Sean Best's Blog

You want to hear the true story of what happened one night many moons ago when I discovered that party drugs are Satanic evil harbingers of self-destruction. Someone offered me a drink of tea that had been brewed from mushrooms collected out of cow dung after a summer rain storm. When I ingested the odd-tasting elixir nothing happened for about a quarter of an hour, then I started feeling weird.
The weird feeling got even weirder as time passed until I lost all concept of time. I began hearing disembodied voices. A red-haired girl was sitting in the fashion of a Yoga meditator on the cold floor of a darkened laundry room staring vacantly through the open door of an empty clothes dryer. The little light at the back of the dryer drum seemed like a candle burning. Her face was luminous with an eerie expression.
She motioned for me to kneel down beside her. Overwhelmed by drug-induced curiosity, I complied with her creepy summons. She bade me gaze into the clothes dryer. I shouldn't have looked into that dryer because when I did, I was suddenly overcome with a wave of stomach churning queasiness. The back of the dryer appeared to move rapidly away into a great far distance. The space inside the dryer was cavernous.
The dizzying abyss inside the dryer gave me a staggering sensation of drunken vertigo. The red-haired girl asked me if I was hearing the voices calling my name. When I listened into the gaping dryer, I realized the origin of the disembodied voices. I heard a chorus of droning voices chanting my name repeatedly as if calling me to join them in the deepening cave of the clothes dryer. It was ghostly haunting.
I was on the verge of tears when the red-haired girl said something disgusting that terrorized me so badly that I jumped up and ran from the shadows of the icy laundry room. She said "Don't you want to rip steel and watch it bleed?"
She must have been a powerful evil witch. What healthy mind would ask such an appalling question? I ran past droves of people crowding a hallway. I stumbled into a room so jam packed with people that I had to force my way through to the door.
The people gyrating in that cramped smoky room didn't look right. It was like being surrounded by mindless zombies. I was trapped in a room of the dead. The gross fleshy people were grabbing at my arms and the door seemed to be getting farther away. The harder I struggled to reach the door, the harder all those freakish corpse people grabbed at my shoulders and arms, and the farther away the door moved. "Where are you going, Sean?" I heard them saying. They were pulling on me and shouting my name in my ears.
The music was so loud. The huge woofers were hammering Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb into my spinning skull. I was going completely out of my mind. The maddening experience was horrifying. I had to get to the front door and get out of that ill-omened house but the door was tiresomely distant and the gruesome hideous people were squishing the air out of my lungs. I felt like I was caught in the mosh pit of a heavy metal concert.
By this time I did start weeping. I was literally crying like a hurt child because I was so afraid of those ghoulish people that were mashing me and holding me back from the dwindling door. The mushroom tea in my bloodstream turned the corpuscles in my veins into little dancing tea cups that were laughing at me and mocking my name with rude insults like "Sad little Sean drank some tea, then cried and begged on bended knees, he wanted a drink and so he had it, now he's falling down a hole with a red-eyed rabbit!"
I despaired of my life at that point. The monstrous people mobbing me was too much pressure for my lungs to endure and besides that the door had moved hopelessly distant. I was literally facing an unspeakable death by insanity and suffocation when all of a sudden a force like a tidal wave slammed into my back and I felt myself being blasted toward the door at breakneck speed.
The door somehow flew wide open and I tripped over the threshold landing face down in the shrubbery beside the front step. The force that had mercifully impelled me from a doom of smothering psychosis was two big dudes who had gotten into a fight with each other. One of their fists grazed the back of my head as I was staggering to my feet. Even though the shot just did clip the posterior of my cranium it sounded like a gong went off inside my head. My eyes crossed and I staggered forward from the momentum onto the grass that was damp with dew of the late night hour.
I could hear shouts and much vulgar language coming from behind me along with the revolting thumps of knuckles heavily colliding with human flesh. I didn't dare look back. I staggered and stumbled through all the cars in the driveway until I found my blue pickup truck. Fortunately, no one had blocked me in. Fumbling with my keys I unlocked the driver side door and crawled in. I closed the door and locked it making sure I had the windows rolled all the way up.
I drove out of the dark neighborhood and when I hit a street that led up through the center of town, the lamps on the utility poles were blazing in my eyes like stadium beacons. I was struggling with blindness when I noticed an automobile beside me on the road. It was an old Stingray Corvette. The occupants of that car motioned for me to roll down my window. They appeared to be puffing on weed and they were wearing T-shirts with AC/DC and Bad Company logos on the front. The passenger said, "Hey man, you're only driving 13 miles per hour. You better adjust before a cop notices you." Then they sped off.
I glanced at my speedometer and saw that I really was driving at only 13 miles per hour in a 45 mile per hour speed zone. Then the speed limit sign indicated the zone had changed to 35 which greatly relieved me because there was no way possible for me to drive 45 miles per hour with those millions of miniature tea cups laughing and taunting in my bloodstream. Driving 45 miles per hour would have felt like doing 90. As it was, it seemed like I was going way over the speed limit when I managed to force myself to ease up to 25 miles per hour. The buildings and utility poles were flying by as though I was jetting down the street like a bat out of Hell.
I willed my leg muscles to put more pressure on the accelerator pedal but my foot trembled and refused to push down any harder. Just then I saw a glowing Burger King sign up ahead and the result was that I began to feel very hungry. After another moment or two of staring at the big red fast-food sign I felt like I was starving to death, so I pulled into the Burger King drive-thru. When I got to the place where the lighted menu is on display, I braked to a stop. A booming voice blared out through the speaker hole. I almost made a mess in my pants and those hateful mocking tea cups were rioting in my veins.
Recovering from the shock, I ordered several food items from the lighted menu. When I got to the window to pay, I couldn't count money. I just dug into my pocket and gave the girl whatever I had, which turned out to be a hundred dollar bill. She said she was giving me change of $50 and something cents, so I must have ordered fifty bucks worth of food.
After that it seemed like I waited at the window for a long time but then the girl started handing stuff to me. She kept handing bags out the window to me until it felt like I was running out of room in my truck. I started to panic because I was getting worried that she could hear the tea cups mocking me, their squeaky little voices were getting louder and louder. I had to get away from Burger King but the girl at the window kept handing bags to me. Finally, she stopped but then handed me two straws wrapped in paper and two big drink cups full of I don't know what.
I drove slowly forward from the window and looked both ways up and down the street. It was very late by this time so even though it was a Saturday night, there weren't many cars on the road. I couldn't stand the ferocious glare of the thousands of looming painfully bright street lamps, so I headed for a secluded wooded spot on the outskirts of town, but that was the worst mistake I ever made besides drinking that nightmare tea in the first place.
When I first arrived at the secluded wooded spot everything seemed all right. I figured I had found a place where I could let the psychedelic drug wear off and get rid of those sadistic tea cups that were now screaming bloody murder in my veins. I left my engine idling and I left my headlights on.
It was summer and the Dog Fennel was growing head-high and fluffy. The beams of my headlights were aimed right straight at a thick growth of Dog Fennel. The song playing on the radio was Paranoid by Black Sabbath, but it wasn't the radio station, it was a tape I'd left in my truck stereo. It was on autoplay, so after one side ended, the tape would automatically flip over and start playing the other side.
I began digging into the food bags like a ravenous animal, but right about that time Paranoid went off and Planet Caravan started. I had opened a double Whopper with cheese and was just taking a big bite when I noticed something odd about the Dog Fennel. The odd thing about the tall eerily lush plants is that they were no longer Dog Fennel. The grim flora had morphed into sinister figures wearing white holocaust cloaks. Their faces were obscured in shadow and they were singing Planet Caravan. The cloaks slowly began oscillating like slimy eels swimming their wiggly way through water.
My guts retched because it felt like the big bite of Whopper I had chomped down on was turning to powder in my mouth. Dry powder. I started coughing and gagging because I had a mouth full of stinking smelly desert-dry talcum powder. When I looked at the cheeseburger to see what I had bitten into, the lettuce, tomato, onion, cheese, and meat patties were oozing with fat writhing maggots. By now the tea cups in my bloodstream were singing Planet Caravan with the colony of cloaked figures that undulated lasciviously in the headlights of my pickup truck.
In the terrorizing shock of panic about what was in my mouth, I opened my driver side door and spit the powdered maggots out into the darkness. Under my truck skulking things leered and watched and waited. I started grabbing all the bags of food and throwing them out. When I had gotten rid of all the vermin-infested food, I closed my door and locked it, but another fright beset me. The position I was sitting in before I opened the door was tense. I had been bracing my left leg against the closed door to keep myself from falling out of the driver seat, but without realizing it, I had moved my leg back a little while I was tossing out the vile rotten food so that when I closed the door again my leg wasn't braced against it which made me feel like I was falling helplessly into a cosmic vacuum of horrifying purgatory out of which not even light could escape.
I kept falling and falling. I grabbed the steering wheel to hold on, but something was pulling at my legs. The whole truck started vibrating wildly. The violent shaking caused my clammy palms to slip from the steering wheel. Below me I could see the flames of Hell and a marauding legion of hateful angry demons waiting to tear my soul to pieces and devour my flesh. I could hear the haunting lyrics of Planet Caravan "We sail through endless skies, stars shine like eyes, the black night sighs, the moon in silver trees, falls down in tears".
Everybody was singing those murderous mind-twisting lyrics - the psychotic witchy tea cups, the eely holocaust cloak colony, the raging fire-breathing demons.
The louder they sang the harder it was for me to hold on to the very last ragged shred of my sanity. I was being mercilessly dragged down into the Bottomless Pit. My life was over. I was facing eternal torment in a subterranean dungeon of demonic horror.
I don't know how much later it was when I woke to the sound of light rain on my windshield. I was still parked in the secluded wooded spot. Low rumbles of thunder seemed to press the early dawn down and mute it, heavily weighting the atmosphere creepy and murky with hopelessness and despair. My mouth was pasty. I was so thirsty. An unpredictable sudden wave of nausea hit me. I jumped out of my truck and vomited hard, but it was dry heaves because there was nothing in my stomach.
After a crying agonizing time in which I thought I was going to suffocate from not being able to breath any air while ensnared in the abominable clutches of the relentless spasms that wracked my tired trembling body, I finally got a reprieve from the violent yacking. The cool foggy dawn rain soaked my clothes and brought much needed relief. I crawled back in my truck, drove home, went upstairs to my room, showered, then passed out face down on my bed. I slept all that rainy day and all the following night before I had fully recovered from the poison I had ingested at the party.
Since that awful horrid nocturne of seemingly endless nightmare I no longer drink booze, take drugs, or go to parties, and I NEVER listen to Planet Caravan.

The published books authored by Sean Terrence Best are available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many other booksellers.

Cold autumn moonlight
you know I’m thinking about you now and I’m so lonely
leafy wind of October
you know my heart was made for you and for you only

the grave is just a breath away
in death we’ll be united
forever in each other’s arms
nevermore to be divided

in the shadows lurking closer
is the specter of our sweet destiny
two ghosts merging closer to the moment when
the darkness shall enclose us

in the coffin of romance
the candle lights sway and dance
there’s a howling in this macabre night
a desperation to be together

take my hand and follow me, my love
to the crypt of our forever
the ancient tombs of earth like ours
are hidden from those who don’t understand

there’s a truth in mystery
there’s a hidden path that leads
to a sacred sacrament among the barren trees
upon the hill of the Salem witch

can’t you see her now, she calls in blood
the innocent one they buried in mud
the vanity of the living blinds them
to the bliss of love in secret chambers

let us hurry now, be on our way
the knife in my hands is sharp
there’s ragged, twisted open gate
though our corpses rot, our passion thrives

in dark repose beyond the lies
the musty tunnel beneath the roots
beneath the gravestones and lower still
to the gray and ghastly cadaver

let not this chance escape us
let’s take it while we can
and free ourselves from the limits
of those who hold tightly to life

never knowing what their postponing
this is us, this friable alluvial
let us ride ourselves of the barrier of life
and find our sensual bliss in ghostly romance

The published books authored by Sean Terrence Best are available via Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and many other booksellers.

The huge blood-red orb has just gone down and I'm driving out of the parking lot of another cheap motel.  Out here in the remote treeless expanse where the Plains rise slowly in elevation to meet the high desert there's always another dive motel.  Just when you think you've seen the last one and start to worry that you may be in for a long haul before the next opportunity for lodging, there's another 13-room rat-hole with gullies in a gravely parking lot that usually has only one other vehicle in it besides your own - a dented pickup truck with a rusty body and broken side mirrors.  Yeah, the twilight is coming on now.  I put the Springsteen CD in and set I'm On Fire to loop continuously.  I've been sleeping in the musty rooms of these roach joints so long that my clothes smell like a combination of dirty ash trays and stale booze.  I don't smoke or drink, but you couldn't tell it by smelling my soft cotton pullover.  These desert nights are apt to be chilly.  That's why I wear long sleeves.  The cobalt blue backlighting of the instrument panel glowing from behind the steering wheel combines with the haunting rockabilly ballad to smooth out my nerves.  Yeah, I've been sleeping in dive motels during the day and driving at night.  I like driving at night.   The traffic is not as heavy.  What am I talking about traffic?  On the old Route 66?  That's a damn lie.  There's no traffic out here in these endless wastes of ghost towns and abandoned places.  Traffic has nothing to do with why I drive at night.  It's because of her.  She hit the road before I did - left without even saying goodbye.  She was gone when I woke up, then my car wouldn't start.  Looked under the hood.  She had stolen my distributor cap.  It took some doing to get another one for my old Bullet Mustang.  She's got two days head start on me, but that's all right, I think I know where she's headed.  She did something to me that night.  It's only been a week, but ever since that moonless night with her in that fleabag motor lodge on the outskirts of Amarillo I've been mysteriously sensitive to sunlight.  It blinds my eyes and burns my skin.  So I sleep during the day and drive at night.  I can see streaks of green lightning flashing far off in the distance.  A misting rain is blurring my windshield.  It must be a rare thing for it to rain in this arid vastness.  A desert thunderstorm at night - it's a beautiful sight to see, the inky abyss lit up with emerald luminescence.  It's eerie and it makes me nervous.  Chasing her into a stormy night is dangerous.  No, not dangerous - deadly.  The recurring nightmare that torments me in my sleep has green lightning in it.  The dream always starts in silver like a memory trying to hide from recall, but then the emerald lightning starts and there she is.  Her sultry form materializing out of the sharp flashes grows bigger as she reaches out to me from a distant horizon that undulates like the waves of a surreal desert sea.  She's radiating phantom green.  Her complexion is sallow like a corpse.  There are dark rings around her eyes, but somehow she's so beautiful.  Exotically beautiful.  Hypnotically beautiful.  Wickedly beautiful.  Her lips are ruby red.  I know she's calling my name, but I never hear any sound in my nightmare except at the end.  That's when I hear the thumping.  It starts low when her foggy form takes shape from afar, but as she approaches the thumping gets louder and louder.  Her red mouth is moving - calling my name in silence.  The thumping turns into beating and the beating into pounding.  She's hovering over me in a flowing spectral green silky translucent gown.  The pounding is deafening, like bombs going off in my head.  It's a rhythmic pounding like a heart beating, but it's loud.  It's so godawful loud!  When her red mouth moves in toward my throat I jerk bolt upright in the sweat-soaked sheets of a squeaky bed.  The curtains in the cheap motel room are always closed.  Shadows crawl in the corners, but I can see in those shadows.  When I look into darkness, I see with silver vision.  I can tell the sun is setting and that means I've survived another day of horror-infested sleep.  Then that feeling starts.  The uncanny impulse to find her - a compulsion, an obsession.  The blood red orb dips below the empty lifeless horizon and the nightshades draw down from the purple afterglow.  So here I am behind the wheel again, driving westbound into the night in pursuit of a ghost that summons me from the darkest regions of my subliminal consciousness.  It's like this song perpetually streaming from my car stereo speakers.  I'm on fire.  I'm on fire for her.  She's out there somewhere ahead in the silvery darkness.  She knows I'm coming.  She's waiting for me in the storm.

This is the true story of when I witnessed a real ghost with my very own eyes for the very first time. This narrative is an account of a ghost my dearly departed grannie called Vinegar Tom. The ghost I'm going to tell you about is of the type known as a Witch's Familiar. Some say these ghosts are spirits of the dead. Others say they are demons. There are even people who say these fearsome ghosts are beings from alternate dimensions - realities wholly apart from the cosmos in which we live. Whatever they are, have no misconceptions about it - these ghosts are real.... and they are deadly.
As close as I could figure it, grannie's familiar she called Vinegar Tom was the ragged scarecrow perched at the far end of her cornfield where the dark compost soil lowered down into the shadows of a brooding swamp. That scarecrow was a ghoulish specter dressed as he was in faded tattered denim overalls with patches on the knees. Under his bibs he wore a red checkered flannel shirt. His sackcloth head was topped with a weathered straw hat, the brim of which was wildly frayed at the edges. He was grotesquely stuffed with rust-colored pine straw that stuck out in all directions from the cuffs of his threadbare shirt and the hem of his dirty overalls.
I did not like to play down at that far end of the cornfield because the creepy scarecrow seemed to be watching me when I was near it. The face of the grim thing bore a sinister expression. Once, I stared at that scarecrow's face for a long moment, then I looked away for an instant and when I looked back I swear the scarecrow's face had altered in some mysterious unnamable manner. The change was difficult to pinpoint - some subtle shift in the charcoal eye, a slight upturn at the corners of the cracked paint of the red mouth. It seemed to be grinning at me. The hideous thing was like a reanimated cadaver and I felt it coldly, ominously reading my thoughts.
During the winter months when the corn wasn't growing, I played on the side of the house opposite the cornfield, because without the tall cornstalks out there, it felt like that haunting scarecrow was watching me from a distance - watching.....and waiting.
Grannie's old house was surrounded on two sides by the dark swampy woods. Across the little sandy dirt road was one neighboring house; on the other side of grannie's vegetable garden was another and that neighbor's house was literally a falling-down shack. The place was infested with burnt brown cockroaches of prodigious size and disgustingness which were kept company by big hairy swamp rats that were as inky iron-gray as any shadow in the mucky murky woods that crowded in on all sides.
Those poor people didn't have air conditioning for relief against the sweltering summer heat. For warmth in winter all they had was a bent old potbellied wood-burning stove.
It was a middle-aged couple who lived in that rotting house with the sagging floorboards. They couldn't have been a day over sixty, but they were both alcoholics and smoked cigarettes lighting one off the end of the other so that they appeared to be aged far beyond their actual years. Their skin was dusky red from exposure to liquor and smoke.
The old feller was a man by the name of Taylor. He didn't call his wife by her name, he just called her "the old lady". He used to beat her. He got along with her all right as long as he wasn't too far gone in his cups, but as soon as he got really drunk he would beat his wife sure as the sun rises in the morning. Have you ever seen it rain while at the same time sunlight is still shining down through the raindrops? There's an old saying that when that happens it means the Devil is beating his wife with a frying pan around the hickory stump. When we saw it raining with the sun shining we said old Taylor was beating his wife around the shack with his firewater bottle.
Now, it came to pass that one time when I was approaching my ninth year of life on this Earth old man Taylor beat his wife so severely that she had to be hospitalized. Back in those days there was no such thing as 911. If somebody wanted to call the police they had to dial zero, wait for the rotary dialer to go all the way back around the numbers because zero was the last number, then wait for the operator to answer, then ask her to connect the call to the police department, then wait for someone at the police department to finally answer the phone. It didn't matter about any of that because back then nobody called the police when a husband beat his wife.
Somebody did call an ambulance, though. It was grannie. She had heard old man Taylor's wife screaming while he was pounding her, then all grannie heard was silence. That's how she knew something worse than usual had gone wrong. Whenever old man Taylor got drunk and beat his wife, the missus would shriek while she was being beaten, then sob mournfully for well over an hour after he tired of knocking her around in the cluttered disarray of their vermin-infested tumbledown hovel. That evening came when grannie didn't hear the crying after the screaming and the beating, so she knew something life-threatening had finally happened.
Without hesitation grannie called for an ambulance. When paramedics arrived, they found old Taylor sucking hard liquor straight from a nearly drained fifth of bourbon while his unconscious wife lay battered, bruised, and bloodied face down on the kitchen floor at his bare fungoid feet. They took her to the hospital but no body called the police and no charges were filed against the old drunkard who had beaten his wife senseless. Back then there was a tradition that a husband could beat his wife as long as he didn't use a stick any bigger around than his thumb.
Now it happened that evening that some cousins of mine from out of town were supposed to be coming in to spend Halloween with us. I had gotten all excited about it of course because grannie always dressed up like a witch and made chili that she put green food color in to make it look just like witch's brew as it bubbled, all creepy and gooey, on the stove. Well, I don't know for sure that it was chili and I don't know for sure that she put green food color in it. Grannie said that's what she did, but the odd thing about her Halloween chili recipe is that she would never let me watch her make it.
I say odd because grannie always encouraged my interest in cooking and would let me help her make all our family meals - all except her witch's brew for Halloween. That was the only cooking she wouldn't let me participate in.
So there I was with sundown rapidly approaching all by myself outside gathering sticks to make a fire for a good old fashioned marshmallow roasting when the kinfolk arrived, but a call came in from them saying they had suffered car trouble and as a consequence wouldn't be arriving until afternoon of the next day. I sat outside alone in the dark night huddling in the autumn chill at my little campfire. I admit I was sulking a bit. My ego had been injured by the lack of an audience for the campfire I had worked so hard to prepare - and besides that, I was lonely.
It was at that very moment I saw it. It was uncanny.... and it was terrifying. An eerie thing moved silently through the dry brown decaying cornstalks that had been picked clean of their harvest. The blood froze in my veins as I watched the skulking thing radiating a spooky green luminescence. It didn't seem to be in any hurry. It moved completely without sound and you probably know exactly where it was headed - right straight toward the old falling-down Taylor shack.
I didn't dare scream. My voice was caught in my throat. I couldn't have screamed if I'd wanted to. I also didn't dare run hard on the ground to make any noise to attract that grim thing's attention, but as quickly and as stealthily as I could, I made my way inside grannie's house and cautiously quietly locked the deadbolt.
I was shocked when I realized that all the lights were off in the house. The only way I was able to see through the shadows is that the little night-light on the back of the stove was on, its faint bluish-white glow barely reaching down the hall to the living room where I stood in unexpected confusion.
I went straight to the kitchen to tell grannie, but mysteriously she was nowhere to be seen. I flipped on the kitchen light, then flicked on the light in the other hallway that led to the far end of the house. Turning on lights as I went, I looked in the laundry room, in the back bathroom, in the down bedroom, but I couldn't find grannie anywhere. Then it struck me that maybe she had gone to bed, but that would have been strange because grannie usually didn't go to bed until after she had stayed up late enough to watch the ten o'clock local news. Glancing at the clock on the back of the stove I saw it was only 8:24.
In a growing dread of the fearful thing I had seen moving silently through the dead cornstalks and a bewilderment of where grannie might be, I made my way back to the front door because that's where grannie's bedroom was, just inside the front door to the right.
To my indescribable horror, I saw that the front door was standing open. This terrified me more than I can say because I knew for a fact that I had firmly turned the deadbolt to the locked position.
For a moment, I could not move at all. I was frozen like a solid block of winter ice. The sound of rapid breathing came to my ears. It seemed to be emanating from grannie's bedroom.
I flipped the switch for the light in the living room but it didn't come on. I was facing a mocking gauntlet of laughing demonic shadows.
With far greater courage than I can imagine any little youngan having, I made my way on tiptoe through the menacing shadows to the front door. I didn't look out into the stygian darkness that cloaked the porch in gloom. I placed my small trembling hands on the front door, softly pushed it all the way closed, and squinting my eyes, I slowly turned the deadbolt until I heard it click into the locked position.
By now the rapid shallow breathing was very audible to my highly alert ears and it was definitely coming from grannie's bedroom, the opening of which was immediately beside me.
I was more afraid than I had ever been in my life. Moonlight was oozing in from the window in grannie's bedroom and it fell in a diaphanous silvery wash over her gentle old face. I muttered, "Grannie?" but she did not answer.
The sickening sound of that raspy breathing was thundering in my skull. I was mortified with terror. I carefully entered the melancholy murkiness of her bedroom. I approached grannie with my heart lumped in my dry throat. I stood at the bedside and watched in that haunting moonlight her chest rise and fall with rapid shallow breathing. I was so scared and worried that something was wrong with my dearly beloved grannie. I began to sob a little because I feared she was dying. The fear that gripped my sad spirit that awful night was a terrible misery of loathsome isolation. All I could think about was how much I loved my beautiful grannie and how I didn't want her to die. I could endure anything life threw at me as long as I had grannie by my side, but without her, I was lost.
It was many years before I could look at myself in a mirror and admit that I had actually truly seen a real ghost. There was no denying the evidence of my own eyes. The image of that green glowing thing that walked without sound at night through the dead cornstalks toward the old falling-down Taylor shack haunts me to this very day.
Old man Taylor's wife spent over a week in the hospital. Grannie had gone to see her a couple of times, then cooked a big wholesome supper for Mrs. Taylor when the doctors let her go back home.
After that old man Taylor never beat his wife again. He couldn't because he was dead. An eerie thing happened while the old drunkard's wife was in the hospital. Someone, the police never did figure out who, entered old man Taylor's shack on the very night after he had beaten his poor wife so severely. Homicide investigators reckon the victim must have been passed out drunk and had no chance to defend himself. His cranium had been crushed with a ballpeen hammer. His entire head had been completely obliterated.
I remember the next day about the time the cousins finally arrived seeing police cars, an ambulance, and the hearse from the funeral home parked under the tall heavy cedar trees that perpetually shrouded the front yard of the falling-down Taylor shack. I also remember, when I went to dump the seeds from the jack-o-lantern at the far end of grannie's cornfield, seeing the rusty pine straw, flannel shirt, and bib overalls of that ragged scarecrow soaked in blood. Vinegar Tom looked sleepy. He had been up late the night before.

The published books authored by Sean Terrence Best are available through Barnes&Noble, Amazon, and many other booksellers.

My fascination with witchcraft began at an early age because family, friends, neighbors, anyone who knew anything at all about my maternal grandmother whispered rumors that she was a witch. 
My grandmother knew this of course, but she didn't mind.  According to what grannie told me, the rumors got started in part because she had an uncanny intuition that made it seem as though she could actually see future events well before they happened. 
Another reason for the rumors is that she brought water to a boil outside by building a fire under a large iron cauldron.  She poured soap flakes out of a box into this steaming water, then threw her laundry in and stirred it around and punched it down in the boiling sudsy water with a stick that had been bleached white and worn smooth from years of repeated use. 
I helped grannie build her laundry fires and I helped her rinse the laundry in cool well water that filled a number 3 washtub nearby.  I even helped hang the wet clothes on the line to dry.
Another contributing factor to my grannie's formidable reputation as a witch came from the fact that she had familiars - as in witch's familiars.  They had names, too, because I often overheard her talking to them when she (as I erroneously thought) didn't know I was listening. 
I asked grannie about Sack'n'Sugar, Vinegar Tom, and Brown Jenkin.  She told me they were her familiars and that she would fight up to the knees in blood before she would lose them, but that's all I ever got to know about her familiars.  I suppose a witch's familiars are something very personal....or very dangerous.
  My dear old grannie's house was built entirely of mismatched lumber and was topped with a rusty tin roof.  Behind her house was a grim and gloomy swamp in which lurked spooky shadows and from which emanated eerie sounds both day and night.  My grandmother, being a witch herself, naturally knew a lot about witches and she told me volumes of some of the most terrifying tales I've ever heard.  That's how grannie would get me ready for bed at night - by telling me stories about witches.  With my imagination thus fired, you can visualize what my dreams were like.
  Grannie used to warn me about a beastly creature that lived out in that dark swamp behind her house.  The creature of course was very big and very scary with huge razor sharp teeth and claws and a vigorous appetite for small boys. 
Maybe she didn't want me venturing out there to get lost or snake bitten, or perhaps the swamp monster was real.  Whatever the case, dear Sybil, I wanted to share this information about my background with you so that you'll have a fuller understanding of my nearly obsessive interest in all things occult.  Supernatural horror is, to me, an irresistible lure.
I want to say that in my experience I have discovered that witches and their ancient craft are real. 
I can provide evidence to substantiate my exotic claim in the form of the following.  I'm going to share with you the beginning of a new novel which formulated in my mind during the last 24 hours.  The ideas for the novels I write are generated from spells of witchcraft.  I literally light candles and chant incantations to invoke original ideas and inspiration for character, scenery, and plot.  I was thinking of calling this new novel Spawn of Witchcraft, yet since it is a horror story of lethally passionate romantic love, I decided to name it after the lead characters of the story - Consuelo and Cristobal.  I shall now endeavor to copy and paste the start of the new novel into this messenger application so that you may bear witness to the manifestations of real twenty-first century witchcraft.  I hope you like it.


Consuelo and Cristobal  

“See how she leans her cheek upon her hand.  O, that I were a glove on that hand that I might touch that cheek!”       
 William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II Scene II  

“There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony.  There is time for work, and time for love.  That leaves no other time!”
Coco Chanel  

A grim flow of scarlet oozed from the motionless bodies that had so lately been animated by the vibrant passions of life and love.  The thick hot blood spattered in the chill October rain as it streamed from the hard unfeeling concrete sidewalk over the curb through the gutter grate and into the dark sewer below.  Like a gruesome sculpture, the corpses lay arm in arm, her head upon his chest. 
Horrified bystanders gathered round to view the macabre spectacle and emitted muffled cries of bewilderment and dread.   Huddling together in their drab raincoats under black umbrellas, the shocked assembly of disbelieving onlookers had very much the appearance of mourners massed round a burial.
The sirens of approaching emergency responders wailed balefully in the distance in haunting resonance with rumbles of rolling thunder that issued like tolls of a death bell from the bloated bellies of iron-gray storm clouds that sagged gloomily low overhead.
But you want to know how things ever got so far as to terminate in such an unthinkable heart-wrenching tragedy.  You want me to go all the way back to the fateful event that set this inevitable course of ruination in motion.  You want me to start at the very beginning and tell the whole ghastly tale in all its gory details omitting no particular no matter how abhorrent.  After all, it is these seemingly trivial matters, the least little wrong turn at the fork in the road of destiny, that so often lead to such a piteous and lamentable end.
Very well, if you really must know, I shall tell you the entire grievous story.  It all began, ironically enough, thirteen years ago on just such a dreary day in the fall of the year as that upon which it finally degraded, by degrees of worsening desperation, to its mortifying cessation.  But, before I begin, ask yourself the following questions: Do soul-mates really exist?  Is there such a thing as divinely ordained love?  For every person living and breathing on Earth at any given time, is there only one other person with whom they can experience true love?  Do you believe in witchcraft?  Whatever your viewpoint now, no matter how firmly embraced, when you’ve heard this story, you may change your mind.

It's late at night.  I'm a private detective named Bryn Frost.  You're an elegant and mysterious Russian heiress named Svetlana Romanov.  You've contacted me by phone about hiring me to find a priceless necklace that you suspect your wicked step-sister has stolen.  The necklace was fashioned by a young Faberge at the beginning of his stellar career as a master jeweler of world renown.  The necklace is a one-of-a-kind for another reason - it was given to you as a birthday gift when you were a little girl by your now deceased maternal great grandfather.  You've made arrangements with me for our first face-to-face meeting to take place at an after hours club called The Blue Danube.  The neon sign out front is a stately colophon exhibiting two cobalt blue swans facing each other so that their gently curving necks form a heart-shape.  At the appointed hour, I'm inside waiting for you at a table for two.  The maître d' is a friend of mine.  I've paid him twenty bucks to escort you to our reserved table when you arrive.  As you step in the door the song Please Come To Boston starts playing on a vintage Wurlitzer jukebox.  Our eyes meet for the very first time.  There's a pause - a catching of breath.  Couples step onto the dance floor and embrace each other tenderly swaying softly to the romantic rhythm of the love song.  There's an ecstasy of sensation charging the atmosphere between us - an inexplicable passion beyond anything either of us have ever experienced.  Gliding like an angel through heavenly mists, you approach the table.  I rise to pull out your chair for you.  As you sit, I carefully remove the luxurious folds of your expensive genuine Russian Sable fur coat.  Your sequined evening gown scintillates ethereally in the indirect lighting of the nightclub.  I take my seat opposite you whence I am instantly enchanted by the way the candlelight reflects warmly on your supple neck and in your delicate eyes that sparkle with moisture appearing like constellations of stars glimmering on the diaphanous surface of a mountain lake that has been lightly stirred by a night breeze.  We gaze at each other, speechless in the rapture of the sublime moment.

A number of people have asked me about my views of Hollywood from the perspective of being a writer. These inquiring minds want to know, as a novelist do I judge Hollywood to be healthy for the mind or detrimental. Here is a written description of my current views of Tinseltown, from which you may make your own judgement about the nature of this somewhat murky subject.

Hollywood has lied to you about many things which ironically include pouring out misleading information about the popularity of a considerable number of the movies they produce, as well as the popularity of the screenwriters and novelists whose scripts are used to make the allegedly popular films, but preeminent among the lies of Hollywood is the suggestion that alien lifeforms from other regions of the cosmos are not present here on Earth.  Have ye no illusions to the contrary, Space Aliens are real and they really are present here among us.  The reason Hollywood lies about this disconcerting truth is because the Space Aliens actually control Hollywood - in fact, they invented Hollywood for the express purpose of Mind Control. 

These Extraterrestrial Beings are prodigious experts in the art of cloaking their activities on our world, yet upon close observation it is possible for a Human Being to discern the presence of these otherworldly entities who are secretly bent on our total obliteration.  The evidence of their presence among us is all around us all the time, yet in order to perceive this evidence, we must remove distractions from our field of observation.  Tactical diversions are one of the insidious methods employed by the Space Aliens to distract Humans from the fact that we are not alone on this planet.  Entertainment and shopping are both means of enslaving the human population of Earth, but these are also tactics employed by the imperious Space Aliens to distract people from conscious awareness of the existence of the Space Aliens. 

Hollywood is a primary vehicle for accomplishing the goal of distracting people away from the truth that this planet and its human inhabitants are being exploited by a dastardly powerful alien intelligence not of this world.  According to the generally accepted assessment of scientific fact, the official human knowledge base does not include an exact explanation of the origin of staples of the human food supply such as wheat, corn, pork, poultry, and beef.  The scientific status quo of this world alleges that nobody really knows how Bos primigenius mutated into Bos taurus or Bos indicus. 

Status Quo scholars cannot definitively prove the precise beginning of the existence of the fowl known as the chicken, nor do they have an explanation as to how entirely different species of domestic breed hogs such as Red Duroc and White Yorkshire appeared (as if by witchcraft) from species of wild boar.  It is a complete mystery to contemporary Establishment scientists how corn or wheat could have mutated from wild grasses which are of little or no nutritional value to humans.  It is also worthy of note that cattle brands used to indicate which ranch a particular animal belongs to are eerily similar to the mysterious symbols seen on Flying Saucers.  Furthermore, the idea that Space Aliens utilize only technology in their aims of Galactic Conquest is another Hollywood lie perpetrated and mass disseminated for the purpose of distracting the people of Earth from realization that Extraterrestrial Biological Entities are adept at the practice of Witchcraft.

  If you look closely at portraits of Cotton Mather and those hanging judges of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials Samuel Sewall and John Hathorne, you'll notice they all bear a striking resemblance to what are commonly known as Roswell Greys.   The reason for this becomes obvious when one realizes that witch-hunts and the subsequent execution of people convicted of witchcraft are a strategy employed by the invading Space Aliens to prevent humans from gaining great skill in witchcraft, a skill which would of course result in the instigation of a successful revolt against Extraterrestrial domination of Earth.  Torquemada himself was a Roswell Grey, as was King Philip IV of France which logically explains why this particular monarch was a prominent player in a conspiracy which led to a sneak attack against the Order of the Templar Knights on Friday the Thirteenth in October of 1307.  Many students of history now know that the Knights Templar are an ancient secret society of Sorcerers which long predates the Medieval Crusades.  The truth is all around us which is why Hollywood mass produces disinformation (lies) aimed at distracting us from becoming aware of the horrifying bane that skulks in the shadows of our Earthly domain. 

Hollywood is the Psychological Warfare Military Arm of the hostile imperial Space Aliens who are engaged in a covert plot to dumb humans down so Earth can be added to the monstrous EBEs growing list of interplanetary conquests.  This is what Hollywood has lied to you about.  I thank you for reading what I write. There are many other occult details of this fearsome conspiracy which I have revealed among the illuminating pages of the 232,197 word epic research novel I have written entitled Bloodstone and Broomcorn: Curse of the W.I.T.C.H.

Witches have a number of mysterious powers, yes there are many interesting things witches can do.  Witches can cause a nosy neighbor's cow to dry up and stop giving milk, or make his garden wither and die.  Witches can put visions of an unfaithful wife's indiscretions inside her husband's head while he's at work causing him to rush home unexpectedly and discover his wayward spouse's infidelity.
Witches can give rude boys the hiccups so bad that they have to be hung upside down from a hemlock tree in the darkness of a moonless night for cure.  Witches can make naughty little girls vomit sharp objects.
The hunter who shoots deer in the witch's cornfield will lose the use of the eye with which he sights his gun, and the minister who condemns the witch's secretive murmurings will inexplicably spout obscene language during his next sermon.
A conniving merchant who fails to pay a witch for the potions he has commissioned from her for commercial trade will have his entire sailing fleet pursued by thrashing tempests - sails will be rent, masts broken, expensive cargoes lost at sea.
Witches can cause the spiteful town gossip to contract laryngitis; or afflict flirtatious young maidens with the nightmare.  The larcenous farmer who steals a witch's rooster will suffer with hens that stop laying eggs or goats that give birth to two-headed kids.
The greedy land developer who encroaches on a witch's back forty will have his contractors abandon his building project due to visions of dark leathery-winged creatures hovering over the job site.  A wealthy matron who covets a witch's spellcasting powers will find herself bedridden with measles.  A restauranteur who won't permit witches to be served in his eatery will pull all his hair out from seeing devils in his soufflés, or if he be bald scald his fingers on a smoking skillet.
Yes, there are many curious powers that witches have, and one of their most formidable talents is knowing exactly what you are doing when you think no one is looking.
Double, double, toil and trouble
Fire burn, cauldron bubble

I agree with the mystical analysis of your observant mind, Sybil, oracle of the silvery nights of yore.  Such concepts are multi-faceted and therefore require no small amount of thought.  Your glowing intellect is one of the reasons I like you so much, Sybil, and why I savor conversation with you.  I believe that when events are stirring enough to the human communal psyche as to win a place in history they must somehow be imbued with secret information which reaches far beyond what many might consider the obvious.  What happened in Salem in 1692 startlingly illustrates that there is what may be termed an unseen force at work beneath the surface of human existence.  Consider money, for example - in relation to the total human population there are only a few people who acquire great wealth by their own efforts.  So, the question presents itself, why is this the case?  How do these rare few amass tremendous capital gain, especially when they began life in ordinary socio-economic circumstances?  Could it be that these individuals, who are few and unique for their amazing accomplishments, actually see deeper into human affairs than most other people do?  If so, what shocking facts does the penetrating energy of their consciousness awareness perceive and is it purely the power of their specially endowed minds that gives them their staggering vision, or is there something of the supernatural involved?  This is why I write about the occult.  It is also why I admire you, Sybil, and why I value talking to you.  It is the legend (and my sensations of intuition tell me the legend is true) that you know something that wells up from deep below the surface of human related phenomena. It is as though you are on the threshold of a great discovery, and I am extremely eager to experience your journey, to share with you in what may very truly be spiritual or supernatural insight spawned by the ancient secrets of Witchcraft.

Crone: Night of the Witches

    It was that time of year when leaves are dying; the branches of deciduous trees becoming starkly bare revealing long narrowing extensions of themselves which stab into the dull red sunset like varicose veins of melancholy thoughts which gnarl and twist their way through the hopeless empty appendages of disenchanted human souls.  The balmy vespers of summer were yielding to the creeping autumn chill that drains down from the Arctic in subzero pus oozing from an icy boil on top of the skull of Earth.  
    Doors and windows were being closed tightly.  Top blankets were being dragged out from musty closet stowage and placed unceremoniously at the foots of beds.  Somber gray gloom brooded on the darkening horizon of shortening daylight hours, seeping into the pedestrian subconscious like swamp hags crawling closer to beating numbing hearts along the crooked edges of lengthening shadows.
    The slight rapping on the outer door of the reception room might have been Poe’s raven pecking.  Reclined in the worn executive chair that I had picked up at a second hand store on Fourth and Main, I somehow wasn't entirely motivated to leap up and dive for the door-handle in spite of the fact that, after coughing up the security deposit and first month's rent for this new office, I desperately needed a client.  The soothing rhythm of the freezing afternoon rain was lulling me to repose beside the flickering blaze crackling warmly in the small stone fireplace so I shouted, "Door's open!  Come on in!"
The squeaky knob turned.  The old door creaked.  Then silence.
"I'm in my office!  Come on back!"
Soft soled shoes don't make much noise and the whisper of thighs in a skirt is even less audible.  A moment later her slight figure stood before me.  The shaded lamp on the corner of my desk cast a subdued yellow glow on her right side.  Her left was in shadow.  Ruddy reflections from the fireplace danced weirdly on her shadowed side.
How she wasn't drenched from the cold rain is a mystery that would be solved later.  At the moment my attention was heavily occupied by her rare mien.  
I hadn't seen one like her since being tortured in vacation bible school at the Pentecostal Holiness church way down south in the little farm-town backwater of Chipley, Florida.  She was covered from chin to wrists to ankles in a drab denim dress.  Her hair must have been very long because it made a huge bundle where it was tightly bound at the back of her petite head.  No doubt that luxurious auburn hair had been lengthening since birth because those zealously faithful fundamentalists in the Old South don't believe in cutting the hair of females.   
I had never seen such pale skin.  The blood coursing through the delicate network of her circulatory system appeared hazy blue.  Due to a prominent lack of mascara, her translucent eyelashes didn't seem very long, and without lipstick her thin flat lips were something less than appealing.  
Barely an A-cup, the softness of her exquisite features is the only thing that prevented me misidentifying her as an adolescent boy.  Only feminine flesh can be that angelically gossamer.  This young lady could have been a ballerina, except that the slow burn of Celtic independence emanating from her medieval aura would have obviated participation in any such regimented choreography as flitting about in a tutu.
At the time I didn’t know much about witches, nor had I any idea that I was about to find out more about practitioners of the ancient craft than I consider healthy for a person to know; but, it was obvious to a trained observer like myself that the purity of her clannish bloodline had been carefully preserved through selective breeding since long before Hadrian started building a wall to delineate the northern boundary of Britannia.    
I removed my patent leathers from my cluttered desk, sat up straight, and motioned the dainty dame to one of the two cheap metal folding chairs that temporarily served as a place for clients to sit.  She seated herself without a word, placing her modestly large Faux leather tote on her lap, then turned her Prussian blue eyes on me and blinked through the clean lenses of her tortoiseshell horn-rimmed glasses.
During a moment of uncomfortable silence, I waited for her to speak.  We listened to each other breathing.  I decided to break the ice.
"You shop at Warby Parker, I see."
She stopped blinking and, in an eerily harmonic voice that hauntingly bespoke heavenly choirs, replied, "What's that?"
"Your eyeglasses," I returned with a gentle nod of my head, "the vintage look is sensible and economic.  You're obviously a woman of discretion.  I admire your unpretentious style."
    It may have been wishful thinking on my part, but at the sound of my masculine voice boldly speaking the word 'woman' I thought I saw a rush of warmth flush her pale cheeks in faint pink patches.  She glanced bashfully aside, then back at me.  The ghostly complexion had returned.
"Thank you, I think, but," she unfolded a small sheet of paper that had been hidden in her palm, consulted it, then, "are you Mr. Frost?  Mr. Bryn Frost, the private detective?"
I was so enchanted by her melodic voice that I was incapacitated for immediate reply.  This served to provide me with deeper insight into her unique personage because she squirmed ever so slightly on the metal chair, blinked again and spoke more music to my ears.
    “I told the ladies at the front office that I was looking for Mr. Frost.  They indicated that I should walk up the hill to bungalow 13.  There’s nothing on the door to identify this as a business location.  I don’t see a name plaque on your desk.  I want to make sure I'm in the right place.  Is this the office of Frost Investigative Services?”
Her fairy voice was the sonic equivalent of milk and honey.  The elusive hint of her Gaelic accent transported me hundreds of years back through time to a secret mystical garden of earthly delights.  With a monumental effort I dragged myself from the soothing spell of her intonations thereby returning to the present moment and the subject about which she was addressing me.  I cleared my throat, " Uh, yeah, well, I just signed the lease agreement day before yesterday.  The lettering artist hasn't been round to paint my name on the door yet.  As for a name plaque for my desk, that’s something I’ll relegate to my secretary....that is, as soon as I hire one.  I'm currently interviewing for a secretary.  I thought you might have been my four O'clock."
I wasn't interviewing for a secretary.  I didn't have the money to afford a secretary, but I wanted things to look good to this potential client.  You know what they say about first impressions.
It was now my elegant visitor’s turn to seem bewildered, so I answered her question directly.
“Yes, I am Bryn Frost of Frost Investigative Services.  You are in the right place.  Private detective Frost, the selfsame, entirely at your service, ma’am.  How may I be of assistance to you?”
She was mute for another moment or two, so I gently prompted, “You want to employ the professional skills of a private eye, but the subject of your inquiry is a delicate matter?  No need to be embarrassed.  I assure you my integrity and discretion are worthy of your trust.  You want me to check out your new boyfriend, make sure he’s not hiding a licentious past?  Or is it that you suspect your husband of being unfaithful?”
I didn’t labor vainly under the plebeian misconception that my fair visitor was the type of woman to permit herself to suffer from either one of these inconveniences, but I wanted to get her started talking, help her relax and lay it on the table for me.  Some think this provocation type approach is a devious underhanded tactic.  They call it reverse psychology.  I myself consider this method a subtle form of mind probing, entirely ethical and worthy of the modern shamus.
    “Nothing so tawdry, Mr. Frost.  I’m not married, nor am I vulgar enough to have a so-called boyfriend.  Please forgive my lack of focus.  I'm not used to being alone in a bungalow with a strange man and I have never consulted a private detective before.  I’m not entirely sure about how to begin.”
“Why don’t we start with your name.  You know mine.  How about telling me yours?”
“Yes, of course, I’m Tamsyn McBane.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss McBane.  How may I help you?”
She gripped the straps of her tote and squirmed again, “I, well, the truth is, Mr. Frost, this is very difficult for me.  I’ve been driven to desperate measures, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.  Meaning no offense, of course.  I’m sure your profession has its merits and I’m sure you’re very good at what you do.”
“No offense taken, Miss McBane.  However, the fact that you wouldn’t be here consulting a private detective unless you thought it absolutely necessary naturally leads me to be interested in knowing how you found out about me.  I won’t get my feelings hurt if you simply picked my name out of the Yellow Pages.”
She smiled a little.  This, I deduced, was a good sign in my favor.
“No, Mr. Frost, I didn’t pick your name from a phone book.  A friend of mine, a member of our cov--, uh, our social group, yes, well, she, Narcissus Ravenwing, told me about you.  She knows something of my difficulty and she recommended I bring my problem to you.  She had known of you through another friend, I don’t know him, who would have been wrongfully prosecuted for a crime he did not commit had it not been for your keen detective skills uncovering the truth and vindicating him.  His name is Michael Hammond.”
“Ah yes, I remember the case, from about two years ago.  One of this town’s most prominent matrons called the police to report a break-in.  Some of her jewelry had been stolen and Michael, due to a petty theft on his record from a few years prior, had come under suspicion because he was employed as a groundskeeper at the matron’s mansion which is located in the well-to-do Tiara Park neighborhood on the north side of town.  Michael had only himself to vouch for his whereabouts at the time of the crime, yet when questioning him, I was able to ascertain that, though he had been home alone on the night in question, he had also been doing some online shopping.  Upon further investigation, I discovered that he had made a couple of credit card purchases during the same time frame that the jewels were stolen.  This helped get Michael off the hook.  A tip from one of my informants revealed that a ring of burglars from out of town had been working Tiara Park that week, so I immediately checked with a local car rental business where I found that a Cadillac Escalade had been rented to Newt Thompson which is an alias of Norton Thomas who has a number of first-degree larceny arrests, though none resulted in convictions.  The rented SUV containing a pearl necklace belonging to the Tiara Park matron was discovered in an alley in a seedy part of town, but the jewel thieves have yet to be apprehended.  Most likely they were out of the vehicle fencing the jewels when police swarmed around the rented automobile.  From a lookout position, a fire escape or window perhaps, the culprits saw what was happening and made their escape.  At any rate, yes, I was able to fully vindicate Michael Hammond of the crime.”
“Which is why you came so highly recommended to me, Mr. Frost.  It is my hope that you will be as successful with my difficulty as you were with Mr. Hammond’s.”
“I shall do my very best for you, Miss McBane.”
“Please, Mr. Frost, call me Tamsyn.”
“Delighted, and you may call me Bryn.  Now, Tamsyn, in order to empower me with the information I need to help you, it is of the utmost importance that you be completely honest with me on every particular.  Hold nothing back.  Tell me everything you know, for instance, were you about to say 'coven' a moment ago when you caught yourself and replaced that word with ‘social group’?  Friends with names like Narcissus Ravenwing are often members of witch covens.”
This time I knew for certain that I saw her pale cheeks flush with faint pink patches for the primary reason that this time they weren’t so faint.
She seemed reluctant for about twenty seconds, but then her strength of character prevailed.  With a deep breath which she sighed out in a relaxing of her tense shoulders, Tamsyn McBane began an eerie narrative in which she stated the facts of her dilemma as she knew them at that time.