Google Images... Artist- Ian Joyner

[I'm reposting an updated version, with several additions in hope of getting some feedback about how to integrate this story with The Night Gods II for the book. I'd like to keep them independent- this as a short story- but both parts are integral to the overall story]

Forms Without Form

How do you explain something you don't understand yourself... something that lurks deep within man's soul. Things that aren't things, forms without forms, real yet ethereal, seen yet unseen. Now perhaps, you understand my dilemma... trying to explain things that happened both in me and independent of me... am I mad, or is it all somehow real?

We've all seen them I think, they live somewhere behind our eyes perhaps, both in and outside of time. They are the old ones, older than time itself, ageless, wraithlike demons drawing us into the darkness of our souls. Or is it their souls that we are drawn into...do they live in us, or we within them? Do they in fact exist at all, or are they merely a manifestation of our imagination? Is it we that give them form, the evil that exists in the souls of man? They lurk there somewhere in the ether, our nightmares are what gives them form.

The cats can see them, of that I'm sure... You can see it in their eyes, looks furtive and secretive. You can feel them in the woods at night, their existence a mere whisper at times, yet real and somehow overpowering. Formless, yet with form. Like the spirits of the dead, coalesced and as cold and desolate as the grave. It was in the woods just outside of Portsmouth that I first became aware of their presence.

It was on the mile or so walk along the dirt road that traversed the wood that led to the big house by the bay. The road that separated the woods from the old cemetery. The house itself was a pretty cheerless place, devoid of the usual hominess that generally pervades such places. I was staying there with my friends Jimmy and Frank. They were normal enough but their parents were austere New England folk...the last of that generation of true New Englanders.

The summer's eve felt cold and empty as I plodded along the old dirt road, lit only by the gibbous moon. I became aware of something other present, something palpable yet ethereal...known but unknown in the wood to my left. Tentacles of terror gripped me from behind the trees; gone during the daylight hours but so very real in the night. The presence came not from the cemetery as one might think, but from within the woods. My pace quickened as I peered into the trees searching for something...anything.

I tried to summon my courage, as much as available to a 16 year old, small town boy. The terror consumed me now, a cold sweat broke out and the hairs at the nape of my neck stood on end. I was running now, the house only a few hundred yards away. The trees and what was behind them became a blur as I sped toward the house. They laughed at my terror these ethereal forms in the wood... it was my fear that sustained them- gave them form and purpose. As bleak as it seemed, that dank and forboding house was a welcome presence to me now. I could see the lights in the windows beckoning. I was safe at last...for now.

But that was then and this is now... My name is Eddie Phillips, inmate #180748. I'm doing 15 consecutive life sentences plus 100 years. They say I'm a serial killer, but I didn't kill anybody, but I remember what happened. I'll die in prison, that I'm sure of. Before I do, I have to tell what really happened.

Donna & Me and the Demons Make Three

It was one of those perfect Spring days that happen in small town New England. The air was alive with the smell of life, trees green with buds, flowers blossoming, the snow gone washing away with it the death of Winter, to be replaced with the vibrant life of Spring. The air itself had a life of its own... which seemed to me at least, to make Donna's death even more tragic.

How could I have known? I was just a small town kid, 15 years old and it was a year or so before I encountered the things in the trees. I might have had a clue if I hadn't been so young and naive. I had seen a few of the shadows flit just outside the field of vision, but I never paid any attention. At this point of my life, if someone said supernatural I would have thought of TV stuff...the Twilight Zone or Outer Limits kind of stuff.

Donna and I were friends. She lived in the old manor house near the center of town that had been converted to apartments. She and her mother lived there alone. I don't know what happened to her father, she never said so I never asked. My friend Kim lived in the same place, but by the 5th or 6th grade, guy games like playing army were beginning to give way to more grown up interests. That's when Donna and I became friends.

We were in the same grade at school and we started hanging around together in about the 6th grade. Innocent stuff mostly, we liked to play cards and listen to records- stuff like that. We went for walks along the river that ran through the middle of town, downstream from the old covered bridge. There was a dirt road that ran along the river beside some corn fields and we would walk and talk. It wasn't romantic or anything, we were just friends. We kissed a couple of times, just to see what it was like more than anything else. It was the same playing "show & tell"... it was experimental, nothing sexual- childhood curiosity. Sometimes when we were playing cards in her living room, she would lift her dress to tease me when her mother was in the kitchen.

Donna was pretty, even when we were kids- not movie star pretty, but cute. She had medium brown hair that she wore long with bangs. Her eyes were pale blue and always had an inquisitive look in them- like she was trying to solve some deep unfathomable problem. By the time we were in jr. high shcool, she had begun to develop... a pretty nice figure, I guess you might call it. By this time she had begun to attract the attention of the boys too- she started dating one of the guys on the high school basketball team. I thought he was a jerk, the way most jocks are... all full of themselves, brimming over with self- importance- strutting around the halls like King Shit of Turd Island even though the team only won two games last season.

While she was dating the Basketball Jerk, as i called him, much to her apparent delight, I was dating a girl named Brenda. She wasn't nearly as pretty as Donna was, but she was very liberal with her affections... Which in those days meant you could get your hand up her dress and only get slapped one or two times.

By the time we hit high school we had drifted apart. We were still friends, but not close like before. She had a boyfriend for a while and I was focused on playing sports. Our card games and walks became fewer and fewer. Her boyfriend was the jealous type so I just kind of stayed away. Then things got crazy... it all started the day after I had the dream.

All teenage boys have "the dreams"... the ones where you wake up sticky. This one was about Donna. It was weird, I hadn't thought about her for a really long time. You have to understand, these were the years before the "sexual revolution" when sexual desires were still suppressed. In those days kids just "made out" kissing and maybe some petting. Intercourse was pretty much out of the question, even if you were going steady. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I woke up after the dream and got ready for school. When I got there it was pandemonium... girls crying, people scurrying about. Donna was found dead.

The day they found her, I was crushed, like somebody had kicked the guts out of me. We may have drifted apart, but she was still an important part of my young life. I could almost see here there, in my mind's eye, swinging in the gentle breeze on the end of that rope- eyes bulging, face swollen and purple, tongue protruding from her mouth. I wanted to cry... I felt like vomiting.

They said it was a suicide...she had hanged herself down by the river. After a few days the details started coming out. People said that she had had sex just before she died. Nobody knew if she had been raped or not, just that she had sex. I knew her and I knew that she wouldn't have done it willingly. She and her boyfriend had broken up a long time ago. He had moved away, so it couldn't have been him. I was stunned, numb. Somehow this couldn't be real, but it was. And what did the dream mean...why would it happen the night before? It would be years before I found out.

GIF by @papa-pepper