kryptophilia issue 7

7/28/2019 Kryptophilia Issue 7

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kryptophiliaprose and poetry

Issue 7 May/Jun 2004 Free

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kryptophilia 7

frontispiece

Welcome to issue7 ofkryptophilia. kryptophilia, for those who have not encountered it before,is a fanzine dedicated to poetry and short prose. The prose should be something unusual: science

fiction, horror, fantasy, tales with a twist, and so on. Poetry can be on anything at all. New

contributors are decidedly welcome.

All articles, stories, poems, are considered to be copyright of their respective authors (see

credits).

kryptophilia was published by Phil Drew.

kryptophilia is published bi-monthly - this issue, May / June 2004. All material in this issue is

Philip Drew 2004.

contents

page article

1 cover

2 frontispiece

2 contents

3 Short Story - Horses

4 Poem - Emerald4 Poem - Haiku #90

5 Poem - Photograph

6 Short Story - The Eastern Lights

8 Poem - Tanka #10

8 Poem - Haiku #58

9 Poem - The River

9 Poem - Tanka #8

10 Short Story - By The Light Of The Silvery Moon

14 Poem - Stone And Sea

15 Poem - King Canute

15 Poem - Funny Beast

15 Poem - Catnip16 Short Story - Children Of The Third Generation

17 Poem - Creepy Dreams

17 Poem - Fishing

18 Poem - The Dream Within The Dream

18 Poem - Double Haiku #219 Short Story - A Murder Of Crows

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Horses

They ran across the plain, the plain that had been there for ten thousand years, since the end of

the last Ice Age. They ran under the light of the full moon, its sheen reflecting off their sweat-

soaked hides. They ran across grass and over brook, through heather and below tors.

It was the first time that Julia had seen the horses. She had seen horses before, of course - justnot these horses. It was only by accident that she was seeing them now - her car had broken

down, out here, in the middle of nowhere, and she had been stretching her legs while waiting for

the AA man to arrive.

Julia stood beside the road. Apart from her old brown Morris Minor, there was not a car in

sight. A cool wind blew across the moor, rustling her long skirt around her legs. The wind was the

only sound. She watched the horses; and she realised that although she could see the horses, she

could not hear them. They were galloping around, oblivious to her presence, but although they

were no more than thirty yards away now, Julia could not hear a sound. She could see one of the

horses, a great black stallion, lift his head back and neigh; but no sound came forth. yet the windwas blowing in Julia's direction - it could not be carrying the sound away. For a moment, Julia

could not understand what was happening. Then, as comprehension began to dawn, Julia heard

the sound of a car horn. Her train of thought broken, she turned to see that the man from the AAhad arrived. Julia walked back to her broken down car.

In the days that followed, Julia thought of what she had seen, and of what she had not heard.

she resolved to return to the moor, to solve the mystery, even though she had an inkling as to thetrue nature of what she had witnessed. A fortnight passed before she had the chance to go back.

She drove to the spot where her Morris Minor had broken down before, but the horses were

nowhere to be seen. Disappointed, she got back into her car and drove off, trying to put the

strange event out of her mind, and concentrate on her job as a librarian.

One day, while at work, on a day when it was particularly quiet in her library, she looked

through the local records. As she had thought, there were not supposed to be any horses on the

moor. The local records went back as far as the early Victorian times, but no horses had ever been

there. Perhaps Julia had imagined what she had seen. But she knew that was not true. Shemanaged to put the horses out of her mind for another few days.

Another boring day came, sunshine outside, and nobody but Julia in the library. They only came

in when it rained. Julia picked up a book on the palaeontological history of the are - it was a self-

published, small press work, by a local author. The book covered the prehistoric flora and fauna

of the area, from the times of the Ice Age until the start of written history. And yes, as Julia had

suspected, horses had once roamed the land, along with cave bears, smilodon, and prehistoric

men. But the horses in the area had died out a long time ago, not being re-introduced until the

time of the Celts and the Romans. Were these the horses that she had seen? Julia shook her head.

She did not believe in ghosts. Definitely not in the ghosts of prehistoric horses, either.

A few more days passed, and it was the next full moon. Julia found herself in her Morris Minor,heading out to the moor. She told herself that she was only going for a walk, and to get some

fresh air. She lied that it had anything to do with the horses.She parked her car beside the road, in the exact place where she had broken down before. No

one else was about. She doubted if there was anybody else about within miles. The night air was

cool and still. There was not the sound of a single animal to be heard. No insects, no birds, no

foxes in the distance. There was only Julia's heartbeat.

Then she saw them again, the horses, exactly as she had seen them four weeks before. They ran

and galloped with the same movements, across the same area of land, their manes ruffled by a

non-existent wind. And yes, the black stallion lifted his head back to neigh, and no sound came

forth: no sound that Julia could hear, anyway. The horses were ghosts of horses who had roamed

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the land thousands of years ago.

Julia stayed and watched the horses until dawn. they faded with the coming of the morning

light.

Julia asked about the moor and its history in some of the pubs nearby, whether anybody hadever seen anything strange up there. But no one had. She did not tell people what she had seen.

The horses were her secret.Whenever she was depressed, or upset about anything, Julia would wait until the next full

moon, and go to the moor and watch the horses. She tried coming on other nights, but the horses

only appeared when the moon was full.

Through the years that followed, the horses were the one constant in her life. Two husbands

came, and went, neither of them all that memorable. Her daughter grew up, and moved out of

home. The library closed down, and Julia was forced to take early retirement. But the horses

never let her down. They were always there for her. She never found out why they still appeared:

she had read up on ghosts, and spectres, and apparitions, and they all always faded away over a

certain period of time. But while other ghosts had faded away, the horses had remained.

The years continued passing. Julia had become old, and grey. The horses were still as young as

they had ever been, a moment captured in time. Eventually, Julia began to die, her family

gathered around her death bed. Julia had no regrets, she had lived a good life. No regrets, exceptfor one.

"I would have liked to have heard the horses." Julia said, the last words that she ever did. Her

daughter, now grown old herself, looked across to her husband, but he looked back blankly.

Nobody there understood what Julia had meant.Perhaps now, Julia would finally hear the horses, after all.

Emerald

An emerald, its green desire,

Burns with an evil inner fire,It tempts the soul with siren songs,

Each person for its owning longs

To keep and hide this shining stone,

Admire its beauty, all alone,And never show their greatest prize,

It is only for their eyes,

And they will hoard what they don't need,

Consumed by their pointless greed,

For when its owner comes to die,

He will find life's past him by.

Haiku #90

The old house echoes

With the footsteps of new folk

Careless of the past.

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Photograph

It's a bank holiday, and it's raining,

And the attic needs sorting out;

You've been putting it off for years,

No more excuses now.

You put the ladder up, and climbInto the musty darkness above,

You fumble for the cord,

A single forty watt comes alight,

Throwing shadows into the corners;

And old wooden chest lies in wait,As it has waited for so long now.

You drag the chest downstairs,

To unearth its hidden treasures:

Bric-a-brac from ages past,

The jetsam of your family's history;

You open the top, it's dusty, you cough;

You pull out old, damp-stained newspapers,Relics of coronations and wars;

Below these yesterdays you find a frame,

An old photograph captured between glass and wood,

A single crack runs the length of the dirty glass,

Nothing is written on the back of the frame,

No identifying mark, no name;

The image, a vignette, posed,

Is of some woman with a shawl,

Seated outside, beside some woodshed,

Her dark eyes stare out at you

From across the years;

she had great beauty, this unknown woman:Who was she?

Some ancestor of yours,

A great-great-great-grandmother?

Or was she something other?

A lover, perhaps, of a great-great-grandad;

A sepia fragment of time,

Fractured and captured in black boxes,

Outlasting all memory.

You put the picture on a shelf;

You will never know who she is;

You throw the rest away.

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The Eastern Lights

He saw himself as the new Marco Polo, bravely journeying into parts of China that no

westerner had ever seen before. But Marco Polo had not been his initial inspiration. No, it had

been the travels of Sir Richard Burton, into Africa and the Middle East, that had been the catalyst

for this journey. Richard Burton, the first westerner to get into Mecca, disguised as an Arab. Hadhis disguise been seen through, the it was certain death for Burton. Burton, who had first

translated the scandalous Karma Sutra into English. Burton, one of the greatest men of Victorian

England.

So Marcus Ffinche had decided that he wanted to be seen as a great man of Victorian England,

too. He wanted the fame, and the plaudits. He wanted a title, he wanted to be a hero. But more,

more than anything, he wanted to satisfy the wanderlust in his soul, that had been awakened upon

hearing the accounts of Burton's travels and exploits.

So Marcus Ffinche, would-be explorer, had set out for China. But not the China of Kowloon

and Hong Kong. He struck out for the mountainous region to the north-west of Tibet. There werestill a few areas that were blank on the maps he had. He intended to fill them in.

He was alone, now. He had been part of a full expeditionary team, but there had been a terribleaccident when descending a mountain, and they had all fallen, roped together as they had been.

Only he had survived, but he had been injured in the fall. He had hit his head, and he had knocked

himself out. He did not know how long he had been unconscious. When he came to, the bodies of

the other members of the expedition had already become cold. Ffinche had been forced to leavethem where they lay, as the ground was too hard to bury them. All that he had been able to do was

to gather a few rocks and build primitive cairns over the corpses.

That had been yesterday. He was now not entirely sure where he was, but he was trying to fill in

the map as he went. That was hard at the moment as, in the valley as he was, the sun was not yet

fully up. He began to climb up the valley wall.

As he climbed, and as he saw the first rays of the sun, he witnessed a strange site on the horizon

somewhere to the east. He saw the magnificent, glowing lights of some city, in that moment when

it was still halfway between darkness and light. Then the sun was up, and he could no longer seethe lights of the city.

Later, when he got the chance, he checked what maps he had of China. The area that he was in

was nothing but mountain, plains and wilderness. There was no city marked on the map. And

certainly, no village could have produced the lights that he had seen. He wondered what the city

could have been. He had heard legends, of course, but he had dismissed them. Legends from

occultists back home, who claimed that somewhere, in China or Tibet, there was a hidden city,

populated by beings who were physically and mentally perfect, and who were technologically far

superior to the people of the world outside. He had dismissed these stories as being nothing more

than stuff and nonsense, written by charlatans and believed by fools. Yet he could not explain the

city lights that he had seen.He carried on with his explorations. Where he had fallen, the day before, he doubted that he

could climb back up by himself, anyway. If he went forward, he could yet be the hero that hewanted to be.

The day had passed peacefully, without seeing another human being. This had not surprised

him, as he was in an area of China that was supposed to be very thinly populated. He had seen

plenty of wildlife, though, not that it bothered him. Birds in the sky above, and some very smalldeer that had stared at him as if they had never seen a human being before. Which, quite possibly,

they had not.

He awoke before dawn, disassembling his small, one man tent. He carried on walking east, as

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the sun began to rise. Then, again, on the horizon, he saw those lights that he had seen the day

before. They lay straight in front of him. Then the sun was too high, and they were gone again.

"I will find that city." he said out loud, to himself. A bird, startled by the sudden sound of his

voice, flew off into the air. He did not realise that he had spoken his thoughts out loud.

He now had something to aim for; the discovery of this mysterious city out in the Chinesewilderness. Perhaps those theosophists and occult philosophers had been right after all.

He wondered if Marco Polo had ever come anywhere near where he was. He did not knowenough about Marco Polo's journey, Ffinche realised. He knew that Marco Polo had reported

many strange and wonderful things that had since been discredited. Perhaps this city was one of

those legendary marvels that he had written about. He carried on walking on into the wilderness.

The next morning was the same: he glimpsed the lights of the city on the horizon, before thesun got too high and blotted the lights out. But, although he had spent all of the previous day

travelling east, the eastern lights looked to be as far away as they had been the night before.

He packed his tent away, and started off on his daily trek. He would discover the source of the

lights that he had seen. He saw that this would be his destiny.

He spent the next few days plodding on towards the source of the lights in the east. But

however far he walked, they seemed to be as far away as the first time that he had seen them. Buthe kept going, no matter how tired he was feeling, nor how much his feet hurt. He would find this

hidden realm, if it was the last thing that he would do.

He came to a village, a small collection of peasant huts. They looked at him strangely, as if they

had never seen a white man before. Perhaps they had not.

Marcus Ffinche did not speak a great amount of Chinese, but he had picked up a few words and

phrases. He tried to make himself understood to one of the villagers. "I look for lights in East." Marcus said. "Big town. Lights. How find?"The villager just carried on staring at Marcus Ffinche. Marcus tried again, slower and louder

this time. It only had the effect of having the villager run off. Marcus scratched his head,

wondering how he was going to communicate. Why couldn't everybody just learn English? It

would make everything so much simpler.

Luckily for Marcus Ffinche, the villager returned, with an old man who Marcus presumed was

the village headman. Marcus tried his few words of Chinese on the village elder, who regarded

Marcus strangely. The headman took Marcus by the hand, and led him into a hut.

"You have been injured." the old man said to Marcus, in surprisingly good French.

"Yes, I fell." Marcus said. "The rest of the expedition died."

Marcus was a little embarrassed that his command of the French language was not as good as

that of a village headman, from an isolated hamlet deep within supposedly unexplored China.

Marcus did not even think to ask the elder where he had learnt to speak French so well.

"You have been injured." the old man said. "You fell. You injured your head. Your sight isinjured. Wear this."

The old man produced a poultice, that he placed on Marcus's forehead, covering his eyes.

"Wear this tonight." the old man said again. "Do not remove. You will be better on morning."Marcus did not argue. His questions about the town that he had seen could wait another day. He

would ask the old man the following morning. So he lay there in the dark, with a herbal poultice

covering his face, its soothing coolness sinking into him.

Marcus must have fallen asleep, although he did not recall doing so. But when he awoke, it was

already daylight. A bowl of rice had been placed beside him, for food. He hungrily wolfed down

the rice. When he looked up, he saw the old man sitting opposite him.

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"You injured your head." the old man said. "You see lights where are none. You are better now.

No more lights."

Marcus thanked the old man, and he left the village. The reason that he had been seeing lights

was because his head had been injured, and he was seeing things that were not there. Marcus no

longer cared. All that was left was the search. He carried on, waiting to see the lights in the east.One day, no matter how long it took, he would find that hidden city.

Tanka #10

It's only money

Flowing through pipes to the rich

From far off oilfields

Where people starve, sanctioned deaths,Killed by fear and avarice.

Haiku #58

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The cow chews its cud

Four stomachs work overtime

Unlike its brain.

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The River

I walk through the valley without a name,

To a dark-flowing river without any game,

Bursting with snow-melt, rattling stones,

Disintering a skull of whitened bone;

Spring has revealed a hidden crime,Along with the melting of winter's rime;

Dark clouds hang in the leaden sky,

Old treest line the river's sides,

Casting dark shadows on the water,

A cold place of colder slaughter,A single hole in the back of the skull,

A murder made with art and skill;

We'll never know who the victim was

Nor why they had to die;

The murderer is never found

And has got clean away.

I stand and look, and feel a shiver,In the valley, down by the river.

Tanka #8

Take these years away,

Discarded like yesterdays,

Meaningless as words

Whispered to the wind,

Lost like faded memories.

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By The Light Of The Silvery Moon

Moonlight, the pale reflection of a burning sun, casts down its fragile illumination on the trees

of the forest. What, by day, is a picturesque scene of sylvan tranquillity, becomes something much

wilder under the light of the night. Shadows lengthen, darken, and merge into one, a selenic

gloom of hidden traps and ancient secrets. Tree branches, still shorn of leaves, become claws,talons that rake at the cloudy sky.

The noises of the wood are not cared about during the day. They are all lumped together as

being 'nature' - the buzz of the bee is not distinguished from the creaking of an old tree bough. At

night, the sounds have a different cadence. They strike fearful whispers into the spirits of the

listeners. Was that the hoot of an owl, the yelp of a fox? Or was it something older, much darker,

something that still lurks on the edge of mankind's fears; banished by daytime logic, only

acknowledged at night, a race memory of times when man still believed that monsters lurked in

the depths of the darkest woods?

The crack of a twig is magnified by the dark, and by the silence. What broke the twig? was itsome animal, or another human being? Do you dare turn and look, for fear of what you might see,

or fear of what you might not? Do you see the she wolf who walks between the trees, her coat

glistening silver in the moonlight? But even if you saw her, you would say that she is not there,for wolves have been extinct in these isles for hundreds of years, hunted into extinction by our

own hands. It had to be a fox, or a dog. Yet there she was, and she saw you, even if you refused to

see her.

The she-wolf slunk away into the depths of the moonlit forest, cold light filtering between the

bare branches of the trees, creating zebra patterns of light and dark. It was time for her to go

home, back to her children, before they suspected that she had gone. They didn't know.

Night's shadows lengthened as the moon set. The sun rose, breaking light across a light frost.

No wolves were in the wood, for wolves had been extinct for hundreds of years in these isles. No

wolves had left the woods, during the night, for all the wolves were long gone.

Getting up is hard to do. When you've got a couple of small children yelling at you to get up, it

can be somewhat easier, though.Susan got out of bed. She felt ten years older than her actual age, this morning. She did not

know why she felt so dog-tired. She had gone to bed early enough. She did not understand what

was going on. But she did not have the time to reflect upon the matter. The little horrors had to be

fed and watered, and then despatched to school. And then, when they were safely ensconced at

school, Susan had all the shopping and housework to do. And her novel would not write itself,

either.

It would be a quick trip to the local cheapo supermarket to restock on the essentials of

existence. Multipacks of Walkers crisps and a bottle of Sunny Delight. Green vegetables that the

kids always pushed to the side of the plate. Toiletries. Bread. And all the other boring stuff. And

don't forget more vacuum cleaner bags.Vacuuming. That was the next chore, when she returned with the shopping. Cleaning up after

children who never put their toys away, and complained bitterly when she touched them, as ifSusan was disturbing the Holy Grail. Well, tough. It was time that they learned to tidy up after

themselves. And hadn't King Cnut demonstrated that you can't turn back the tide?

When the vacuuming had been completed to her satisfaction, Susan took the time to look at

herself in the bathroom mirror. She definitely was looking the worse for wear, these days. There

was a white streak running through the centre of her hair. And while it might have looked okay on

some teenage gothette, it was not something that Susan had wished for.

"I suppose that I'll have to start dyeing my hair," she said, to nobody in particular.

She did not have time to worry about that at the moment, though. There was the never ending

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housework to carry on with. And then there would be the little horrors to collect from school.

As she did the ironing, and the washing up, and the dusting, she thought back to her own school

days. She had always made her own way back from school, from the age of nine onwards, in

those dim and distant times. She supposed that those times had been safer. There had certainly

been less cars on the road, then. She had never been harmed. She could not even rememberhaving a school day off sick, apart from a couple when she had skived off. And she certainly

never had the time to worry about going to the doctor, now.The day continued, the same as many days that had gone before. She collected the children

from school. She fed them. She cleaned up after them. And she put them to bed. By the time that

she had finished clearing the children off to bed, it was almost time to go to bed herself. That

must be why she was feeling so tired at the moment. There simply were not enough hours in the

day. All that she wanted was a little time to herself, once in a while.

It was the second night of the full moon. There was a slight breeze, that ruffled the leaves on the

trees in the wood. A light rain had begun to fall. The undergrowth rustled, but it was too low

down to have been disturbed by the breeze. Small, unseen creatures made their ways on their

midnight paths, the moon a full silver disc overhead, untroubled by clouds for the moment.

Perhaps there was a fox, looking for birds' eggs to steal. Or maybe there was a badger, snuffling

around for food. No doubt there were many mice and rats, scurrying from cover to cover, tryingnot to be an owl's evening appetiser.

A leveret broke from cover, exiting the foliage at full speed, running straight across a field. A

second behind it, its pursuer left the wood, sharp on the young hare's tail. It had to be a dog that

chased the hare, for wolves had long been extinct. Perhaps it was an Alsatian that had gone feral.

The creature's fur shone silver below the moon, a pure white streak running down the centre of

its back. The hare jagged from side to side, trying to free itself from its pursuit. It knew what

would happen if it was caught, an ancient memory of hares ripped apart by wolves still lingered

in its genes.

The hare cut across a road, the Alsatian, if that is what you must believe it to be, nipping at its

tail. But it did not look like an Alsatian, really, did it? Its build was too slight, its nose a little too

long.

There was a screech of car brakes, as headlights picked out two shapes running in front of theVauxhall Viva. The hare made it free, the outside wheel just missing its tail. Its pursuer was not so

lucky. There was a thump, as it hit the front of the car, and the rolled across the tarmac.

The car now at a halt, the shaken driver got out to look at what he had killed. Reverend John

Miller had been returning home from visiting relatives up north. Shaken, he opened the door, got

out, and stopped.

In the blink of the headlights he had thought that he had struck a dog. He had expected to see a

dead dog, of some sort, stretched out across the road. But he was looking at the body of a wolf.

He had seen wolves on wildlife programmes on the television.

The wolf was lying on the road. It picked itself up, shook itself, as if trying to remove non-

existent moisture from its shiny coat, and turned its yellow eyes to stare at the priest. The priest

stared back, unable to break away from the wolf's gaze. And then, the wolf turned and fled, back

the way it had come, back into the wood, apparently not hurt by being hit head on by a car doingthirty plus miles an hour. As it ran off, Reverend Miller noticed the streak of pure white running

down the she-wolf's back. He got back in the car, and drove of, but a lot more slowly now. When

he got back to the vicarage, he made sure that all the doors were bolted against the night.

Susan felt knackered when she woke up the next morning. She was almost as tired as when she

went to bed the night before. And her ribs hurt. They felt as if somebody had given them a

kicking. She glanced down, but there were no marks, not that she had expecting there to be any.

No doubt she had been sleeping funny. Either that, or it was the onset of rheumatism. She

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preferred to imagine that she had only be sleeping funny. She was still too young to be thinking

about such things as rheumatism. It was the sort of thing that the little old ladies, with their blue

rinses and free bus passes got.

Susan put it out of her mind. She was too busy to have aching ribs. She had to get the children

up, and off to school, despite their best attempts to thwart her efforts. I mean, why was it thatchildren only liked to eat and drink what was bad for them? Her children's idea of a good meal

was chips, more chips, a hamburger, and high sugar soft drinks. Greens were something that grewin people's gardens, and were not to be eaten. Breakfast times were not that much better. Their

ideas of a breakfast cereal was the sort that came covered in sugar, and that went chocolatey when

you added milk. At least that meant that they were drinking some milk - but the problem was that

they liked to add extra sugar to their flakes. She had tried giving them muesli once, but they had

refused to even taste it, saying that it looked like puke. So little Jeremy and Jemima had won that

particular battle.

That was how Susan was becoming to see bringing up children. As a battle to give them the

right things to eat and drink, and get them off to bed at a sensible time. The only thing was, Susan

was feeling outnumbered, and she was beginning to suspect that she was beginning to be

outmanoeuvred as well. So she settled for doing as well as she could, and hoping to win the

occasional skirmish.

An hour or so later, the children had been dropped off at the local school, complete with packeddinners. That was one thing that Susan was proud of, the fact that she gave them a decent packed

lunch. At least that way,.she knew what they were eating. She would have much preferred them to

have been eating a cooked school meal, of course - but not when the main ingredient of school

meals these days were chips. It did mean that she had to allow Jeremy and Jemima a treat in theirlunchboxes, if she wasn't going to get constant moaning when they returned from school, but she

could live with them eating the odd chocolate bar or packet of crisps.

The children having been dropped off, there was shopping to do. However much she bought,

there was always shopping to do. She drove a Mini, and she thought about buying one of those

gas guzzling four by fours just so that she would only have to do a weekly shop. But she could

not really afford one, nor could she justify having such a car only for doing her shopping and

dropping off her children off at school. Susan also suspected that her shopping would merely

expand to fill the size of the car.Back to housework once the shopping was done. There was always more housework to be done,

like there was always more shopping that needed buying. She did wonder if she could go on

strike for a day or two. Would the housework get bored of not being done, give up, and go away?

It would be nice if things happened like that. But at least the pain in her ribs had gone away. She

must have only been sleeping funny. Susan shrugged her shoulders, and did not give it another

thought.Housework, collect the children from school, feed them, and get them off to bed, at a

reasonable time, if at all possible (and it usually wasn't). At least the children never seemed to get

ill. She had never had to take them to hospital, and they had never come down with any serious

complaints. They took after her in that respect.If she had any free time of an evening, she liked to write. It was more of a hobby than anything,

she did not imagine that she would ever see her name in print. But it would be nice if she did. Shewrote racy romantic fiction - rough hewn Cornish pirates, serving maids with heaving bosoms,

that sort of thing. But she would not be doing any writing that night, she was far too tired. Set the

alarm clock, get off to bed, and try and get as much sleep as she could.

Reverend Miller had spent a lot of his day wondering about the night before. He had tried to tellhimself that it was a dog that he had hit and, by the light of the day, he almost managed to

convince himself. Just to be sure, he phoned all the nearest zoos and safari parks to find out if

they were missing a wolf. As he had expected, none of them were. He cradled the receiver of the

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kryptophilia 7

phone in his hand as he tried to think. Perhaps it was destined to be one of those things that never

got explained.

The day passed, and the night approached. Things looked different by the light of the silvery

moon. And Reverend Miller had had all day to fail to sort out his thoughts about what he might or

might not have seen.It had to be a feral dog, he thought. And he had definitely hit it with his car. It was now

wounded, and probably in a lot of pain. It might be dangerous in that state. He could not letanybody getting injured by a wild dog rest upon his conscience. That was what he told himself,

anyway.

He knew that one of the local farmers had a shotgun. He'd borrow it, and go back to where he

had run into the dog. He should have had a better look last night. There might be a trail of blood.

He had to finish it. He'd go and get the gun right now.

It was the third night of the full moon. A wind was up, and clouds sped in front of the moon's

surface, temporarily obscuring it from view, wispy scraps of water vapour casting deeper

shadows on the darkened ground. There was a change in the weather. Rain was coming. The she-

wolf felt it in her bones.

She ran along the roads, towards her favourite wood, happy to be free. She did not know what

she was happy to be free from. She ran full pelt, faster than you would expect from a wolf wholooked to be getting on in years. She remembered that something had happened the night before,

but she could not remember what. She did not care, now, for she was free.

She saw the lights of the car as she ran along the road, and something told her to get out of the

way. The she-wolf veered off on to some waste ground.

Reverend Miller saw the eyes of the wolf as she veered off on to the waste ground. He almost

went sailing past in his Vauxhall Viva. He managed to break just in time. He reached over to the

back seat, and grabbed the shotgun that he had borrowed off the farmer, and got out of the car.

The wolf was looking at him, not more than a dozen feet away. The Reverend knew that it was

a wolf, and he knew that it could not possibly be a wolf. She was just standing there, looking at

him.

He slowly raised the shotgun, took aim, and fired. The flash, the noise, distracted himmomentarily. He looked to where he expected to see a dead wolf. She was standing there, her

hackles pulled back, growling at him, but no sound coming forth. He did not understand how he

could have managed to have missed.

The wolf took a couple of running steps towards him, and leapt. Reverend Miller remembered

the second barrel, and fired, point blank, as the wolf was in the air. As he saw the teeth of the wolf

approaching his face, he dropped to the floor in a dead faint.

Reverend Miller was cold, and he was damp, and his back hurt. He was also looking at a rather

dismal grey sky. He got up. He was on a scrap of waste ground not far from a small wood. It was

drizzling, and he was soaked to the skin. A shotgun was on the ground at his feet. His Vauxhall

Viva was parked on the road nearby. He felt himself for any injury, but he was perfectly fine.

There was not a scratch upon him. Only his head hurt, a lump on its back from when he hadfainted and hit his head on the ground.

There was no sign of any wolf. For some reason, he was not surprised. He looked over the

waste ground. There was no sign of any blood, nor bits of bone, nor brains, nor bits of fur, nor

that the wolf - or dog, as it must have been - had ever been there. Just him, and the shotgun, both

barrels having been fired, the spent cartridges on the ground near to the gun.

The Reverend picked up the shotgun, got back into the car, and drove off. He never mentioned

the incident to anyone, and he never went looking for wolves again.

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Susan woke up. She was tired, and there was a drizzly rain coming down outside. Her body hurt

- it felt as if someone had given her a kicking, while she slept last night. She ached all over.

"It must just be the time of the month." she said to herself, as she got up to get the children

ready for school.

Stone And Sea

I am stone,

You are sea,

Won't you please

Erode me?

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King Canute

Good King Canute, ha waived the rules,

And made his courtiers look like fools,

When he was asked to rule the waves,

And turn the breakers into slaves.

So he sat down upon the sand,

To bend the waves to his command,

He knew that man can't turn the tide

Because the sea respects no pride:

Wise King Canute proved one sure thing -

That Nature is the greatest king.

Funny Beast

Bread is such a funny beast,It has no mouth, but feeds on yeast,

It grows large when met with heat,

Burnt again, a breakfast treat,

Left alone, it goes black and greenAnd tastes like something quite obscene.

Delivered daily to our stores,

It soaks up moisture through its pores

A wondrous beast, this thing called bread,I think I'll eat it until I'm dead.

Catnip

A legal high for pussycats,

Who dream of cream, and chasing rats,

Eluding dogs, and catching frogs,

And taking baths in upstairs bogs,

Of balls of string, and other things,

Chewing the baby's plastic rings -What dreams cats have, oh what a trip,

When they eat their blessd catnip.

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Children Of The Third Generation

My name is Tom. I am one of the children of the third generation. The third generation of

humankind to be born after the Third World War. The third generation of people to be born in our

bunkers deep below the surface of the world. But it is our hope to be the first generation, as well.

The first generation to return to live in the world above.The war happened almost a hundred years ago, long before the birth of anyone still alive. I

never even saw any of the people who came down to the world below - they all died before I was

even born. Only a couple of the first generation born down here remain with us, and they will be

too old and frail ever to see the world above. Even the second generation are well past their

prime. It will be our task, the third generation, to reclaim the wastelands above for humankind.

Although none of the top-landers remain with us, their legends live on, passed down from one

generation to the next. my friends and I all know of the legends of how the top-landers heard of

the impending war, and of how they prepared to survive the coming holocaust. We all know of

how, when war had become inevitable, they escaped to bunkers buried deep below the surface ofthe world. The bunkers - our home - had once been a complex where humankind had mined for

gold, a yellow metal that was reputedly once of great value. Why, it was never explained to me,

for the metal seemed to be too soft to be of much use.The bunkers had been prepared in advance. The war had been brewing for a long time, and my

ancestors had possessed enough time to equip the underground complex with everything needed

for a society to survive for a very long time. To survive for a century, in fact; long enough,

according to the wise men of the time, for the world to be safe enough to live in once again.

The legends tell of the horrors that must have occurred while our ancestors sheltered deep

below the ground. Something called an atomic bomb would have been used - but not one, but

thousands. These bombs would rain down on the cities, out of something called the sky. Each

bomb possessed enough destructive force to level a city. There would be a blinding flash of light

from an implosion, winds would radiate outward, accompanied by great heat, and radioactive

death. A plume of smoke - a mushroom cloud - would ascend towards the sky. Thousands of

people would have been killed instantly, vaporised by the bomb, leaving only shadows on the

fragments of walls. Millions more to die a lingering death in the following days and weeks, asradiation poisoning and mass starvation took their toll. Men and women reduced to living

skeletons, before they dropped and died, lying unburied on streets reduced to rubble.

Great mushroom clouds would have risen from the implosions of the atomic bombs, carryingradioactive dust high into the atmosphere. A long night would have fallen across the world, a

nuclear winter two years long. Deprived of the sun, plants would have withered and died. Most

large animals would have become extinct, deprived of food, and light, and warmth. Only the very

hardiest of them would have been able to sustain themselves - and even these would be destined

to have any offspring horribly mutated by the radioactive fall-out. Plants would also have mutated

- those that survived the nuclear winter. Even a century after the event, topside would remain a

hellish place to try and reclaim. But that was our destiny. That was what we had been brought up

to do.

The underground complex had been provided with enough stores and equipment to last ahundred years. Water was not a problem - there was an underground stream that ran through the

former gold mine, that provided us with uncontaminated fresh water, and that also served to carry

our waste away.

Food had been one of the main problems. Tinned and dried stores had been stockpiled. By the

time that these had been exhausted, a fully functioning underground farm had been established,

growing fungal proteins, and anything else that could be grown under artificial lighting. We may

not have dined on the most tasty food in the world, but at least we never starved. And, all through

these years, we prepared for the time when we could reclaim the world above.

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Nothing can really prepare you for being the first at any endeavour. The first man in space, the

first man on the moon, the first man out of the elevator back to the surface world. I stood behind

the lead lined doors, scared of what horrors I might yet face. Hesitantly, I pushed the button, and

the doors creaked open.

Outside, I could hear birds singing in the trees. A lush, verdant grassland rolled down from the

entrance to the shelter, to a small copse bisected by a babbling brook. Everywhere, there weresigns of life. Insects hummed in the air. A cool breeze toyed with the leaves on the trees. I could

see a large, black bear nonchalantly strolling down towards the stream. I could see some sort of

silvery craft streak across the sky. And the sky - it was so incredibly blue, and so bright, and so

very, terribly open. I felt that the whole sky suddenly began to press down on me, heavier than

any rock could ever be. My chest began to hurt, and I realised that I was having difficultybreathing. I went back into the lift, and closed the doors, and calmed myself, before going down

to tell the other children of the third generation that the world outside, alas, was beyond saving.

Creepy Dreams

In darkness, my dreams gain life,

Creeping out of wardrobes,

And from below the bed,

Crawling across the coverlets,

And back into my head.

Spiders, boggarts, vampires,

Ghouls. ghosts, and ogres, too -

All the monsters that I knew

From story books, fairy tales;

Lords of myth and legend,

Forgotten since my early days,

Only remembered when half-awake;They'll play in my mind

All through the long long night

And flee with first daybreak.

Fishing

I wish I had a fishing lineFor then I'd fish all day

I'd sit down by the riverside

And while my life away.

But I don't have a fishing line

And I don't have a lure

For all I have's a busy life

So I will fish no more.

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The Dream Within The Dream

The dream within the dream

Awoken by the sound of butterflies' wings.

All alone and feeling old.

Ever blossoming like some infinite flowerLotus, crocus, orchid

Petals revealing petals within

The dream within the dream.

Casting aside the dead skin

Ever reborn seeking some distant nirvana

Awake to sleep to dream

Nothing is unseen within


All alone and feeling old.

A doll within a doll

Painted wood in your hand

Getting smaller forever

Like some article of heaven


Layer upon onion layer

Scent of orange blossom

No colour but rainbows

The dream within the dream within me.

Double Haiku #2

The secret garden

Untouched for too many years,

Where are its carers?

Two overgrown graves,

Lying many miles apart,

With different names

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kryptophilia 7

A Murder Of Crows

Like Poe, like Hitchcock, they flew into his nightmare on sable wings.

John Richards was an ornithologist. He really should not have been having nightmares about

birds. He loved birds. Why become an ornithologist if you didn't like birds? But having anightmare he was. He tossed and turned in his troubled sleep, sweat staining the sheets around

him. In his dream, he was being pursued by a flock of crows. They were out to get him; what

crime he had committed against them he did not know.

John awoke with a start, shivering, cold. He remembered that he had dreamt a nightmare, but its

details slipped from his mind like water through fingers. He tried to grasp the details, but he could

only remember an ominous blackness.

As an ornithologist, his speciality was corvidae - the crow family. He had studied them for

years. It was not only crows that he studied, of course, but all members of the crow family. That

meant that as well as the crow, he knew nearly all that there was to know about the choughs,

ravens, rooks, and all the other members of the crow family. He was most expert on the behaviour

of British birds, but he knew quite a bit about members of corvidae from foreign climes, as well.

So why on earth was he having nightmares about them? He couldn't understand.He put his fears behind him for the day. He had work to do. There was a copse a few miles

away, where there was supposed to be a few choughs nesting. He had to go, check it out, make

sure that they were okay, and mark the nest location down on his Ordnance Survey map. He

would have to make sure that there were no egg thieves in the area. Perhaps he could ask the localtwitchers to be on the look-out. He could not understand why people would steal birds' eggs. Why

kill off such wonderful creatures? It was not as if they could put any rare birds' eggs on show, to

anybody except other egg thieves. It was like those art thieves, who would steal a famous

painting, knowing that nobody but themselves would ever be able to see it. It was worse, even,

for art theft did not endanger species' livelihood.

Yes, there they were, at least four choughs. He made a note in his very dog-eared notebook,

stained with countless days spent out in the wild. There was a couple of nests, so they were

breeding. At least they were out of the way. Perhaps they would be left in peace. When he wassure that he had got all his information down correctly in his notebook, and that no one was

taking an unusual interest in him or the birds, he put his notebook away and made his way back to

his car, an extremely battered Range Rover that somehow kept managing to pass its MOT. Its

back seat contained an assortment of empty Coke cans, road maps, packets of Fisherman's

Friends, waterproof clothing, and books on ornithology, copiously amended along the margins of

the pages. The Range Rover had served him well, through the years. It was his second best friend.

Usually, it even started second time.

Back to his house he went, his task complete. Most of the day had gone. He spent the rest of the

afternoon having a nice hot bath, and then typing up his notes. He kept his most recent notes on

his laptop computer, but his old ones were stored in box files. Eventually, he would have to

organise them all properly, but it was not a task that he was looking forward to. He kept findingreasons to put it off. He went to put the TV on, and suddenly felt a tightness in his chest, and was

short of breath. He fell to his knees, and gasped, until he got his breath back, and his pulse rate

settled down.

"I must cut out all that fast food." he said to himself, as he turned on the TV, and settled down to

watch EastEnders. And he thought no more of the pain in his chest.

That night, while he was asleep, he dreamt of crows again. Large, black crows, swooping down

on him. He woke up gasping.

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"Crows." he said. He did not understand why he should be having these nightmares. He loved

birds. When his pulse stopped racing, he turned over, and went back to sleep.

The next few days passed pretty much the same. He would go about his normal bird-watching

during the day, and dream about crows during the night. It was almost as if his subconscious was

trying to tell him something. Perhaps it was time to take a holiday. He certainly needed a change

of diet, as the heartburn had been getting worse. The uneasy nights certainly weren't helpingmatters.

So he took a few days off, went walking around the Lake District. That seemed to help. He no

longer felt so stressed. He slept well at nights, with no dreams of crows. And his indigestion

disappeared, as well.

When he arrived back from the Lake District, though, he saw a couple of crows sitting on theroof of his house. It was as if they were watching him, rather than the other way around. He told

himself that he was being silly, and went inside.

Over the next few weeks, he saw more crows around his house. Their behaviour was unusual ,

and was certainly not normal for members of the family Corvidae. And the dreams returned -

dark, disturbing dreams, nearly always featuring crows in them. It was as if they were ganging up

on him. But that was ridiculous, he told himself. He loved birds. And birds didn't gang up onhumans. And he definitely wasn't superstitious, he told himself.

He made notes of the crows behaviour. They looked like crows, and they did not do anything

that was not unavian. But he could not shake the feelings that he had.

His work was suffering, but John Richards could not be sure if it was due to the strange dreams

that he had been having, or due to his dietary problems. His indigestion was back, and with a

vengeance. His chest was tight, but he didn't go to the doctor. He would have felt stupid going to

see a doctor just for an upset stomach, when he could so easily deal with it himself. He tried Alka

Seltzer, eating more vegetables and fruit, and cutting down on fast food. But his chest pains

continued. And the more he suffered from them, the more intense his dreams became.

One day, he looked out of the window one morning, to see at least thirty crows watching his

house. He decided that something was going on. They were after him. He could deny it no longer.The question was, what could he do about it? Would anyone believe him if he spoke out? They

would only think that he had been around birds for too long.

He had to get out of there, before they got him. He grabbed the keys to his Range Rover, and

made a run for it.

He had expected the crows to suddenly make an attack upon him, but they simply stayed on theroofs and trees watching him. Heart pounding, he made it into his car, scrabbling around trying to

get it started. His chest felt like it was going to burst.

The car started, and Richards put his foot on the accelerator. He tore around the corner of the

road, the Range Rover almost going up on two wheels. In the back seat, Fisherman's Friends,

coke cans and books slid all over the place.

The Range Rover roared down towards the T-junction at the end of the road. It did not stop, butploughed through a wall, and into somebody's front garden. A horn was heard, continuing,

unending. John Richards was dead at the wheel of his Range Rover, dead before he had hit the

wall. His heart had not been able to take the strain, and had given out.

On a rooftop, looking down at the crash scene, John Crow spoke to Jack Crow.

"There goes the best ornithologist that we ever had. He was a true friend to us birds. But not

very bright, was he? We keep sending him all these dreams to warn him that he had a heart

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condition, and he still ends up getting killed of a heart attack."

kryptophilia issue 7

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