You can't have a fence with only one post.

Writing blog.

[blackdogprairie]

Saints, Liars, and the Dead

A Boston medium shows up in a small town, aiming to profit off a recent collapse in the coal mine. But the job's not as straight-forward as it seems.

Chapter One

— ⸸ ✧ ⸸ —

Victor

The drought had desiccated the land. Empty fields held the remains of a failed harvest, so dried and broken down by the wind that Victor couldn’t tell whether it’d been corn or wheat or something else altogether. He hadn’t seen an animal in hours. Just a vast, rocky plain stretching wide under an endless sky, its pale blue broken only by the thick dark trail of smoke drifting from the train.

“There’s the town,” Em said, their face pressed against the window, pupils a pinprick in the bright morning light. A circle of fog grew and disappeared on the glass with each breath. “I think? It’s real small.”

As the train slowed, Victor grabbed his bags. “Hopefully they’re the stupid sort of small-town people, not the shoot-first-and-never-ask kind.”

“Which one am I?”

Victor chewed the inside of his cheek. “I didn’t mean it like that.” Em shrugged.

The only person at the station was the clerk, half asleep at the window with his head propped up on one hand. His hat tipped precariously, and fell to the floor when Victor tapped on the sill to get his attention. Slowly, the clerk bent to lift the hat from the floor, and, brushing dust off – pointless, with the way all things seemed to be coated with the fine, brown-grey powder – said in a brusque tone, “What?”

“Which way to the inn?”

Leaning out of the window, the clerk pointed at the building next door. ‘INN’ was painted on a sign in flaking white over the covered porch. Em was already halfway there, hands in their pockets, having left all the bags for Victor to deal with.

By the time Victor caught up, Em was already at the door. They held the door for him and then checked them both in. The woman at the desk barely gave them a glance as she handed over their keys, letting them know that their other luggage had already arrived and was waiting for them in their rooms.

The rooms were side-by-side and identical but for the curtains and bedding. Victor dropped Em’s bags in their doorway and moved into his own. It smelled clean but faintly stale, like linens folded away too long.

As the lady had said, his luggage sat on the floor, the single leather-bound trunk obscuring the pattern on the worn brown and white rug in the center of the room. He dug through it, shoving things out of the way, until he found what he was looking for; a heavy clear sphere. Victor ran his fingers over the surface, and, finding no chips or cracks, rested it gently on the bed.

“All good?” Em asked from the doorway.

Victor kept his gaze on the contents of the trunk. “So far, but I can’t find the... aha.” He pulled a green object out of the mess of fabrics. Its sides were flat with a gentle slope, the corners lifting to four points, as if to hold something. “Everything that matters. You can dig through the rest later.” He placed the base down onto the small table that sat by the window, and then set the sphere onto it. The sunlight streaming through the gap in the curtains glinted off of it, casting tiny rainbows onto the walls.

“I’ll go make sure we can still use the parlor room,” Em said. The door swung shut behind them.

The train whistled as it pulled out of town, its rumbling fading into the distance. Silence did not settle over the town; the train’s noise was replaced by something not altogether unlike its metal wheels on the track. Then a muffled bang. The inn trembled.

Shoving the sage-green curtain out of the way, Victor searched the street through the window. The main road rose in a straight line up the unevenly graded hill, climbing toward where he knew the coal mine sat tucked into the mountainside. Rooftops and unlit chimneys blocked his view, save for the skeletal tips of mining machinery. Down across the road, a man sat on a bench along the wooden boardwalk, idly smoking a cigar and reading the news. He didn’t even look up when the sound repeated.

Everything Victor knew about mining had come from a single line in the Boston Tribune—COAL MINE COLLAPSE, ALL BUT ONE DEAD—and what Em had told him on the train. Though they were Appalachian, their family had been farmers, not miners. Em barely knew more than Victor.

If the locals weren’t bothered by the explosions up the hill, he decided he wasn’t going to worry either.

There was a knock on the door and Victor let Em in. “The parlor room is ours.” They dropped to their knees to gather some dark fabric from the trunk into their arms. “I’ll get everything set up.” They paused, arms going loose in their lap as they glanced up at him. “Unless you want me to post the fliers?”

Victor would prefer it, but the discomfort in Em’s voice was plain. “No,” he said. “I’ll handle it.”

Em let out a breath and stood. They held out a thin stack of papers, slightly crumpled from their journey at the bottom of the trunk but still smelling of ink.

In the center of the page, bracketed by ornate lettering that proclaimed him as PROFESSOR VICTOR SINCLAIRE, MEDIUM OF BOSTON and inviting the townspeople to a seance the following evening, was a drawing of his face. Em insisted it looked just like him, but Victor couldn’t see it.

They hadn’t had time to have it redone, in any case.

A bulletin board had been pounded into the compact ground just outside of the train station. Shreds of paper littered it, not a single one readable, bleached by the sun or torn to illegibility by the wind. Victor securely pinned the page to the board and stepped back to admire it. Slightly tilted, but good enough, he decided.

Mrs. Harker, the woman who owned the inn, had said a second board sat in front of the sheriff’s office. She’d neglected, however, to tell Victor where the sheriff’s office was.

The man who’d been smoking on the bench had left, and the streets were eerily empty. Victor followed the main road, the hill steepening and flattening over and over as he walked. He passed the general store, MACKINNON’S MERCANTILE barely readable in faded white over the door, and then the saloon – he’d half thought they were a thing of the past, and had the strange feeling that the train had somehow transported him backward in time.

He spotted a woman sweeping the boardwalk some ways down, and called to her. “Excuse me, miss?” Her broom didn’t stop, so he tried again when he got closer. There was grey on her temples, and her pale blue dress was faded. “Excuse me, could I bother you for directions?”

Shallow wrinkles appeared on her face as the corners of her lips pulled down. “Everything’s on this street.”

“Yes, I see that.” Victor took another glance down both directions, the train station on one end, and the mine on the other. The general store, saloon, and even the little town’s tiny bank sat between, but not a single building held a sign proclaiming SHERIFF. “Would you be able to point me to the sheriff’s?”

“We ain’t got a sheriff no more. You got legal trouble, you deal with it yourself.”

“… Mrs. Harker said –“

The woman scoffed. “Oh, Lenore. She ain’t been right since the collapse. Lost her husband and both sons. No, we ain’t had a sheriff in near three years.” Her broom swept across the dry wood with a scraping noise that made goosebumps pop up on Victor’s arms.

“Well. I was only looking for a bulletin board.”

Her pale eyes landed on the papers in his hands. “Hand me one of those, would you? ‘Victor Sinclaire, Medium of Boston…’” She raised her dark eyebrows. “Well, Victor Sinclaire,” she folded the page and put it in her dress pocket, ignoring Victor’s aborted reach. “I’ll let the ladies know. Not sure if anyone ‘round here believes in any of that nonsense, though.”

“I… Thank you, ma’am.”

“The old sheriff’s building’s just past the inn. There’s no sign, but the board in front of it’s still intact. Just head back the way you came and take a right. Surprised you missed it.” She resumed sweeping the boardwalk, though there was no dirt that Victor could see. When he didn’t leave immediately, she paused. “Well? Go on.”

He tipped his hat and went.

Em had said they’d handle the parlor room, and handle it they had. Every window had been covered with dark cloth, alternating between black fabric and a deep purple that may as well have been black itself, blocking out the sun and leaving the room lit only with a handful of small kerosene lamps. They’d appropriated a small round table from the innkeeper and placed it in the center of the room, surrounded by padded chairs. The crystal ball rested on its stand in the center of the table.

Mrs. Lenore Harker stood in the room, shadows playing across her lined face as the kerosene lamps flickered. “I’ve never seen a séance before,” she said, when Victor entered the room. “Your assistant said it would be fine if I had a look at the place.”

“You own the building, ma’am.” Victor watched her for a moment, the way she tangled and untangled her fingers together. “Will you be attending, tomorrow evening?”

“Oh, I… I’m not sure.” She glanced around the room once more. “I should get back to the desk. Never know when someone might show up.”

Victor closed the door behind her, muffling the continuous racket of the mine. He rested a hand on the circular table, pushing slightly. It rattled enough to shake the crystal ball, but not enough to upset it completely. The long, trailing fabric over top the table mostly covered its legs, and the darkness did the rest to conceal them. Victor ran his fingers along where each leg met the floor, and found a flattened matchbox beneath one.

He hadn’t even been gone that long. He would have to think about paying Em more.

— ⸸ ✧ ⸸ —

AO3

[blackdogprairie]

Chapter Two

— ⸸ ✧ ⸸ —

Thora

More people were lined up outside of the inn than Thora had seen in months. She’d half thought more of them had moved on after the mine collapse, but there they stood, widows with dark bags under their eyes, holding babies in their arms or toddlers by the hand. Mixed in were miners themselves, those who hadn’t been on shift when the tunnel had caved in and buried all but one.

She ran her eyes over the line once more. Gideon Rourke was missing, though she hadn’t really expected him to show up. Odds were he hadn’t ventured far enough into town to even see the flyers, and no one visited him anymore, save her.

The line shortened in front of her, each person giving their twenty-five cents to the youth at the door. Thora tightened her fist around the quarter dollar she held. This pair of city folk were no different than the journalists who’d flocked in like vultures in the wake of the collapse, pecking at grieving families for anything that’d make a good story, only to leave them no better off than where they’d started when they realized the story wasn’t selling.

As if men’s lives were worth nothing more than some words printed on paper.

“Twenty-five, cents, ma’am.”

She handed over the money without a glance at the dark-haired teenager, and followed a woman and her three young daughters into the cramped parlor room.

It was dark and smelled of kerosene from the lamps, the walls and windows covered in dark fabric. In the center was a small, round table that the townspeople clustered around, pressed in on each other like baled straw.

On the far side of the table stood the man from the flyers. The “professor.” There seemed nothing special about him. Everything about him seemed ordinary – his height, the color of his hair, even the way he held himself. She’d half expected him to appear draped in velvet or even silk, instead of the plain black suit that hung from his shoulders. Thora imagined it was suited more for dinner parties than holding a séance, though she’d never before attended either.

The door to the room closed somewhere behind her, and Thora spotted the youth she’d given her money to passing through the crowd to stop at Victor Sinclaire’s side.

Sinclaire clapped his hands, quieting the whispers that had filled the room. “Good evening. My name is Victor Sinclaire. My assistant here is Emery Calhoun, and they will be helping to make sure everything goes well. These things don’t always go as planned.”

“Why not?” Harold Holsteader asked. Even in the dark of the room, Thora could see the coal dust ever present on his clothes and skin, dark smears that never seemed to wash off, and marked the miners for all to see.

Sinclaire shrugged his shoulders, his arms out and palms up, making the move larger that it needed to be. “Speaking with the dead is more of an art than a science, and like the living, sometimes they just don’t want to speak to you.” He nodded to his assistant, who stepped away, and gestured to the chairs around the table. “Is there anyone who would like to go first? Please, don’t be shy.”

Chair legs clattered against the floor in a thudding cacophony as several people hurried to take them. Thora squeezed closer, trying to get a better view of the table.

“Oh, don’t rush!” Sinclaire’s assistant urged. “It’s no good if people are pushing.” For Sinclaire’s part, he’d only set a hand on the crystal ball at the center of the table, keeping it from toppling onto the floor.

Fitch Kinkaid put his hand down on the table. It wobbled slightly. “Just start the thing.” He appeared to have lost weight since the last time Thora had seen him, at the joint funeral they’d held at the mouth of the mine for all the miners lost. Fitch’s two sons, a grandson, and his son in law had been on the line when it caved in.

His daughter was silent at his back, belly round with child.

Sinclaire nodded and sat at his own chair, flaring his coat tails with a flourish that Thora found distasteful. The whole thing was ridiculous, taking advantage of these people and making a spectacle about it. She could spit.

“Em,” Sinclaire said. “Lower the lights.”

His assistant did as bid, slipping past Thora to darken one of the kerosene lamps. Only the one just to the left of Sinclaire’s shoulder remained bright, casting his face half in shadow, but sending a bright light onto the crystal.

“Who would you like to speak to?” Sinclaire asked Fitch, who immediately said the name of his eldest son.

The smell of incense began to fill the room, blending with the scent of kerosene. Thora glanced around and spotted the tiny red dot at the end of the stick, near the shadow that was Emery Calhoun. The assistant seemed focused on the séance, as were the rest of the group.

In the center of the room, the table shook, pulling gasps from the crowd. A frown pulled at Thora’s lips. Smoke gathered around the crystal ball, whirling as if in a circle as the table shuddered, and then dispersed across the room. The table stilled. Whatever Fitch and Sinclaire were saying was lost to Thora in the muttering of the crowd.

“I can’t believe it’s real,” Lenore Harker whispered at her side.

Thora didn’t have the heart to tell her otherwise.

The crowd dispersed, heading back out into the cool night air, more than one wiping their eyes as they passed through the door. Thora stayed back, watching Sinclaire relax into his chair, head falling back. He pulled in a long breath.

“That went well,” he said to his assistant, who was carefully smothering the incense.

Emery Calhoun hummed in agreement. “It was a bigger crowd than I expected. Seemed like the whole town was here.”

“Almost,” Thora said. The assistant’s hands faltered, sending spent incense powder floating to the floor. “A couple of folks were missing.”

Sinclaire pushed himself to his feet, straightening the lapels on his suit and running a hand through his hair, sweeping it back off his forehead. His eyebrows rose and a well-crafted smile pulled at the edges of his lips. Rehearsed, it seemed to Thora. No one around town ever smiled so wide. “My apologies. I’d thought everyone had left already.” He gestured to his assistant on the floor, trying to clean up the mess. “Is there something we can do for you?”

“I’d like you to leave.”

The smile faltered, and Sinclaire’s assistant paused in sweeping up the incense. “Excuse me?” he asked, the words slipping out as if on accident. Sinclaire cleared his throat. “I mean, please explain.”

Thora stepped closer, and Sinclaire’s assistant finally rose from the floor, dropping a handful of powder back into the dish it had fallen from. She thought she should be more frightened, alone in a room with two strangers, but all she felt was rage. Her hands trembled with it, she could feel the heat of it in her cheeks, her forehead. “These people have been through enough. They don’t need you here peddling falsehoods, offering lies for money.”

“It’s not –” Emery Calhoun tried, but fell silent at Sinclaire’s raised hand.

“No one is forcing these people to believe, nor to even attend. That’s their own choice.” His vapid smile had fully dropped. “I’m not leaving simply because a single woman demands it.”

Thora could find no way to counter his argument. “Fine.” She turned to the door.

“Wait,” he said, and she stopped.

When nothing more was forthcoming, she faced him again. “What?”

Sinclaire just blinked at her. “I thought you were leaving.”

“You told me to wait.”

“No, I didn’t.” He crossed his arms, creasing the sleeves of his suit. “I’ve no reason to keep you here.”

The room felt strangely cold, Thora’s fingertips like ice against her palm. Her hand ached as she wrapped it around the doorknob.

Sinclaire’s footsteps sounded on the floor behind her, their cadence impossibly familiar. He stopped an arms length away. “In the mine,” he said. His voice was softer than she expected.

“What about it?”

“What about what?”

“The mine!” She whirled to face him, the skirts on her dress flaring around her legs. Goosebumps rose on her flesh, and as she exhaled, she swore it was a white mist. “What about the mine?”

Sinclaire pulled back, hurried steps that sent him bumping into the table. The crystal ball shook and fell from its stand, rolling toward the floor. Emery Calhoun lunged forward to catch it and hit the table, sending it sliding with an ungodly screech. When Calhoun placed a hand on it for steadiness, the table did not shake.

Adjusting his tie, Sinclaire asked, “Why are you bringing up the mine?”

Thora scoffed. “You’re the one who mentioned it first!”

“No, I didn’t.” He didn’t sound like he was lying. But a professional liar, wouldn’t. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Emery Calhoun put a hand to Sinclaire’s arm, the crystal ball cradled safely in the other. “This is weird.”

“What is?”

Calhoun ignored him. “My apologies, ma’am. We can issue a refund, if you’d like.” Sinclaire appeared about to argue, but Calhoun’s hand tightened on his arm, and his mouth snapped shut.

Thora shook her head and finally yanked the door open. However reasonable Calhoun seemed to be, they were both in on the tricks. She knew they were frauds. She just needed everyone else to see it too.

— ⸸ ✧ ⸸ —

AO3

[whunt]

every day i wake up and i develop my concepts.

[vetchtibbles]

despite everything, it’s still you (derogatory)

[vetchtibbles]

wait hey man wait whoah hey

[redstonedust]

big fan of when a character is dead and the narrative frames them in a very angelic, soft, gentle manner but then it turns out not only are they still alive (plot twist) but theyre alive in the most gruesome and horrific way. your loving kind mentor who motivates you to fight in their memory came back wrong and theres blood and dirt under their fingernails from clawing they way out of the grave.

[mhbcr]

Don’t use AI to write. Use childhood trauma like a real poet.

[tragicwaif]

what should happen: get tortured -> come back stronger -> no stress

what does happen: get tortured -> mind broken -> stressed always

[blackdogprairie]

I did as the text post said and I wrote some words.

[paperplateprose]

writing challenge!

open up your document and put words in it

[anthropophagiie]

everyone out there who is a writer. pls write gay vampire cowboys. i will also write gay vampire cowboys. listen. i just think we need it. maybe a couple werewolf cowboys as well. witch cowboys. go on git

[blackdogprairie]

#ofc cowboy is gender neutral some of these cowboys need to be lesbians

[daily-prompts]

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

― Madeleine L'Engle

[paperplateprose]

writing challenge!

open up your document and put words in it

[fictionallesbian]

Comic I saw in a dream

[orcboxer]

honestly "oracle that nobody believes" is such a solid trope. imagine trying to convince anybody in 2006 what the next two decades was gonna look like

[orcboxer]

Cassandra: I have seen the future and it is really, really stupid. They're hiding in the fucking horse.

[prokopetz]

You are an unreliable narrator because your coping mechanisms for your deep-seated trauma forbid you from acknowledging the reality of the situation. I am an unreliable narrator because I sincerely have no idea what the fuck is going on.

[stavroginas]

Hélène Cixous, Love of the Wolf

[corviiids]

chart idea

[blackdogprairie]

[ewaneneollav]

words are extortionists that build a toll gate between people & meaning