a will-of-the-wisps short story

[man_in_mudboots]

ill be posting it in enstallments.

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We Meet Benedict

Benedict was a terrified man, terrified of just living his life. Or, more accurately, he was not terrified of life itself, but of missing his ‘chance’ in life. His whole life had been one immense period of worrying that he would miss it, so as you can imagine, Benedict was a very miserable and nervous man indeed.

Benedict was originally from that wild, scrubby, brambly part of the north-east. His parents, two miserable, tired people, tired of life and living life without a point, took him to Louisiana to live in when he was seven years old. It was there in that tiny, forgotten town on a tiny, forgotten road they moved to that many of the things of his future were put into motion, and, in fact, that terror of missing his chance first settled in his soul there.

The Lights

There were many queer things in the swamps in the area which Benedict and his parents moved to. Strange things seemed to congregate there, and bring hordes of stories and tall tales with them. Some of the most frequently told tales included the one of the lady that choked in her sleep on six frogs that battled each other to stay in her mouth (Benedict never understood how the story-tellers knew the frogs fought in her mouth if nobody saw it, for surely nobody saw it or they would have helped the poor lady); the seven-foot-tall mad swamp hermit who killed three people to feed to his ‘pet’ alligators (which he was rumored to have had ‘relations’ with); the screams of a particular banshee that lived along Coteaux Bayou (which was agreed upon to be made by male muskrats fighting); and whole hosts of stories centering on eerie and mysterious huge black shapes lurking in the deepest bayous and darkest sloughs. But nothing else starred in these tales like willow-wisps did. The name was a blanket term for strange lights that moved around in the swamps. There was very little pattern in the lights; some were small as a man’s clenched fists, while some few were as big as people. Some glided steadily close to the ground, some swung around just like lanterns a person was carrying, some flew around in random bee-lines, and some just floated in one spot. They came in any number of colors, and some even changed colors as they went. Nobody was quite sure how to explain these willow-wisps. Father Etienne, the catholic priest of the town, insisted that they were demons, sent by Lucifer himself to lure men to distraction and cause them to miss their chance. Some conjectured that they were ghosts; others thought that perhaps they were signs of impeding doom, others that they were somehow tied to voodoo magic rites. It had become almost a sort of contest between the towns folk to see who could sight the largest willow-wisp, brightest, most colorful, and so on. Father Etienne kept documentation of the record sightings as bragging rights.

But it’s not as if the lights were all over the place, or easy to see. Being that they were in the darkest, deepest part of the swamps, that left very few people around to see them. Many of the lights were very faint or flickered, and could only be seen on a dark night. Nor did they appear frequently; sometimes nobody would see a willow-wisp for weeks at a time. Willow-wisps almost never came near other light sources, which meant they never came into the main town, which meant, in turn, that Benedict and his parents never saw any. But that didn’t keep Benedict from wondering about them. Just the word ‘willow-wisp’ would attract Benedict like nothing else could.

Edited October 3, 2004 by man_in_mudboots

[Tillghast]

Its great!

[man_in_mudboots]

why, thank you!

.....

.....

.....want to know a secret? its been written for some few months, im just posting it in pieces makes folks think its shorter than it actually is, so theyll be more likely to read it. only about nine more chunks around that size to come!

[man_in_mudboots]

Benedict Meets the Priest

Benedict was exploring his new home, absorbing the sights and vibrations of the miniscule country town they had immigrated to, when he came across a church. It was, in particular, a Catholic church, of which there was a plethora of in the area, but, to Benedict, at the time, a church was simply a church. He had heard for a long time from his parents that churches were open to anybody at any time, and he saw a group of people with a child his age walking through some smaller doors in a lesser building next to the church, so he went in the same doors after them. He found himself in a sort of hall with an extremely low ceiling, that was completely empty except for a large but simple crucifix on the wall that looked hand-made, a handful of people, and a sprinkling of rustic wooden chairs that made a lot of creaking noises with the slightest motion of the person sitting in them. There were a lot of children, as he could see, and most of them his age, with adults scattered here and there. One adult in particular caught his eye, a small but vibrant man dressed almost all in black that unceasingly flashed from one kid to another; it was the parish priest, though Benedict didn’t know it. Benedict wanted very, very much to know what the man was doing, and to talk to him, but he wasn’t quite sure how to go about getting the man’s attention or what to say to him if he did.

Finally, though, the man came to Benedict. He was short and stocky, with the dark hair, almost black eyes, wild bushy eyebrows, and swarthy dark skin of a Cajun Frenchman. The man asked Benedict his name and the names of his parents before realizing that he didn’t know Benedict’s family. Benedict told him that he had just come to the town to live, and that he came to see what a church was all about. The man asked Benedict if he knew about God, and Benedict correctly told him that he did not; his parents had never said much about God, or shown much care to know anything much about religion. The man told Benedict that he would talk to him special in a few minutes, after he went around to the other children and everybody else was gone. Then, nobody was left except Benedict and the man. The man explained to Benedict that he was a priest, a person who brings the words and will of God to other people, and told him that his name was Father Etienne. He talked to Benedict for almost three hours, giving him almost incomprehensibly vast amounts of information about God, Le Bon Dieu, and how this Good God wanted him to live his life. Benedict sat there amazed, wide-eyed and drop-jawed, unable to take his attention off the priest. He had never imagined anything like that before could be real. It was like all the bed-time fairy-tales Benedict’s parents had never told him, and what’s more, Father Etienne insisted it was all true. Father Etienne left briefly and came back with a thick but squat book with a plain boring cover and no title on it at all. Father Etienne said it was the book God had gotten people to write, and that it wouldn’t tell him everything he needed to know about God, but that it came darn close.

And, right before he went, Father Etienne leaned towards him, almost like he was sharing a secret, and told Benedict that he was about to hear the most important thing he had ever heard. Benedict leaned in closer with him, as in a huddle, and listened as he said, “Benedict, everybody on earth is put here by God for a reason. There is something here that we have to do to fulfill Gods purpose. We all are given at least one chance in our life to complete our task, although often we may not understand how it could possibly aid his plan. So many things can happen to make a person miss his chance. Do not miss yours.” The words stood out in Benedict’s mind like a huge mountain in the middle of a treeless plain, and it resonated in his mind for months afterwards.

im not fond of dialogue.

[Daughter of the Nine Moons]

M&M great story. In my opinion a lot of dialogue isn't always better. Good work

[man_in_mudboots]

thanks beaucoup! just a few questions, for anybody to answer that feels like it. does it seem fomulaic? predictable? samey? cliched? i tried to make it fairly original, but these type things are hard to tell if you wrote it.

[Daughter of the Nine Moons]

Actually I found it very original and refreshing (plus I love the French/Creole names)

[Arsenik]

It is hard to tell when you're writing it. I write movie screenplays, and i usually have 4 or more people go through it before I move on.

Edited October 5, 2004 by Arsenik

[man_in_mudboots]

(plus I love the French/Creole names)

290876[/snapback]

i try to give the characters interesting names. if the character isnt french (which is rare) older names that arent used much work. Maman didnt think i should name him benedict, you know, because the first person folks think of is benedict arnold. but i say why let one wicked person ruin a good name?

Edited October 5, 2004 by man_in_mudboots

[man_in_mudboots]

After Benedict Met the Priest

Benedict and his parents eventually moved to Georgia and then Carolina, all the while Benedict waiting for his chance. He fully understood that it might not come to him for a long, long time, but it could come to him tomorrow, as well, and he had to be ready for it, lest he miss it. Years passed, Benedict finished school, and it came time for him to go to college. To his parent’s dismay, he stalled, and continued stalling, not quite sure what he wanted to be. He studied to be a doctor, then a lawyer, then a writer, then a veterinarian, and a multitude of other courses that he never completed, some of them not even lasting two months before he gave up on them. The truth of the matter was that Benedict was faced with so many options that he was utterly paralyzed. Any one of these could be his chance. Any of the others could be a distraction, a vice that would cause him to miss that precious chance, and he was not going to let that happen to him. The problem was that he couldn’t tell the chances from the distractions. Was he meant to be a doctor? Was his task to save the life of some person that would greatly further Gods grand plan? Or, as a lawyer, would he successfully defend an innocent man, who would in turn inspire some other great person to change the world for the better? How could he tell? There were just too many options and too little time to figure them out; Benedict was frozen with indecisiveness. So he dabbled in different fields, wasted time, and lost hope in finding his chance in his career. Instead, he began to pay more attention to potential chances such as investments.

On one occasion, Benedict found a man selling a very old and valuable coin, which he predicted would double or even triple in value in only ten years. Benedict thought very seriously about buying the coin for weeks, thinking that perhaps it was his chance; it was expensive, but it would appreciate and maybe he could use the money for Gods great work, and if not, at least he would have money to live off for a while, while he waited for his real chance to come to him. He finally decided that he would risk buying the coin, but upon returning to the store, he found it had been bought by somebody else only the day before, while he was making up his mind. For weeks afterwards, he was a nervous, worrisome mess, thinking that the coin was really his chance and that he had just missed it. On another occasion, he went through much the same ordeal with a round group of stocks in a bull market, and in a lottery after that. Once, he met a girl named Adeline (when he and his parents were living in Carolina), a lovely girl with big, round eyes and wispy, almost frizzy hair, whom he thought, for a while, he loved, and, occasionally, it seemed as though she was drawn to him. He wondered whether she could be his chance - he had never thought of a chance as being a person - but he refused to do much more with her than just talk politely on a couple of occasions, little more than coming out of the shadows, and so she drifted away to other, bolder men as Benedict’s focus had drifted to other possible chances. Benedict was terrified that his chance would appear in the most inconsequential event; scared stiff that he would overlook it because it was so menial. He lived his life in terror of missing any little chance at all, because he was unable to tell whether it was his one great chance or not. He was absolutely miserable, but not once did he ever regret hearing Father Etienne, who had become to him almost like a second Christ, say those words. Often, when Benedict was thinking of nothing in particular, he would hear those words in his head, ‘So many things can happen to make a person miss his chance. Do not miss yours.’ It had become for him almost a prayer.

[Daughter of the Nine Moons]

Hey M&M,

Your writing reminds me of Anne Rice, whom I love. When she writes about New Orleans and the south you can feel the love she has for it. That is what I get with your writing. It is very sincere and very appealing. And it is not pretentious. Keep up the good work.

Dot

[man_in_mudboots]

thanks, there isnt a place on earth better than South Louisiana.

[man_in_mudboots]

After Benedict Met the Priest

Benedict and his parents eventually moved to Georgia and then Carolina, all the while Benedict waiting for his chance. He fully understood that it might not come to him for a long, long time, but it could come to him tomorrow, as well, and he had to be ready for it, lest he miss it. Years passed, Benedict finished school, and it came time for him to go to college. To his parent’s dismay, he stalled, and continued stalling, not quite sure what he wanted to be. He studied to be a doctor, then a lawyer, then a writer, then a veterinarian, and a multitude of other courses that he never completed, some of them not even lasting three months before Eustace gave up on them. The truth of the matter was that Benedict was faced with so many options that he was utterly paralyzed. Any one of these could be his chance. Any of the others could be a distraction, a vice that would cause him to miss that precious chance, and he was not going to let that happen to him. The problem was that he couldn’t tell the chances from the distractions. Was he meant to be a doctor? Was his task to save the life of some person that would greatly further Gods grand plan? Or, as a lawyer, would he successfully defend an innocent man, who would in turn inspire some other great person to change the world for the better? How could he tell? There were just too many options and too little time to figure them out; Benedict was frozen with indecisiveness. So he dabbled in different fields, wasted time, and lost hope in finding his chance in his career. Instead, he began to pay more attention to potential chances such as investments.

On one occasion, Benedict found a man selling a very old and valuable coin, which he predicted would double or even triple in value in only ten years. Benedict thought very seriously about buying the coin for weeks, thinking that perhaps it was his chance; it was expensive, but it would appreciate and maybe he could use the money for Gods great work, and if not, at least he would have money to live off for a while, while he waited for his real chance to come to him. He finally decided that he would risk buying the coin, but upon returning to the store, he found it had been bought by somebody else only the day before, while he was making up his mind. For weeks afterwards, he was a nervous, worrisome mess, thinking that the coin was really his chance and that he had just missed it. On another occasion, he went through much the same ordeal with a round group of stocks in a bull market, and in a lottery after that. Once, he met a girl named Adeline (when he and his parents were living in Carolina), a lovely girl with big, round eyes and wispy, almost frizzy hair, whom he thought, for a while, he loved, and, occasionally, it seemed as though she was drawn to him. He wondered whether she could be his chance - he had never thought of a chance as being a person - but he refused to do much more with her than just talk politely on a couple of occasions, little more than coming out of the shadows, and so she drifted away to other, bolder men as Benedict’s focus had drifted to other possible chances. Benedict was terrified that his chance would appear in the most inconsequential event; scared stiff that he would overlook it because it was so menial. He lived his life in terror of missing any little chance at all, because he was unable to tell whether it was his one great chance or not. He was absolutely miserable, but not once did he ever regret hearing Father Etienne, who had become to him almost like a second Christ, say those words. Often, when Benedict was thinking of nothing in particular, he would hear those words in his head, ‘So many things can happen to make a person miss his chance. Do not miss yours.’ It had become for him almost a prayer.

[Daughter of the Nine Moons]

Benedict was terrified that his chance would appear in the most inconsequential event; scared stiff that he would overlook it because it was so menial. He lived his life in terror of missing any little chance at all, because he was unable to tell whether it was his one great chance or not.

I really like this part

[Arsenik]

... You do have this story backed up on paper or disk right

[snuffypuffer]

Much swell and grooviness.

[Kryso]

An amazingly original and easy to read story; this pulls the reader in.

And with reference to your question about originality. Almost everything has already been done – in one form or another – and we have to learn to put new twists and turns in and make it original, which you have done. Even S King explains it like being in the center of a room. Every book you write takes you one step closer to the wall, and eventually you have to turn around and head back into the center.

But as I’ve already said, your book is fresh and invigorating. And it’s a good point about installing it in chunks, because when people see a long stretch of words they go numb. They possibly read a few paragraphs then lose interest. Which no one does with yours.

I look forward to reading more.

[man_in_mudboots]

thanks, folks! thanks for taking the time to read it and comment, especially. papa cant read hardly at all, and maman loves reading, but she isnt much of a commenter. you folks have helped me in the best way you could have.

... You do have this story backed up on paper or disk right?

yes, on microsoft word, on three forums, in a stack in my desk, and where ever stories go when you save them on your hard drive. thanks for the reminder, though!

Edited October 9, 2004 by man_in_mudboots

[man_in_mudboots]

especially such nice comments, too! youre almost past the booring part, folks....

Benedict Returns to Louisiana

Benedict’s Parents had completely given up hope in him having any sort of a future, and so when he collected his things and left, they had no false optimism that perhaps he would find some interest along the way and chose a single career. Not surprisingly, he wandered back to Louisiana, back to that same town that he had lived in as a boy. He found that Father Etienne had died, and the priest that had replaced him was a dull character who had had a stroke which made it impossible for him to talk without having the left side of his face twitch. This new priest didn’t approve of such foolishness as keeping record of the best willow-wisp sightings as father Etienne had. Nevertheless, Benedict went to mass every day. Many of the people remembered him from when he had lived there as a boy.

Benedict was now completely exhausted waiting for his chance, but still he waited for it. He moved into an uninhabited shotgun house deep in the swamps, where he could go days without seeing anybody at all. He simplified and simplified his life until he was living on nothing but necessities. Only then did he have some peace; he was no longer confronted with the paralyzing barrage of possibilities, only the most very fundamental things; he, in essence, filtered out all of the potential chances but his one great chance.

Only in one matter did Benedict depart from the absolute basics, and that was in his maid. His parents had always had maids, and he found that he didn’t know how to function without a maid to do the things that they had always done. The maid he hired, Marie, was a Mexican girl whose parents had worked on some large plantation, and she was helping her siblings support them in their old age. Marie would usually come in the morning and leave shortly before lunch, but was open to come any time Benedict’s eccentric schedule allotted. Benedict, though he tried to not show it, despised Marie. She, he thought, is a person who has utterly missed her chance in life. Such a head on her shoulders, had Marie, but look how she wasted it; washing his clothes and cooking his meals. He didn’t think he had ever met a more pathetic human, or one that had squandered so terribly the gifts and chances God had given her.

Benedict actually fit in in the little town very nicely. His partial training proved sufficient in most of the cases of sickness in man or beast that were brought to him. He became, rather speedily, the doctor of the area, fixing any of the people that came to him that couldn’t fix them selves, and a good number of the animals too.

Willow-wisps were abundant around Benedict’s house. Marie refused to come on nights when they were active, following Father Etienne’s belief that they were demons, no matter how Benedict tried to explain to her the truth of the matter. He was certain that they were, in fact, balls of fire caused by gasses in rotting organic material exploding out of the ground and igniting. As the breeze blew the gasses around, they stayed on fire, so they weren’t moving on their own. The effect of changing colors was created by a different gas replacing the previous sort, making the flames burn a different hue. How or why they caught fire was beyond Benedict’s reasoning, but he knew it was not demons or ghosts, or any of that other superstitious mumbo-jumbo.

Benedict was almost literally bored to tears with this life style, so his mind grabbed hold of the first thing in its environment that could prove interesting and refused to let go: the willow-wisps. He discovered that his childhood fascination with the lights had been lying dormant, waiting to be re-born. And obsession is bound to develop in a mind as prone to it as Benedict’s was.

[Daughter of the Nine Moons]

Very nice M& M...keep posting.

[Arsenik]

hey m&m, wanna help me out? participate in my little write-a-thon. continue writing on my emotional stories thread please.

[man_in_mudboots]

im looking at it right now!

Benedict’s Resolution

Benedict at last resolved to solve the mystery of the willow-wisps. He told nobody of his goal. He knew that to tell of it would have himself bombarded by an onslaught of different stories of ‘men going insane over the willow-wisps, going after them, and never being seen or heard from again’ from the men of the town, and constant warnings that ‘demons were not to be messed with’ from Marie, since she followed Father Etienne’s belief that they were devils, sent from hell to cause men to miss their chances. But not a single one of these tall tales or fiery warnings could have changes his decision to go one night and see them up close.

He thought well in advance of all the possible problems that he could see himself having the misfortune to encounter on this safari; getting lost, needing a drink of water (the swamp water was putrid and stagnated, and completely un-drinkable for someone who had not been raised on it), getting injured, and so on. He had been immersed in the culture of survival that is the backbone of all cultures; he knew what needed doing. He only needed the right time to do it.

The seemingly perfect night came. The moon was waning, there were just a few wispy clouds in the dark sky, and the willow-wisps were out in abundance. Benedict was putting everything he needed in a fringed leather Indian pouch; he had long had all the items he needed gathered in the small iron-bound chest beside his bed, except for the water and food, of course, which he would have to wait until the very night to arrange; when he got a frantic nock on the door. The man at the door was obviously on the verge of hysteria. He somehow managed to relate to Benedict that one of the team pulling his stagecoach had stumbled, fallen, and managed to tip the whole coach over with it, and that the two men riding inside must have had their heads slammed against something inside the coach, the walls or maybe each other, with great force, because both were now unconscious, one bleeding profusely from a wound on his head and breathing very faintly. Benedict was ready to leave, though, ready then. He gave the man directions to another house - Marie’s - he thought she would be able to take sufficient care of the wounded men that they would still be alive by the time Benedict himself could get there, after, of course, he was finished with the willow-wisps in the swamps. The coachman, because he was in such a panic, wasn’t in much of a state to ask why or how far away the house was, or any other details. As Benedict finished packing (the man had interrupted him right in the middle), he hoped Marie would manage. He would hate to have the worse-off man be his first patient to die. Then he plunged himself into the swamps, noting his compass and heading in the direction of the most lights.

Benedict followed the lights as they moved (they seemed to progress together in mostly the same direction), reasoning that was because the breeze was blowing all the flaming plumes of gas in the same direction. For almost two hours he followed the wisps of light, never getting within an acre of one, until he got to a glade. It should be noted that, in the swampy areas of southern Louisiana, the word ‘glade’ had a different meaning than else-where; the meaning being an area of slightly higher, un-swampy land. There, in that glade, Benedict saw the willow-wisps gather, floating, as was the case, into the glade a few at a time, and, then, stop right where they were all at once. Benedict, as utterly riveted on the eerie scene as he was, thought to himself that the breeze moving the wisps must have failed. Screwing himself up, he walked on trembling legs to the center of the glade. He walked past several wisps and found them to be exactly what he had thought; balls of flaming gas, not demons or ghosts or voodoo spirits. He got close enough to touch them, even, had he been able to touch them without being burned. The whole glade was hot with the willow-wisp’s fire. He got to the center of the glade, sat down on a stump that just happened to be there, and watched the wisps in spell-bound amazement. So, he thought, that they were balls of flaming gases? So had he been expecting anything more? He hardly thought he could call flaming balls of gas erupting from swampy ground ‘mundane’, but so, they were rather mundane in comparison to demons or ghosts or voodoo spirits. So would a less mundane conclusion to the mystery have made it any more fascinating?

The flames, as they were, had a truly hypnotizing effect. If Benedict just looked in their center, he found he couldn’t make himself look away. His eyes were locked on their burning, flickering light. And, as tired eyes and over-worked minds do, Benedict began to see things. There, that dark shape, it looked like a hunch-backed human figure, holding the flaming ball like a lantern. There, that flame looked to take the shape of some four-legged beast. That flame there, did it not, for a second, possess lips that spoke to him?

Benedict sat on that log until sunrise, and not a single thought strayed through his mind other than thoughts of willow-wisps.

[man_in_mudboots]

The Man in the Stagecoach

Only after the sun rose and the willow-wisps disappeared, and Benedict managed to make himself get off the stump and start for his home, did he remember the two injured men in the stagecoach that he had sent to Marie that needed his help. He was going along the road, which he had came to from the swamps, and saw, ahead, a gathering of people around a large object half in the ditch, and the events of the previous evening returned to him. The object was the stagecoach, and the people were attempting to right it; turn it over onto its wheels. He resisted the urge to watch, remembering the two men needed his medical help, but as he passed by something caught his eye. It was a medium-sized trunk, which must have burst open falling out of the coach as it tipped over. Benedict removed some of the crumpled newspaper protecting the contents of the trunk to find dozens of glass vials, a Bunsen burner, Petri dishes, slides, a microscope, and hosts of little jars filled with powders and jellies and foul-colored liquids. Right above the lock was a brass plate engraved with the name ‘A. Trahan’. Trahan….A. Trahan….the name was familiar to Benedict. He rushed as well as one can rush in a road of calf-deep mud to the tiny, cramped, inadequate shack that Marie and her over-sized family lived in.

When Benedict burst in the door, he found Marie there, with two men; the one that owned the coach and had knocked on his door, and one other man, who identified himself as Eustace, the passenger that had been knocked unconscious. Benedict demanded to know who was A. Trahan. Eustace said that it was the one seriously injured man that was breathing so faintly the day before. He had died during the night. Benedict said, “Yes, yes, man, but the A, what did it stand for?” Eustace said. “Ambrose!” “Ambrose Trahan….Ambrose Trahan….where do I know that name from?!?!” Benedict half begged, half screamed. Eustace, in way of explanation said, “Ambrose Trahan was a brilliant man! I am not surprised that you, a doctor, have heard of him. Ambrose was,

-no, I shant say ‘was’, I’ll say is- he is a pioneer in the field of vaccine research. We, I was his assistant, we were going to Houston, to……demonstrate to the hospitals the vaccine he had newly invented…..he took notes, detailed notes, but God only knows how many people will die in the time it takes for another vaccine specialist to understand the nuances of his methods.” Eustace watched as a this man Benedict underwent a truly great transformation; his face turned ghostly pale, his eyes widened, his mouth fell open, his shoulders dropped, and his hands trembled.

Adeline

Adeline wouldn’t have recognized Benedict had it not been for the look in his eyes. He had suddenly appeared in her hometown in Carolina about a month ago; or rather, not Benedict, but a man that could only be an imposter, a man that looked thirty years older than the Benedict she had known, a man with hunched shoulders and a gaunt face who had withered away to a skeleton with skin. She had seen him seven times, every time through a window in a bar. He was sitting there on the stool, hunched over his drink to an almost comical degree, murmuring something to himself. He had not seen her any of those times, from the blank look on his face he hadn’t seen anything but his glass, and she had been screwing herself up to go talk to him. She was thirty-six now, and still not married; if she had to have a man, the Benedict she had known would have been the one. Now, though, this couldn’t be the same man. So the eighth time she saw him, in the bar in town again, she walked in fast and went strait to him, before she could think about anything otherwise and before her courage could fail her. She walked up to him, said his name, and waited for him to turn around to look at her. He did only after she said his name again a second time, and even then it seemed as if he hadn’t really heard her. He looked at her with clouded, glazed eyes and a uncaring, distant look that Adeline found alarming, even disturbing. He looked at her without seeing her and said, more to himself than to her, “Father Etienne was right. They were demon lights, and fool that I was to let lights lure me from my chance.”

~finis~

Edited October 11, 2004 by man_in_mudboots

[man_in_mudboots]

just a few notes.

first off, i tried to keep as close to the original, traditional will-o-the-wisp myths as i could and tell a decent story. for some factual information, you could come--here--

second, their name is actually 'will-of-the-wisps'. i shortened it to 'willow-wisp' for the story simply because its less cumbersome.

third, i dont feel that the way i protrayed the Catholic Church was very flattering. i myself am a catholic, and let me assure you that brainwashing little kids and having them scared to death for the rest of their lives is not done in the Catholic Church or in Louisiana. its for the sake of the story.

fourth, i posted the last three bits together because i thought that, if the climax wasnt all together, any of the suspense i was able to create would be lost and the plot ruined by being interrupted.

Edited October 11, 2004 by man_in_mudboots

[Arsenik]

How much more do you have left to post?