Drabble Wednesday Meets October Frights

Okay, you ghouls and monsters, tomorrow kicks off a ten day extravaganza of creepy delights for the wonderfully wicked October Frights Blog Hop! We have nearly 50 authors taking a terrifying trek through terror. You'll find Free Reads, Prizes & Giveaways, and more! And it all happens October 1st-10^th!

For my part, I’m serving up a look at the upcoming paranormal anthology, Beyond the Wail, giving you stories galore, my regular Drabble Wednesday feature and a great giveaway. All under the theme of ghosts.

That’s right, for ten days my blog will be haunted!

So be sure to come back tomorrow when it all kicks off!

And now on to our Drabble Wednesday Feature Presentation:

Today I’ve dipped into the vaults for a story, but there is a deathly duo of new drabbles as well.

Wanderers

Whispers quiver along unseen particles between worlds, caught against the ragged edges of darkness and light. They race the electric and sing the shadows, they weave among the thunder and warp past the starlight.

They are the lost.

They are the forsaken.

They are the mourning echoes down the eons, the ache in the hearts of the lonely. They breathe the dust on worlds long dead, and remember some that never began. Their voices speak to drops of dusk tumbling from sunsets, their wails resound from the church bells to the moonbeams.

They are the lost.

They are the forsaken.

~*~ 

Waiting

“Can you see him?”

The old man’s voice murmured, a weak rasp barely heard above the medical machinery. He waved his hand in a feeble gesture; the sunlight from the hospital window illuminated his skin’s wrinkles and liver spots.

“See who, Grandpa?”

“Death.”

The man standing beside his grandfather’s bed shivered, but didn’t quite understand why. So he smiled, and said, “It’s just the medication, Grandpa. There’s no one there.”

The old man closed his eyes. He knew better. The black shadowed figure stood by his bed, a cold hand placed on his shoulder.

Death had come for him.

Tonight.

 ~*~

Wail of the Plaid Spirit

Beware the Plaid Spirit

That’s what my Granny Fiona always said.

I thought she was bonkers until I spent one summer at our ancestral castle in the Hebrides. When I came face to face with our family ghost.

On that third moonlit night, a ghastly yowl echoed throughout the castle. I jumped from my bed, flung open the bedroom door and stared into the black eyes of the Plaid Spirit.

I gasped.

For there, a gargantuan presence in the darkened hallway, hovered the ghost of my great-great uncle Angus. At the first wail of his bagpipes, I turned and fled.

© A. F. Stewart 2015 All Rights Reserved