The knock came just after mid-night, a faint wrapping against the door. It was almost lost in the thick rhymes of evening bird song. Lost in some dream I slowly spiraled up from and opened my eyes to feel the faint brush of breath on my check that my wife cast in sleeping night mist. Lost in the world between worlds I thought surely I am dreaming the dreams of other men, of men I could scarily imagine or know?

Now, the wrapping came more insistently. This time, this time there was no mistaking it’s urgency, more its’ seeping violence that like dark water seemed to flow around the door frame into my comfortable home. The oddity was that as I lay dreaming my dream was of a crush of water pouring in through the door. In the dream I stove back in deep fear pressing myself against the wall as the relentless torrent came and came.

Now awake I could almost see its’ hue, smell its’ scent full of fear coming on me like wood smoke up from the valley, coming like the perfume of the dead on warm winds. I twisted awake suddenly my wife grasping at my shoulders pulling me back to a safety that no longer existed. How does one know these things I mused, so suddenly and so true? How does one know that a knock on the door in the still of night brings one’s ending? I knew in that instant that even if I were to breath the air of morning it would no longer be the same air of yesterday.

My mind jumping in sudden leaps of fear something, something that I would miss was sliding away from me forever.
A faint cry followed me through the bedroom door as I left my wife’s side I pulled her hands free of me. This call had to be answered. I knew that much.

It was a quiet cry, her cry so soft and faint it seemed only the whimper of a child. Yet it was filled with such awful longing like greedy fingers grasping at a life done, finished, and incomplete. My life? Could she feel it too?

There were rumors of course, of the men with guns that came in the night. But for me, why? For the love of god and things decent what could I have done to bring their wrath? I am a dentist by trade. I am no radical. Two Saturdays a week in the trading village of Chichicastenango I donate my services to the local Mayan that come from miles across the landscape like ants gathering to honey. I try and fix what hurts. Could this be my crime my sin? My mind is swelling, racing, probing toward causes for this knock at the door at my peaceful quiet home.

The knock was a thunderstorm now. I could ignore it no longer. Moving to that door was like swimming through thick water.

Opening the door I was already shaking body, hands, legs quivering my stomach pressing up into my heart knocking at me in wild rhythm. I open the door further. Foolish me I declare my occupation as if this would make some mistake fall away to move on to the proper doorway. Yes that is it. They have found the wrong door. Perhaps I can help point them in the right direction. I try and smile but my lips hang on my dry teeth.

Then I see through the wave of fear blurring the world into a white haze like a raging entity hanging during the day of the dead celebration, my cousin’s eyes large-feral-white like a frightened animal fill the doorway and pierce me with his fear and something more, something wild and un-imaginable was pushing its’ way in behind them.

That was when I saw them the other eyes floating beyond his in the darkness. Wild eyes that had surrendered themselves to murder too many times or just one time that was too much for the thing inside that had been man to live on. The man’s riffle dug into my cousin’s shoulder blades pushing him at me. Then the footfall of madness came behind, and I knew that the devil himself had entered my home and there was nothing, nothing at all I could do to change this.

_ . _ _ . _ _ . _
My name is Bill Withier and I am what my friends call a bringer of the dead. I walk on the bones of other men and breath life into their last, most harsh moments. I tell the stories written on the bones. I tell these stories because I must. Some dark karmic wind pushes me along down paths no one should have to tread. I think that I am ghost, the real kind, the kind that breathes and yearns and loves and hates. A man filled with the deeds of men done in darkness and yet I cannot look away. I am a ghost blown about the weeds and reeds and shallow bogs. I have spent weeks in trenches that for a moment’s agony of others I stuck my hands into too deeply breathing their essence and wonder and horror.

I walk between two worlds and belong to neither I am the mid-wife that gives birth to the dead in the awful bogs and trenches of time. I am a forensic anthropologist. I am a man. I am, a very selfish man for I make the hurt of others my own.

by ~Mark Walters

Watching heat lightening bending over mountains, first cool stars stir, a breeze. . .

Damp morning yellow flowers hiding their heads from sun until an awake bee comes to ruffles them.

Remembering far away places I have never been and will only see in my minds orb,

A breath. Did you feel it, there on my neck hiding under my collar like a wet giggle?

–a Deep whimsical abandoned breath circulating the light of a thousand cold dead stars rakes me into a chill ridden heap of emptiness,

Oh to be a rock hidden in some old moor catching night tremors of fiddle ministrations away in the warm tender now missing home once burned to rubble under a light rains reach.

Pouring forth like a river into the world a peel of child’s laughter –echo’s distant and near and far away into cold undreamed passages of forgotten time.

I whence-shutter as the breeze softens a piece against my warm wet flesh that like those star-petals –fold to unfold to remember to forget forgotten, things,

Stories not yet told,

Dance me to wake-fullness of a poems deep mystery at arriving so far distant a skill forgotten under the weight of weeping stones of yesterdays,

-NO monster stirs this night, -NO labyrinths, -NO thing sleeps or wakes again,

a child’s footsteps on moss,

skillfully glide. . .

away

Excerpt: As for the others, these are people I’ve not read for a long time but the poetry and internal world is still there. Writers like Paul Bowels, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Pablo Neruda. They all wrote the interior world very well. At the same time, their eyes were piercing, in the awake sense. You could see through their eyes, in new ways, the ordinary world.

Link: http://conversationswithwriters.blogspot.com/2010/06/interview-2-of-2-m-walters.html

- What can you tell us about your new book The Rocks Beneath?

I can tell you what I think of it but I’m more interested in what others think it is. On one level it’s a hard driving fast paced adventure Sci Fi. However it’s character driven and there are deep collisions of personalities and ideas in this action. These are personalities defining and creating the direction and course of their own history. The story is about cross roads that define a race. It’s about the dark roads civilization can too often take and the damage that it inflicts on it’s own self.

- Where did the idea for this story come?

I wish I knew how to answer that. The manner in which a story comes is a kind of mysterious thing. I think writers, particularly poets are modernity’s answer to shamanism, it’s something old you see, the storyteller functions as such. We may have technology but in fact it’s the same as sitting around the campfire and spinning myth to explain the world. I think most writers are at least a bit mystified by the process of writing if they are honest. I find that character and story have an odd life of their own.

That said observation of life has a lot to do with it. Looking at the world in an objective way and realizing that most of the values we claim to embrace are decidedly not how the world functions. Remember the things we hopefully learned as children like sharing? How often do we see this practiced in daily life? When we see this a tension arises, a very creative kind of tension.

A writer needs to dive below the propaganda and this is something that all cultures practice knowingly or not our ethnocentrisms are our propagandas. We all want to believe them. I don’t think this is necessarily bad, it’s natural and we all try and twist the world into fitting our pre-conceived notions, especially if there is something we want and think we some how disserve. This happens naturally and serves a protective function but its also very dangerous and deceptive when it becomes the tool of power and privilege, then it can truly become something, well, evil.

This is my view at least. People do it and nations do it. We are at such a cross roads, and have been for some time now. It’s a good time to be a writer and a scary time to be human being I think if you are even remotely awake; it’s getting scary out there. Some of us would like to push our culture to live up to its’ highest and most noble ideas like true justice and equality, etc, however old bigotries, and hatreds and intolerances have truly bubbled into the open. I’ve seen this story before and it can and often does end very badly. Seeing the patterns repeat themselves gives me pause. Sorry that’s the anthropologist in me speaking. I can’t avoid that perspective; it’s in the work also. As a writer and a person I look for patterns. In many ways humans are very predictable. I think we play with this as writers. We stretch and prod it, but there is a framework to work within.

- How long did it take you to write this book? (And how long is the book?)

It took a year to write, although I was working on multiple projects at the time including a book of short stories, a novella and a screenplay. For example I finished a Flourish of Damage & other Tales, a mixed genre collection of short stories. It is divided into 3-parts, there is humor, horror, and science fiction. It is available now at Sonar 4. Please see the link bellow and go and check it out.

Regarding the novel, I sat on it for another year because I was not entirely happy with the potential home I had found for it. There was a larger publishing house that had some interest in the project but for some reason I could not engage myself in a re-write to re-submit to them. They were not bad in any way, I just did not think them the right home for Rocks. In the end I went with a smaller company that I really believed in and felt that we had each other’s interest at heart. Rocks will be out early next year in trade paper, in the mean time please pick up a copy of Flourish of Damage and keep me writing. My work is eclectic, you will find something there that you will enjoy, at least I strive to be inclusive.

- Tell us something about your first writings, before this book came about.

Hmm. . . journal entries formed themselves into poems eventually, poems became short stories, and short stores became novels. The journals began as a way to order a world that still makes little sense to me. It was natural, that’s all I can say. I put pen to notebook and something happened, and I liked it. It fit, it made sense, and it was and is, one of the few things that seem natural to me.

- You are a science fiction, and horror novelist and short story writer – which is your favorite genre? Would you rather write short stories or novels?

That’s a good question; I love the feeling of writing a novel. It’s like running a marathon. It’s rewarding. It’s a damned exhausting venture for me also. I mean it takes a lot out of me. My health, already poor suffers. For me a novel is a scary awful adventure I both like and hate. It takes effort to hold it together, for me it’s like trying to contain an explosion. Sounds dramatic, but it’s also true. I would rather write short stories. A short story has a beginning, middle and an end and they can come together quickly for me. There is so much less editing for me as a writer working on a short story. It’s more a like a poem, they seem to arrive complete. I’m not chasing after threads here and there. Both are important to me, equally important, the novel probably more so in fact, it’s just that one is easier than the other for me.

- Tell us something about your 3 book dark science fiction series called the Minder series.

Beneath the Rocks is part of the Minder series. The first concluded novel of that series. Two other novels have already been started and they were started while I worked on the first of the series. The general story line for the trilogy all came at once, talk about harassing an explosion! But I’ve needed a little break from the dark Minders, my next novel is no less intense, in fact it is more so, yet subtle, darker in a kind of Lovecraftain way. As far as the Minder series, the next two novels of that series occur both previous to the Rocks novel and then much latter in time.

The next novel of that series is when the Minders came to Crootu and discovered the indigenous peoples of that planet. The Minders are use to taking what they want and deny themes selves nothing. The band level society sees the Minders as gods at first, but gods are often demi-gods that don’t realize they are demi-gods and saviors are often not what they seem.

Even when the good savior arrives, men wait until the moment they are gone to tell us what they really meant. For example Christianity today has little to do with the teachings of Christ, right, for example both he and the Buddha said that men and women were equal, right. That alone was enough to get you murdered in those days. However the generation that was responsible to organize and carry their teaching forward quickly corrected them and told us what they really meant to say. (laughing) Another example is all that stuff Christ said about the poor is getting explained away today. The only time I recall Christ becoming intolerant was with the ‘banksters’ of his day. The moneychangers exploiting the folks outside the temple. Anyways the point is, what follows is seldom even recognizable from the original source. That relates to the creative tension I spoke of earlier.

So back to the novel, this is the early conflict of two races. The conflict changes both of them forever as they move forward. No one will abide an occupation. This is true of the Phyne people, the indigenous race of Crootu. History teaches us this simple truth again and again and we forget again and again it seems. An occupation may last a century even in seemly stability, but the moment it ends it will bubble and then ignite in new ways and old ways. Values can never be taught at end of a gun. That’s a fool’s enterprise I fear.

Also in the early novel the Minder race has suffered a genetic split and one branch of that split becomes the Gorrum of the Rocks novel. We learn more about the Minders and their history and where the conflicts originate in the Rocks novel and why there is such hatred between Minder and the Phyne race. When I talk about it I admit, I’m kind of ready to jump back into the Minder world again. (laughing)

- How much time do you spend writing, and what is your writing plan (do you use an outline? Take notes? Or just write?)

I sit down and I write. If the creative battery is dead I edit. (sigh) I’m attempting to be more methodical in the next novel to save me time and worry. I’m attempting to use more visual aids just to keep the threads coherent. We shall see how that works, ask me in a year. I’m curious myself.

- What would you like for your readers to know about your writing, your life?

Well it’s a difficult path. I hear a lot about how smooth the flow of the writing is. This always breaks me up for I’m at the other end of the process. The visual comes to mind of a man at the end of a fire hose turned up on high and I’m bouncing off the sidewalk getting beat half to death so they can feel the smooth rhythm of the thing, the flow, the smoothness at the other end. Sometimes it’s not that way but for me a lot of days I’m bouncing off the sidewalk. That’s not a complaint. This is a profoundly rewarding road. I love it, I truly love it, it’s also very solitary and I’m solitary by nature and by choice lately, so it’s a perfect fit for me. I just think most folks don’t understand this process, but then I don’t either so that’s okay.

-Who are your favorite authors? Have you any lesser-known favorite writers?

People I have not read for years but their influence hangs on me like an old worn out soft jacket. People like Paul Bowels, who was really a kind of stream of consciousness writer that did some wonderful things. There is a story that he wrote called, if I remember correctly; Up Above the World, it’s so strange the feel to it. It takes place in Central America , which is one of my favorite places. There is a tone to the book that I got a small glimpse of in Belize. Kind of like you have stepped over some un-seen line and find yourself in a very strange place. It’s not comfortable and in fact it may be a little dangerous, but you feel both very awake and slightly drunk at the same time. Exhaustion was part of it, but also the place and the people and the dangerous under currents of that time in that part of the world. I can’t explain it. But the influence in there some place in the work. Maybe with Jhem in the Rocks, he is a prisoner in his own home and body so to speak. He is locked inside for much of the novel and he is at that taunt tight wonderful scary place when it’s all about to break open and some part of you, some very deep part is awake and knows this. The rational mind is resisting trying to hold it all together and then comes the surrender and interesting things start to happen. Perhaps you live through it, but life is forever changed from that point on. We can all I think relate to this feeling in lesser ways. It’s part of our personal story, right, perhaps less dramatic, perhaps not, time and place dictate a lot of this.

- I love the book cover and would love to know who is the cover artist?

Oh me too! Dan McPharlin has no bigger fan than myself. Dan is an extraordinary Australian artist. He does shows through out Europe, the US and has worked with everyone from the New York Times to Nike. He is amazing and I am lucky to call him a friend. He is a big fan of my science fiction and our work fits eerily together I think. He is creating images now for me for a novella I wrote that he is producing titled; Night Reach and I simply can’t wait to see them. Dan is an amazing fellow with incredible talent. I can’t say enough good things about him.

- Have you a website or blog where people can find out more about you and your work?

Join me at the Book House click here to listen/ Click here to listen/

I am undone by it, the bell. It woke me from a stupor, the crashing sound of the bell breaking the long alien silence apart.

My dreams have brought me here; my dreams have spat me into this awful place. “There are wolf prints on the floor, look here,” a voice is saying. “Three hundred years ago it walked into this church and killed the likes of three deacons and then cast itself down the road to kill two more persons before the lightning storm took it away. It’s prints are still here, burned into rock tiles.”

“What- hugh- what?” I mutter in delirium.

“The dog of course man, the lighting hefted it away never to be seen again. Although some say it went to England and set to its ugly work there a century latter.”

“You are quite mad sir, and where the devil am I?”

“The devil indeed has come upon us, but in ships you see, come from the stars. They are merciless. I sought to bring them here to finish me but you came instead. Some raving naked minstrel came bursting through my door singing and covering his ear with face clenched tight as a fist. Scared the living fright out of me. I realized I was quite mad in that instant. Then I saw you and realized I was quite sane in fact, by comparison, if madness is a thing that is relative for I knew I looked into the face of a frigging lunatic. You man! That would be you.”

A Flourish of Damage,

By ~M. A. Walters

It’s late after-noon. The Central Valley has been baking like an oven, now, finally, a breeze arrives like a welcome old friend, it’s brushing my bangs to the side gently, as my ice tea is bleeding coolness, coldness all over my hand and lap. My mind is tumbling, turning and whispering of distant things, awful things, and wonderful things. I’m on the porch swing and I’m leaning into those memories today. For the first time, in a very long time they don’t seem like the terrible monsters I had always believed them to be. Today, this day at least they pierce and they probe me, here on this porch with the breeze playing over me in my loss summer dress with Maxwell snoring peacefully on the couch just inside the window, I feel suddenly so safe and so whole and it seems okay to look around that corner, the one I avoid. I am startled at this simple thing, this feeling of safety, of wholeness. I venture into it with eyes open, this time. I tilt my head back and feel the breath pull me along and the cascade begins.

Where did it come from I almost wonder out loud.

The darklings don’t hold the terrors they used to, he, does not hold the terrors that he used to. He is a diminished man, and they; the darklings are a diminished terror. Those memories pour out of me into the heat where they seem to evaporate, slowly. Today those haunting memories gather like the moisture off my glass and slip away from me toward emptiness. I honor them with my awareness for a time, as they go.

It’s all like such a dream now, but it wasn’t a dream, I assure you. . . it was not. It’s also not the nightmare full of so many jagged teeth it used to be either.

It all started a little like this.

available for purchase at Sonar 4 Publishers/

Words,

Are my calling,

Yet,       words elude me

When the topple into my head,

at moments strange,

I am intoxicated by then. . .

Written of the road to Lake Atitlan

by ~ me

Welcome to my page. . . I’m a Science Fiction & horror novelist who is currently working on a three book series titled the, “Minder Series.” The pesky Gorrum haunt the hallways, corridors, and living landscapes of a despot run-away world. They set my heart to pounding when I wrote then, be very wary least they follow you into your dreams.

Contact me at/ flashingsteel002@yahoo.com

illustration by talented illustrator ~ Dan McPharlin

The Kgala is both mysterious and indifferent.

Guard yourself well, for if you become mystified

by its’ clime and apparent temperament, its’

indifference will crush you. . .

Remember the Loppers come in mass at Night Reach,

In their wake, nothing draws breath,

From: The Book of Desert Conduct

Date & Origin unknown

Night Reach                                                                                                   ,

By ~ M. A. Walters

The horizon was a burst of new color as the large suns were sliding toward day’s end. Fine silver, purple and green fingers spread and roamed and danced at the edge of the eastern borders. The light was reacting with dust particles lifted high into the atmosphere on heat thermals of midday, but it was magic against the eye no matter how the mind carved it up.

Jom’s mouth was agape and his eyes wide while Milli kept watch over their shoulders. The distant wall some fifteen kilometers behind them was gathering up the last fall of light and shining it back toward the two figures in great, thick pinkish hues. The curve of planet could be seen across the Kgala a brief instant after the heat thermals cooled near even-time. Above the great vastness of blue-black space poked through the colors of the horizon, making the colors clearer and crisper.

At times like this, distant objects would seem close enough to reach out and touch. The air would becalm itself like a clear lens, and things of the far reaches would bloom before the eyes as if near. It was one of the strange illusions of the vast, dry alkali stretches. On this day conditions were such; and the safety of the wall seemed nearer than it was, and the blaze of distant sun was enormous and looked close enough to throw a rock into its great slip of orange furry.

Jom closed his eyes tight and tilted his head toward the glare. He thought for a small moment he could hear the violent, mad crackle of it.

~coming summer 2010

Night Reach by Mark Walters, M. A. Walters is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.