrake
With her faint shell drifting in and out
As the wind from the broken window
Slowly passed through her frame

‘You don’t scare me, Benjamin’
Carrying the echo of his name
Through the room
‘You didn’t when I was alive
And you don’t know’

To which Mandrake fired at her
With three bullets
Dancing through the silence
In frustration
Full well knowing what
It would bring crashing
Behind them.


Thursday 20 April 2017

Part 20

Twenty

Peppered white
In the middle of snowfall
On top of the Pendle Hills, 
Michelle was murdered
And by Mandrake

Sprinkled white in fury
Over a betrayal
Or a affair gone sour
Buried deep
In a distant age 

Peddling across generations
Bent deep with two shots

One from the distance
Which struck Michelle down
From the distance

And the other moments later
Splattering her head
for half a metre across
Making identification
Nearly impossible,

Mumbling all the way
She asked for it
As he shot her again
Despite her pleading
It wasn’t her

It wasn’t her

Unaware how powerful
Her magic was. 

Wednesday 19 April 2017

Part 19

Nineteen

Mandrake stood there
Staring at her for several seconds
With his eyes
Almost looking
like he was eyeing her up
Instead of wanting
to kill her in ways
than had been forgotten
about for centuries
‘I killed you’ He looked at her

‘I threw your body into the pit’

‘And don’t think I know it’
Michelle looked at him. 


Tuesday 18 April 2017

Part 18

(In case, you don't know who the Pendle Witches are - a good reading point is here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendle_witches and i will be writing more about this in the future) 


Eighteen 

You could cut the tension
With not just a knife
But a axe
Using it to channel your way
When they looked at each other
Before going back through time
To when they were both young, 

About how much they had been in love
And planned to vanish 
To that hut they’d always wanted  
Up near Pendle Forest
just before the burnings started, 
Only for the Soldiers to take it away,

Burning her to the stake
Only to be amazed
When the flames died 
And he changed 
Sending the survivors mad, 

Born in flames
And dying in musket fire,

Unaware that demons
Was real 
Not spiteful family gossip. 




Monday 17 April 2017

Part 17

Seventeen 

Tattooing his lips together 
‘Your dead?’ Joe looked at her stunned. 

‘It’s a long story’ She answered
Crushing her words into a mess of distortion
‘We’re not close’ 

‘No, we’re not’ a voice said
From the other side of the hall. 

Sunday 16 April 2017

Part 16

Sixteen

The scream haunted 
Some of the Soldiers 
From the inside out

Intricately scarring some
In feelings unexplored
When it eventually stopped.

Some had served for ten years
And fought in
Countless battles and wars,

Others had been in Northern Ireland
Terrified to patrol alone
Some areas alone

And others in the Middle East
Enthroned in death like a brother
But left shaking here

Glistened with a patterned rage
As the screaming and the killings 
Cut straight through their spines

And completely unsure
Whether they should wait
Or just opening fire. 

Saturday 15 April 2017

Part 15

Fifteen

Five years the reports said afterwards
They had been together.

Five years.

Starting off as friends at school.
then lovers at College.

Five years.

Just a normal fun loving couple
Grown up together loving the same music.

Five years.

Scraping pennies together
To see one of their favourite bands.

Five years.

Queuing up in the rain
On the night of the gig,

Conjuring support
For the support act
When nobody else did

Riddled with symmetry
When everybody started head banging

Salved in terror laced with fear
As everybody did when the killing started
And hid behind the bar
As their friends died around them.

Five years.

And in five minutes
Their lives changed forever. 

Friday 14 April 2017

Part 14

Fourteen

Stopping still in the shadows
Cherry looked at Joe
Twirling in a
Half exhausted slumber
Clothed in a sweaty condensation
Unsure what had just been said to them
Before stating 
‘Who are you?’

‘I’m his wife’ She proclaimed
‘Or rather his ex wife’

‘Ex Wife?’ Joe looked at her shocked


‘Yes, before he killed me’  

Thursday 13 April 2017

Part 13

Thirteen

Casting shadows over the corpses
Laid out across the ground
Without saying a word
Looking side-wards towards the exit
Bleached purple in the moonlight
She said to them
‘Do you want to live?’

‘What do you think?’ Cherry answered

‘Do you want to live?
Her words repeated themselves
Zigzagging across them
In a shocked delirium
To which they both nodded wordlessly
‘We better move before he returns’

‘Who is he?’ This time it was Joe.

‘Death, his name is Death’
She stopped by the door. 

Wednesday 12 April 2017

Part 12

Twelve

Skipping backwards
It is hard to believe
Mandrake was once a man
Not always a killer

Turned in the industrial revolution
Casually tossed aside
Invisible like
And turned by accident

Into a infidel sea of dead bodies
Buried in a carnage of feeling
Until his neck was almost ripped away
And his body drained of blood

His skin feeling
Like burned chimneys
Un-rhymed in broken dreams
Forever autographed by the moon. 

Tuesday 11 April 2017

Part 11

Eleven

Changing directions
With his broken toe
The Man in Black looked at Brooks
Nodding speechlessly
Buried in blankets of thought

‘Have you heard from her?
Brooks said

The Man in Black
Looked back up Oxford Road
With the screams
Echoing in the distance
‘No, but Michelle said
he would be there’

‘And that is what worries me’

Monday 10 April 2017

Part 10

Ten

Adrift the carnage carried
All over the venue
From the ground floor to the third
After Mandrake was
Slowly pushed downwards
Screaming with a anger
‘Come on, I’ve got all night’

leaving Joe and Cherry
shaking with a fear
that turned scarlet
when more and more
were cut down
until the screaming calmed down

‘Jesus’ Cherry said to him
‘What the hell is going on?’


‘War’
an echoey voice said
from behind them
that neither of them knew

‘It’s the beginning
of the end of the world’ 

Sunday 9 April 2017

Part 9

Nine

The gunfight in the dressing room
was the worse the Unit found afterwards
with the door left off the hinges
and bodies laid out all
over the back of the stage
alongside lines of dust
that Unit Leader 1 was convinced
had been some of the creatures

Burning a smell of rotting flesh
that stank out
the smell all the way
from the toilets
all the way back to the door
and the line of bodies
lined out like breadcrumbs

laid out like a icy reflection of death

creaking into the mist
tunnelled deep into
the old underground
leaving you feeling
like you had gone to your own funeral
and not either
the bravest soldier
would dare enter.  

Saturday 8 April 2017

Part 8

Eight

Laughing with a throated passion
Mandrake dropped another cartridge
Into his rifle
And looked at Mero

‘Call that a army,
I’ve had more hot dinners
Than whatever the heck
You can throw at me’

Ripping the corpses
That crawled at him into broken pieces
With his guns
Until he ran out of bullets

Laughing at death in the face
With a twisted precision 
And he moved onto his sword
Instead of re-loading

And then his dagger
Spinning around in a circular pattern
Like a ballroom dancer
Gone mad

Leaving nothing
But chaos in his wake
And a few frightened witness
Trying to frantically get out alive. 




Friday 7 April 2017

Part 7

Seven

Caged between the screaming
And a endless ream of shooting
Joe and Cherry
Somewhat were the only two
To actually make it
Behind the bar
Without getting torn to sheds

Ducking and diving
Like professional soldiers
Between Mandrake’s bullets
And the band’s hunger
That killed hundreds
In a few heartbeats

Holding onto their ears
For seemingly a eternity
Until there was nothing left
But a silence
And Mandrake’s exhausted chant

‘Come on, I ain’t f**king finished’

And what was the singer’s voice
Laughing in the shadows

‘Neither have we, neither have we’
Pulling up dozens of people
Like a puppet master

To throw back at him. 

Thursday 6 April 2017

Part 6

Six

Just over a mile away
Near the deserted library
He waited silently
With his pointed lack hat
Barely covering his guilt

‘What now?’
Brooks coughed
Into his pipe
‘This is like waiting
For Cyanide’

‘We wait’
He responded with resignation
‘We wait
For the signal’


Wishing he could wipe
His hands
Clean of the
Full bloody mess

But knowing
He couldn’t. 

Wednesday 5 April 2017

Part 5

(This next piece focuses on something on the outside but people will know i will bring it all together like a Jigsaw Puzzle lol)


Five

Black listed across the media
The killings were all hushed up
And cobbled under the carpet
With tents over the venue

Dumbing down the carnage
Into a attempted terrorism act
Rather than the first real thrones
Of a new supernatural war

And the Police then the Army
Who was hushed up
By a forgotten branch
Of the Supernatural Unit

Armed to the teeth
With weapons previously
Only rumoured about
For decades and decades

Smelling more and more
Like death 
With each step
They took towards the door.

Tuesday 4 April 2017

Part 4

(Not revealing yet who the person in Part 4 but eagle eyed readers of previous Ghost Stories may guess) 

Four

Unseen like a closed kiss
She remained unseen
Even after it exploded
And blood firstly
Then limbs covered the stage

Dismantling herself
Further and further
Beyond the curtains 
Over corpses
Mostly ripped in half

And each head spinning
Around the floor
With blood pouring out
Like spilled bottles
Of cheap whiskey 

Shouldering thoughts
Mixed with guilt 
And broken fear
That there was nothing
She could have done

Even if she could have
Come back to life
To warn everybody
Or whether they would have
Even listened to her

Regretfully wishing 
She could have saved
More of them 
Than she could. 

Monday 3 April 2017

Part 3

(This next one is from personal experience a little, minus the bloodbath of course)

Three

Wrapping themselves in familiar threads
Like empty catchphrases
The support band
Played to almost silence

Throwing themselves
Into each song
With a inhuman energy
That stank over their clothes

Bemusing them
As the chant Doom
Rose slowly in the dark
Until it became almost a hum

Anchoring itself
To any hope
Of attracting new fans
With a invisible kick

Leaving them thinking in the station
After the bloodbath
They had all looked 
Like rabid dogs.

Sunday 2 April 2017

Part 2

(Hope you enjoyed Part 1 which set the scene a little. Part 2 is where we start looking at a few of the characters)

Two

And there was the man
Stood there in a trench coat
Who followed them around silently,

Exhaling broken smoke
Through in endless trail of fog
Like Borget gone wrong,

Drowning himself in silence
In the corner of every gig,

Casting a casual eye
Over everybody. 

Who was head banging
At the front 

And who was on the side
Kissing or maybe more

His hands always dangling
Near the edge of his coat

Looking
Always looking for the first sign

Focused on the band on the stage
With a look that went beyond hatred.