Rob Edwards is a British born writer and podcaster, currently living in Finland.

Q1: What is the best thing about having a story in Tales From The Underground?

Q2: What is the strangest thing about living in Finland?

Q1: What do Lingonberries really taste like?

Why did you want to see me?’
‘Ghosts.’
She reached over quite steadily and took her cup of tea from my outstretched hand, but her face lost quite a bit of its usual high colour.
‘Oh. That lot. What do you want to know?’
‘Everything.’
‘That could take a while…’
‘Précis then.’
She stared into her tea for a long minute then started to talk, I switched on the voice recorder on my phone, and sat back to listen.
‘My granny was born and raised in this pub, though it was called The Bell in them days. She always said there was a ghost. Sad but not dangerous. Was supposed to be a fine lady whose husband came back from the wars to find her pregnant. Legend has it that he kept the child but killed the woman after she had given birth. Her bones are supposed to be in the walls somewhere. Anyway. After great grandpa sold up the place ticked along quite normal. Until the middle of the nineteen sixties when there was a fire. Insurance job was what the local rumour mill said. Whatever. About half the pub was burned to the ground. They rebuilt, and when they was doing it they found a picture, in the roof someplace. The fair maid and falcon. Like the pub sign. The picture was sold to the New Forest Museum, but they had it copied for the pub sign and changed the name. The museum got some clever people in to look at the painting, and they reckoned the woman in the picture was somebody called Rosalind Acres, who is recorded as having died in childbirth, along with her child, in the nineteenth century. Her husband is supposed to have mourned her till the day he died, and buried her in the garden with her baby, because the church refused to allow an unbaptised child to be buried in consecrated ground. Whatever is the truth of it, after they rebuilt there was said to be a second, gentle ghost. Maybe the fair maid herself. And that’s all I really know…’
‘But’ I prompted gently.
‘But there seems to be at more than them. I think at least two more. One something followed Philip wherever he went, it was black and bad. There was an atmosphere of hatred. It frightened me. And when he killed himself I could feel its anger. Then there was a quieter something singing in my head when Philip died, it seemed to feel some sort of justice had been done. Then it all went quiet. But I don’t think anything has gone.’
‘Me neither.’ I said. ‘Me neither. But thank you for being frank with me. Did you ever hear a name for the first ghost?’
‘My granny said she was called Aline.’
‘Thanks. Now drink your tea and have a chocolate biscuit before Ben comes back and snaffles the lot.’
She relaxed in her chair and accepted a milk chocolate digestive. ‘I’m dying of curiosity’ she said.
‘Well. I’m sorry, but I can’t help now. Maybe later.’
She grinned.

After a few minutes’ chat, she got up and went back to her work. I decided to run some internet searches. Rosalind Acres was fairly well documented and I printed off some fifty sheets of information. Aline seemed to be a relatively common name in the Middle Ages, but inputting the rest of Mrs A’s story brought up two references in learned tomes. I printed both of them. It was a start, I thought.

I began reading the story of Rosalind Acres’ life. She was the beloved only child of a very rich American, who had married (for love the reports said) a thirty-year-old Englishman called Christopher Acres, when she was just seventeen. Her husband was a country gentleman and their home was Midwinter Manor, which seemed, by the old map I had printed out, to have been more or less precisely where the Fair Maid was now located. Her death, at the age of twenty-one, was well documented, and there was more than one mention of a rumour that the lady and her child had been interred in the gardens of the manor. So far, Mrs A’s story seemed to concur with the known facts. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, or not.

Rosalind caught my imagination, but the pub sign purporting to be her was rather ineptly painted, and I found I wanted a look at the original from which it was copied, so I hit the museum’s web site. The picture was exquisite, and according to the museum catalogue, the portrait (found in the roof of a local pub during rebuilding), was the young Rosalind Acres nee Barclay, and it was attributed the pre-raphaelite John Everett Millais. Rosalind had, if the portrait didn’t lie, been as lovely as she was young. I printed out a colour copy to show Ben.

I shivered, then pulled myself together, and put ghostly business to one side in favour of pub business.

From: Who Put Her In?
myBook.to/WPHI

© jane jago

I am old, that’s no bone of contention
And I got here without intervention
So why would I think twice
On your so-called advice?
Hush your mouth, I’m not paying attention

© jane jago 2017

They were sitting in the park, a child had come running up chasing a creature no one else could see, playing a game in augmented vision. She swiped at something in the air between them.
“Got it!”
Yris watched her run off already obsessed by the next intangible she needed to track down.
“She knows,” Soraya said, as the child danced away over the sunlit grass. “She called me to account for my activities this last cycle.”
The pit of his stomach tightened and he looked at the woman sitting beside him, unsmiling. Her face was haunted by shadows of sadness and fear, beneath the sweep of blue-black hair. He reached out and gripped the two slender hands resting in her lap.
“Then we will have to go. I won’t lose you.”
“But -”
“But nothing. It is time to make a stand. My sister has dictated the course of my life long enough. I will not have her destroy the one thing that makes me truly happy.”
The shadows lifted from her face for a moment, and the smile was as sweet as life itself. “She will not let us go easily.”
“I know. I’ve known her a long time. A very long time, more than four times as long again as you have been alive. So you must trust me when I say I know how to deal with her.”
The blue-black hair swung as Soraya turned her face away, watching the child running after her private ghosts. For a moment, Yris envied that unknown child, her freedom and potential had yet to be curtailed by life.
“I don’t know,” Soraya’s voice came from behind the veil of her hair. “I’m not sure we get to live happily ever after.”
“No ‘ever after’ is happy forever.”
It got dark as he spoke. The air was no longer crisp and fresh, but brackish and still. Shadows flickered from the weak lights.
“But ‘tsa story, Gran’pa. It says so – so they did.”
The small dark eyes looked up at him from a face wearing a defiant expression.

From ‘Tongueless Caverns’ by E.M. Swift-Hook, one of the stories in Inklings Press newest anthology Tales From The Underground: Twelve tales of hidden legends which is available for preorder now.

The willow man’s breath fogs the window
He scratches the glass with twiggy fingers
You hide your head under the pillow
But the voice of the wildwood lingers
It follows you into the edges of sleep
And echoes in the spaces of your head
Under your straining eyelids it creeps
And flavours each indrawn breath with dread
The willow man’s breath is as cold as cold
And his fingers are knotted and strong
No matter if you be in childhood or old
You will suffer the ice of his song
The willow man’s breath chills coldly
His twiggy fingers scrape your throat
Will you face the willow man boldly
Do you have fear’s antidote?

© jane jago 2017

From ‘Times of Change: Transgressor Trilogy‘

The very worst thing about Tabruth was the smell.

The city was nothing more than a squalid collection of unsanitary slums, huddled together in tightly packed rows and crushed around by restraining walls, which were more effective at keeping the garbage and disease in than any enemy out – and smelt worse than a fresh batch of organically produced fertiliser. Even in the allegedly luxurious rooms which he had been assigned in Tabruth’s castle – it’s most superior dwelling – Elias Bazath found the sewer stench of the place was insidious and inescapable. From a distance, Tabruth might look like a picturesque, historical reconstruction in a theme park, but close to it stank like a rotting corpse.

If the stench was the worst aspect of the place so far, there was a lot more besides that which conspired to turn Bazath’s visit into a trial of endurance. In terms of providing physical necessities and fundamental comforts, Temsevar did not even score on the baseline. If one wished to be clean – a state to which it seemed to him that few of the natives seriously aspired – it was necessary to parade naked through the castle’s very public bath house. The clothing was ridiculously impractical, seldom laundered and usually infested with parasites. The food was served so highly spiced as to be almost unpalatable to disguise the fact that much of what was served up was already half rotten. Fresh water was drawn from a well, swimming with so many impurities such that all who could afford to do so chose to drink the wine in preference. Bazath, careful of his health, simply refused to drink anything he had not treated first.

Temsevar, he decided, was an uncivilised cess-pit which had managed to maintain itself somehow by planting one foot firmly and with grim determination in pre-history and the other, more precariously in a barbaric slave economy and feudal system. The people he had met so far had done little to improve his opinion of the place. The soldiers, craftsmen and above all slaves, which seemed to form the vast majority of the population in the castle, were complete non-entities and seemed even to regard themselves as such. The Castellan was obsequious and weak, cowering behind a thin charade of haughty pride. The Warlord’s man, Commander Caer, was a surly, ill-mannered lout, and unintelligent enough to make no attempt to hide his hatred for Bazath. The Castellan’s nephew, Keshalgis, had the most to recommend him – he was almost intelligent and something of a diplomat, but even he seemed not to realise the importance and urgency of Bazath’s visit and displayed an infuriating lack of concern about the slow progress of negotiations.

He stood there now, wearing a supercilious, almost patronising, expression as he explained, through the interpreter, for the third time that the Castellan could not possibly fit in another audience with the Honoured Lord from the Stars until the following afternoon at the earliest. And would not the Honoured One prefer to spend the day hunting with himself and the Castellan’s charming lady wife instead?

It was at moments like these that Bazath realised, to his great chagrin, that he had far more in common with the filthy terrorist in the dungeons than with any of these posturing morons who considered themselves the nobility of Temsevar. He despised their immense ignorance, barbarism and over-inflated self-importance. Put any one of them on a half-way civilised planet and they would be lucky to find work as a refuse processor. But here they gave themselves grand titles and lorded it over their peers, behaving as if they were the equal of a delegate in the Coalition’s Legislature.

“Tell the simpering imbecile that I have no wish to waste my time chasing wild animals around the countryside,” Bazath snarled impatiently as the interpreter finished speaking. “I came here to transact business – to purchase a slave – and not to sample the dubious delights of primitive culture in the raw. I want to speak with the Castellan immediately.”

Although Keshalgis had reacted to the leashed anger in his tone, it was obvious that the interpreter translated the message without the insults, as Bazath had expected him to. He paid the man to put into diplomatic niceties whatever he needed to say.

E.M. Swift-Hook

The lights were shining on the beach
Blinking in colours and white
They lit the sky and lit the sand
And made it all so bright
And this was good because it was
The middle of Saturday night
The deejay jumped just like a flea
Because he said the kids
We’re lucky that he did this gig
As freely as he did

The Banker and the Accountant
Were walking on the beach
And each one wept to see so much cash
Definitely out of reach
With seven miles of razor wire
And a hundred vans selling beer
Do you suppose the banker said
We could make people pay to come here
I doubt it said the accountant, and shed a bitter tear

The time has come the Banker said
To talk of many things
Of VAT and interest rates
And why the viper stings
And why there’s a Canadian
In charge of all these things

Oh teenagers come walk with us
Along the moonlit strand
And we will teach you many things
As you traverse the sand
The teenage children looked at them
But vouchsafed not a note
The drugs had ate their brains away
Goodbye, that’s all she wrote

© jane jago 2017

Shalomon came back to the everyday world, and looked at the paper under his hands. There was something, but what was it? It was complex, and full of symbols, and a bit frightening. He knew this was his last chance and he was afraid he might already have blown it. But what could he do?

He drew in a slow, deep breath and made an effort to calm his soaring pulse rate before raising one shaking hand.

Teacher left his desk and came down the narrow aisle, with his scaly sides brushing the desks as he walked.

He picked up the paper and looked at it for a long moment, exhaling a spurt of bluish smoke through the red craters of his nostrils. Then he took the paper in both of his ‘hands’ holding it away from his snout and breathing more smoke accompanied by tiny gouts of flame.

Shalomon scarcely dared to breathe. Would his drawing pass muster, or would it be rent in twain by contemptuous claws?

Teacher exhaled more smoke and flame, before turning a reptilian eye on the cringing boy.

“Satisfactory,” he grunted “you are deemed worthy.”

Shalomon bowed. Satisfactory. That was all one could ask.

You are old, let me just make it clear
That even your knitting is queer
You should knit baby clothes
To warm tiny toes
Not merkins in purple cashmere

© jane jago 2017

A new feature for the blog – Jane Jago’s latest hard-hitting novel, serialised for you to enjoy! 

CHAPTER ONE

When Jim Cracksman received a ‘get your ass home now’ text, he grinned good-naturedly and climbed into his beloved muscle truck. As it turned out, that was to be the last time he smiled for many hours.

When he strolled into the house, it was to find his wife and his oldest son awaiting him with white, strained faces. He pulled Patsy into a one-armed hug and looked a question at Jamie.

“It’s Will. He ain’t in France with the school party. Mum got the heebie jeebies because he hadn’t called and got me to do some checking. He never got on the plane. I activated the locators on his stuff and it’s in a locker at the airport. Then I did a naughty and activated his personal locators. He is in Scotland. Stopped moving about an hour ago at some place called Castle Ellan. Which actually is a castle. It’s let furnished, but I can’t find out who to.”

Jim held out his other arm and the boy came and buried his face in his father’s chest.

“He’s only seven years old Dad. We mustn’t let anyone hurt him.”

“We won’t. And you did good work. Now. Who do we know in Scotland? It’s time to call in some favours.”

Patsy lifted a tear-stained face to look at him.

“Rod’s in Scotland. Him and his buddy Sam are doing a distillery tour. And Anna and her motorhome are at some place called Garlieston.”

“Right. You call Ma and tell her somebody has got at Will. Ask her to look after Charlie and the twins while we sort it. Say she can tell the twins if she must, but not little Charlie. Jamie can stop here with us, as he’s already in it up to his neck. But I want the others out of harm’s way.”

She sniffed.

“Yes. I should’ve thought. I’ll get right on it. And I’ll make tea while I’m at it.”

She picked up her phone and headed to the kitchen.

Jamie looked at his father with haunted eyes.

“They are going to start hurting him soon, aren’t they?”

“Not if Rod gets there first they aren’t. And he will get there first. We have to believe that. Now. Quiet. I need to make some calls.”

The conversations were all brief, but Jim looked a little less grim when he finished the last call. As he did so, Patsy came back into the room carrying a big tray with a brown teapot and milk jug, three mugs, and a plate of biscuits.

“Pete is fetching the kids from their schools, and Ma will keep them for as long as it takes. Pa said not to forget Geordie Jackson, plus he knows a guy in Edinburgh who makes boomers if we need.”

“I already talked to Geordie. He has a couple of boomer boys, and they are on their way to a field where they’re going to be picked up by a helicopter what is already on its way to collect Rod and his pal, who I forgot is a doctor, and who insists on going along to take care of Will when they get him out. Anna is packing up the camper and moving to a place Geordie owns on the outskirts of Glasgow. It’ll take her about three hours to do the drive, she says. So she’ll be in position when they bring Will out. Geordie knows who is at the castle, and he says they are not nice people. He also tells me the main man is currently away from home. Expected back tomorrow. Which’ll be why we’ve heard nothing yet. With only average luck, we’ll get the wee man out before the end of today.”

Patsy looked him in the eyes.

“Now what aren’t you telling me?”

“Actually. Nothing. But I’ll admit to being very, very worried.”

“Fair enough. Me too. But the three of us will support each other through it. Now. Tea?”

Jim swallowed a huge lump in his throat, and Jamie just buried his head in his mother’s breast. She patted one and smiled at the other before pouring mugs of tea so strong it would have fought its way out of a delicate cup.

“Sit down and drink your tea. It’ll help.”

They sat, and there was silence for a while before Jamie spoke.

“Has Anna got enough stuff with her to pick up Will’s locator?”

“Yes. She already called it up. She says good work Jamie. She and I think Will is probably drugged, because he isn’t moving. So it’s good there’s a doctor in the rescue party.”

“But. Isn’t he a surgeon?” Patsy asked in worried tones.

“He is, which is all to the good, apparently, as he knows lots about unconscious people. He says William will be fine with him.”

Jamie spoke up.

“Is there any more we can do Dad?”

“Nope. Now is the hard bit. We sit tight. Man the phones. And wait.”

They waited.

Five hundred miles north, things were moving at an altogether faster pace. Two men, a couple of small suitcases, and a black leather holdall, waited by the helipad at the Gleneagles hotel. The larger of the two looked at his companion.

“You sure about this, Sam? It’s going to get nasty, and some people will get hurt, or worse.”

“Yes. I’m sure. They have kidnapped a seven-year-old boy. If they have kept him drugged for thirty-six hours, he could be in a bad way. He might need me, and I might need the stuff I asked for.”

“It’s on the chopper. And how bad?”

“I honestly don’t know, Rod. Worst case scenario is brain damage, but at best he is going to be confused, feeling sick, and dehydrated.”

“Right. So we do need you.”

“And we need to hope.”

They fell silent as the sound of a big helicopter engine came closer.

“Why a Sikorsky?” Sam bawled in Rod’s ear as it came in to land.

They picked up their stuff, ran across the helipad and leapt aboard. A big man in a jumpsuit pushed them into a pair of seats and handed them headsets.

“Welcome aboard Rescue One,” he said.

“Thanks,” Rod grunted. “My friend here wondered why a Sky Crane?”

“Easy. These bastards fly in and out of the target area all the time. Nobody will think twice about another. Has anybody thought about what sort of condition the kid will be in when we get him out?”

“Yes,” Sam said tersely. “I’ve given the matter a lot of thought. Is the stuff I asked for on board?”

“Yeah. You know how to use it?”

“I do. But let’s hope I don’t have to.”

“What don’t you want to have to use?”

“Mostly: tracheotomy kit. I’ve had to do it in Thailand to kids that were sedated for too long on the underground sex trade routes. It ain’t pleasant, but it can be the only way to get air into the poor little sods’ lungs.”

“Fuck. Will it really be that bad?”

“Probably not, but I wanted to be sure I had all the bases covered. But the poor little bugger is going to be confused and frightened, and that’s why going home in his friend’s motorhome, where he can rest and feel secure will be better for him than a plane flight where he is surrounded by strangers, or the noise and smells of a chopper.”

“Yeah. I get that. And we can take it in turns to drive. So we’ll get him back to his mum pretty soon. Now I find I’m feeling murderous. Nobody should get between me and anyone I’m beating up.”

The man in the jumpsuit grinned.

“Fine. We’re all fathers here, and nobody is feeling particularly gentlemanly right now. About half an hour till we collect Geordie’s boomer boys. Then an hour from there to this fucking castle. Any orders?”

“Apart from getting my nephew out and demonstrating the family’s annoyance? No. Just do what needs doing.”

“Will do. By the way. This one’s a freebie. Geordie is providing the hardware and the fuel, we’re giving our time. Nobody liked having the Russian Mafia on our turf. But as long as they kept their noses clean we could tolerate them. Taking people’s kids is a big no-no, so we are handing down a lesson.”

“How many are we?” Sam asked.

“You two. Geordie’s boomer boys. Twelve fighters. Pilot, co-pilot and radio guy. Why?”

“Because I have a bad feeling about what they might do to the kid when we tip up. I want to get to him fast.”

“Good thinking. Six of us will escort you right to him. We have his location on screen.”

“Right. Good.”

The two men bumped fists.

They seemed to have covered all the bases, and the men sat in silence until the helicopter dropped down to land briefly. Three men jumped in carrying obviously heavy bags. Once they were seated the chopper took off and headed north. The men put on their headphones and their leader gave Rod a grim wink.

“Got enough stuff to flatten this fecking castle. Geordie says you have to agree, though.”

“Oh yeah. Let’s show them our fist! But we have to get little Bill out first. And if they’ve hurt him…”

The smallest of the boomer boys spat eloquently.

“Aye. There’s examples to be made.”

Jane Jago