The Voice before the Void: Arcana, Story, Poetry

Canada Day Special:

Glory and grisly death, for food and clothing.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“The Buffalo Hunt”

Pierre Falcon and Agnes Christina Laut

Now list to the song of the buffalo hunt,

Which I, Pierre, the rhymester, chant of the brave!

We are Bois-Brulés, Freemen of the plains,

We choose our chief! We are no man’s slave!

Up, riders, up, ere the early mist

Ascends to salute the rising sun!

Up, rangers, up, ere the buffalo herds

Sniff morning air for the hunter’s gun!

They lie in their lairs of dank spear-grass,

Down in the gorge, where the prairie dips.

We’ve followed their tracks through the sucking ooze,

Where our bronchos sank to their steaming hips.

We’ve followed their tracks from the rolling plain

Through slime-green sloughs to a sedgy ravine,

Where the cat-tail spikes of the marsh-grown flags

Stand half as high as the billowy green.

The spear-grass touched our saddle-bows,

The blade-points pricked to the broncho’s neck;

But we followed the tracks like hounds on scent

Till our horses reared with a sudden check.

The scouts dart back with a shout, “They are found!”

Great fur-maned heads are thrust through reeds,

A forest of horns, a crunching of stems,

Reined sheer on their haunches are terrified steeds!

Get you gone to the squaws at the tents, old men,

The cart-lines safely encircle the camp!

Now, braves of the plain, brace your saddle-girths!

Quick! Load guns, for our horses champ!

A tossing of horns, a pawing of hoofs,

But the hunters utter never a word,

As the stealthy panther creeps on his prey,

So move we in silence against the herd.

With arrows ready and triggers cocked,

We round them nearer the valley bank;

They pause in defiance, then start with alarm

At the ominous sound of a gun-barrel’s clank.

A wave from our captain, out bursts a wild shout,

A crash of shots from our breaking ranks,

And the herd stampedes with a thunderous boom

While we drive our spurs into quivering flanks.

The arrows hiss like a shower of snakes,

The bullets puff in a smoky gust,

Out fly loose reins from the bronchos’ bits

And hunters ride on in a whirl of dust.

The bellowing bulls rush blind with fear

Through river and marsh, while the trampled dead

Soon bridge safe ford for the plunging herd;

Earth rocks like a sea ‘neath the mighty tread.

A rip of the sharp-curved sickle-horns,

A hunter falls to the blood-soaked ground!

He is gored and tossed and trampled down,

On dashes the furious beast with a bound,

When over sky-line hulks the last great form

And the rumbling thunder of their hoofs’ beat, beat,

Dies like an echo in distant hills,

Back ride the hunters chanting their feat.

Now, old men and squaws, come you out with the carts!

There’s meat against hunger and fur against cold!

Gather full store for the pemmican bags,

Garner the booty of warriors bold.

So list ye the song of the Bois-Brulés,

Of their glorious deeds in the days of old,

And this is the tale of the buffalo hunt

Which I, Pierre, the rhymester, have proudly told.

First Reported Sighting of the Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp Anniversary Special:

Something’s out there.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp”

Wikipedia

The Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp (also known as the Lizard Man of Lee County) is a reptilian humanoid cryptid which is said to inhabit areas of swampland in and around Lee County, South Carolina, as well as sewers and abandoned subways in towns near the swamp.

1. Strange car mauling

In the summer of 1988, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office was called to the scene of a strange instance of vehicle damage. On the morning of July 14, deputies made their way to a residence located in a small rural community known as Browntown on the outskirts of Bishopville, South Carolina. When they arrived, homeowners Tom and Mary Waye showed them the vehicle in question. Police found that the chrome molding had been torn away from the fenders, the sidewalls were scratched and dented, the hood ornament was broken, the antenna was bent, and even some wires from the motor had been ripped out. Upon closer inspection, it appeared that parts of the molding had actually been chewed, as if an animal had used its teeth to inflict the damage. To further support the animal theory, the Wayes pointed out clumps of reddish colored hair and muddy footprints that had been left all over the car. However, while Sheriff Liston Truesdale was investigating the car, local residents informed him that there might be yet another, more bizarre possibility. Truesdale said, “While we were there looking over this situation, we learned that people in the Browntown community had been seeing a strange creature about seven feet tall with red eyes. Some of them described it as green, but some of them as brown. They thought it might be responsible for what happened [to the car].”

2. Davis sighting

Prompted by a newspaper article about the strange car mauling, a local father brought his terrified son to the Sheriff’s Office on July 16. Seventeen-year-old Christopher Davis reported that he had encountered a creature while driving home from work at 2 AM on June 29. According to his account, Davis stopped on a road bordering Scape Ore Swamp in order to change a tire that had blown out. When he was finishing up, he heard a thumping noise from behind him and turned around to see a creature running towards him.

In Davis’ words:

“I looked back and saw something running across the field towards me. It was about 25 yards away and I saw red eyes glowing. I ran into the car and as I locked it, the thing grabbed the door handle. I could see him from the neck down – the three big fingers, long black nails and green rough skin. It was strong and angry. I looked in my mirror and saw a blur of green running. I could see his toes and then he jumped on the roof of my car. I thought I heard a grunt and then I could see his fingers through the windshield, where they curled around on the roof. I sped up and swerved to shake the creature off.”

After he had returned home, Davis’ side mirror was found to be badly damaged, and scratch marks were found on the car’s roof.

3. Further incidents

In the month that followed the Davis sighting, there were several further reports of a large lizard-like creature, and of unusual scratches and bite marks found on cars parked close to the swamp. Most of these are said to have occurred within a 3-mile (5 km) radius of the swamps of Bishopville.

At the time, local law enforcement officials reacted to reports of the Lizard Man with a mixture of concern and skepticism, stating that a sufficient number of sightings had been made by apparently reliable people for them to believe that something tangible was being seen, but also that it was more likely to be a bear than a Lizard Man.

Two weeks after the Davis sighting,

A weird ending… but what other ending could be possible?

⁓The Voice before the Void

“The Man Who Found Out

(A Nightmare)”

Algernon Blackwood

part 3

5

It was five o’clock, and the June sun lay hot upon the pavement. He felt the metal door-knob burn the palm of his hand.

“Ah, Laidlaw, this is well met,” cried a voice at his elbow; “I was in the act of coming to see you. I’ve a case that will interest you, and besides, I remembered that you flavoured your tea with orange leaves!—and I admit—”

It was Alexis Stephen, the great hypnotic doctor.

“I’ve had no tea to-day,” Laidlaw said, in a dazed manner, after staring for a moment as though the other had struck him in the face. A new idea had entered his mind.

“What’s the matter?” asked Dr. Stephen quickly. “Something’s wrong with you. It’s this sudden heat, or overwork. Come, man, let’s go inside.”

A sudden light broke upon the face of the younger man, the light of a heaven-sent inspiration. He looked into his friend’s face, and told a direct lie.

“Odd,” he said, “I myself was just coming to see you. I have something of great importance to test your confidence with. But in your house, please,” as Stephen urged him towards his own door—”in your house. It’s only round the corner, and I—I cannot go back there—to my rooms—till I have told you.

“I’m your patient—for the moment,” he added stammeringly as soon as they were seated in the privacy of the hypnotist’s sanctum, “and I want—er—”

“My dear Laidlaw,” interrupted the other, in that soothing voice of command which had suggested to many a suffering soul that the cure for its pain lay in the powers of its own reawakened will, “I am always at your service, as you know. You have only to tell me what I can do for you, and I will do it.” He showed every desire to help him out. His manner was indescribably tactful and direct.

Dr. Laidlaw looked up into his face.

“I surrender my will to you,” he said, already calmed by the other’s healing presence, “and I want you to treat me hypnotically—and at once. I want you to suggest to me”—his voice became very tense—”that I shall forget—forget till I die—everything that has occurred to me during the last two hours; till I die, mind,” he added, with solemn emphasis, “till I die.”

He floundered and stammered like a frightened boy. Alexis Stephen looked at him fixedly without speaking.

“And further,” Laidlaw continued, “I want you to ask me no questions. I wish to forget for ever something I have recently discovered—something so terrible and yet so obvious that I can hardly understand why it is not patent to every mind in the world—for I have had a moment of absolute clear vision—of merciless clairvoyance. But I want no one else in the whole world to know what it is—least of all, old friend, yourself.”

He talked in utter confusion, and hardly knew what he was saying. But the pain on his face and the anguish in his voice were an instant passport to the other’s heart.

“Nothing is easier,” replied Dr. Stephen, after a hesitation so slight that the other probably did not even notice it. “Come into my other room where we shall not be disturbed. I can heal you. Your memory of the last two hours shall be wiped out as though it had never been. You can trust me absolutely.”

“I know I can,” Laidlaw said simply, as he followed him in.

6

An hour later they passed back into the front room again. The sun was already behind the houses opposite, and the shadows began to gather.

“I went off easily?” Laidlaw asked.

Knowledge is fearsome to possess, sojourner, but take solace: you shall never possess it.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“The Man Who Found Out

(A Nightmare)”

Algernon Blackwood

part 2

3

A year passed slowly by, and at the end of it Dr. Laidlaw had found it necessary to sever his working connexion with his friend and one-time leader. Professor Ebor was no longer the same man. The light had gone out of his life; the laboratory was closed; he no longer put pen to paper or applied his mind to a single problem. In the short space of a few months he had passed from a hale and hearty man of late middle life to the condition of old age—a man collapsed and on the edge of dissolution. Death, it was plain, lay waiting for him in the shadows of any day—and he knew it.

To describe faithfully the nature of this profound alteration in his character and temperament is not easy, but Dr. Laidlaw summed it up to himself in three words: Loss of Hope. The splendid mental powers remained indeed undimmed, but the incentive to use them—to use them for the help of others—had gone. The character still held to its fine and unselfish habits of years, but the far goal to which they had been the leading strings had faded away. The desire for knowledge—knowledge for its own sake—had died, and the passionate hope which hitherto had animated with tireless energy the heart and brain of this splendidly equipped intellect had suffered total eclipse. The central fires had gone out. Nothing was worth doing, thinking, working for. There was nothing to work for any longer!

The professor’s first step was to recall as many of his books as possible; his second to close his laboratory and stop all research. He gave no explanation, he invited no questions. His whole personality crumbled away, so to speak, till his daily life became a mere mechanical process of clothing the body, feeding the body, keeping it in good health so as to avoid physical discomfort, and, above all, doing nothing that could interfere with sleep. The professor did everything he could to lengthen the hours of sleep, and therefore of forgetfulness.

It was all clear enough to Dr. Laidlaw. A weaker man, he knew, would have sought to lose himself in one form or another of sensual indulgence—sleeping-draughts, drink, the first pleasures that came to hand. Self-destruction would have been the method of a little bolder type; and deliberate evil-doing, poisoning with his awful knowledge all he could, the means of still another kind of man. Mark Ebor was none of these. He held himself under fine control, facing silently and without complaint the terrible facts he honestly believed himself to have been unfortunate enough to discover. Even to his intimate friend and assistant, Dr. Laidlaw, he vouchsafed no word of true explanation or lament. He went straight forward to the end, knowing well that the end was not very far away.

And death came very quietly one day to him, as he was sitting in the arm-chair of the study, directly facing the doors of the laboratory—the doors that no longer opened. Dr. Laidlaw, by happy chance, was with him at the time, and just able to reach his side in response to the sudden painful efforts for breath; just in time, too, to catch the murmured words that fell from the pallid lips like a message from the other side of the grave.

“Read them, if you must; and, if you can—destroy. But”—his voice sank so low that Dr. Laidlaw only just caught the dying syllables—”but—never, never—give them to the world.”

And like a grey bundle of dust loosely gathered up in an old garment the professor sank back into his chair and expired.

But this was only the death of the body. His spirit had died two years before.

4

The estate of the dead man was small and uncomplicated, and Dr. Laidlaw, as sole executor and residuary legatee, had no difficulty in settling it up.

Summer Vacation Special:

A quintessential weird tale.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“The Man Who Found Out

(A Nightmare)”

Algernon Blackwood

part 1

1

Professor Mark Ebor, the scientist, led a double life, and the only persons who knew it were his assistant, Dr. Laidlaw, and his publishers. But a double life need not always be a bad one, and, as Dr. Laidlaw and the gratified publishers well knew, the parallel lives of this particular man were equally good, and indefinitely produced would certainly have ended in a heaven somewhere that can suitably contain such strangely opposite characteristics as his remarkable personality combined.

For Mark Ebor, F.R.S., etc., etc., was that unique combination hardly ever met with in actual life, a man of science and a mystic.

As the first, his name stood in the gallery of the great, and as the second—but there came the mystery! For under the pseudonym of “Pilgrim” (the author of that brilliant series of books that appealed to so many), his identity was as well concealed as that of the anonymous writer of the weather reports in a daily newspaper. Thousands read the sanguine, optimistic, stimulating little books that issued annually from the pen of “Pilgrim,” and thousands bore their daily burdens better for having read; while the Press generally agreed that the author, besides being an incorrigible enthusiast and optimist, was also—a woman; but no one ever succeeded in penetrating the veil of anonymity and discovering that “Pilgrim” and the biologist were one and the same person.

Mark Ebor, as Dr. Laidlaw knew him in his laboratory, was one man; but Mark Ebor, as he sometimes saw him after work was over, with rapt eyes and ecstatic face, discussing the possibilities of “union with God” and the future of the human race, was quite another.

“I have always held, as you know,” he was saying one evening as he sat in the little study beyond the laboratory with his assistant and intimate, “that Vision should play a large part in the life of the awakened man—not to be regarded as infallible, of course, but to be observed and made use of as a guide-post to possibilities—”

“I am aware of your peculiar views, sir,” the young doctor put in deferentially, yet with a certain impatience.

“For Visions come from a region of the consciousness where observation and experiment are out of the question,” pursued the other with enthusiasm, not noticing the interruption, “and, while they should be checked by reason afterwards, they should not be laughed at or ignored. All inspiration, I hold, is of the nature of interior Vision, and all our best knowledge has come—such is my confirmed belief—as a sudden revelation to the brain prepared to receive it—”

“Prepared by hard work first, by concentration, by the closest possible study of ordinary phenomena,” Dr. Laidlaw allowed himself to observe.

“Perhaps,” sighed the other; “but by a process, none the less, of spiritual illumination. The best match in the world will not light a candle unless the wick be first suitably prepared.”

It was Laidlaw’s turn to sigh. He knew so well the impossibility of arguing with his chief when he was in the regions of the mystic, but at the same time the respect he felt for his tremendous attainments was so sincere that he always listened with attention and deference, wondering how far the great man would go and to what end this curious combination of logic and “illumination” would eventually lead him.

“Only last night,” continued the elder man, a sort of light coming into his rugged features, “the vision came to me again—the one that has haunted me at intervals ever since my youth, and that will not be denied.”

Dr.

Extraordinary stories.

⁓The Voice before the Void

Octavia E. Butler, Part 2: Notable Works

compiled from Wikipedia

Lilith’s Brood

Lilith’s Brood is a series of three science fiction works by Octavia E. Butler. The three volumes (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago) were previously collected under the title of Xenogenesis; the collection was first published under the current title of Lilith’s Brood in 2000.

Synopsis

The first novel in the trilogy, Dawn, was published in 1987. The story begins after the United States and the Soviet Union obtained nuclear weapons and their actions resulted in a terrible nuclear war that left the earth uninhabitable. Humans are all but extinct. The few survivors are plucked from the surface of their dying world by an alien race, the oankali. The title character Lilith (a black human female) awakens from stasis centuries later on an oankali ship. She meets her saviors/captors and is repulsed by their alienness. The oankali don’t have eyes, or ears, or noses, but sensory tentacles over their entire bodies with which they can perceive the world much better than a human can. Stranger still, the oankali have three genders: male, female, and ooloi. All oankali have the ability to perceive biochemistry down to a genetic level, but the ooloi have the ability to directly manipulate genetic material. Ooloi can mutate and “evolve” any living thing they touch and build offspring gene by gene using the genetic material from their male and female mates. Despite their alienness, the ooloi are strangely alluring – sexually arousing even while being visually repulsive. The oankali have made earth habitable again and want Lilith’s help in training humans to survive on earth without human technology. In exchange, the oankali want to interbreed with the humans to create a new human-oankali hybrid race. This book focuses on the conflict between Lilith’s desire to stay human and her loyalty to her species, and her desire to survive at any cost.

The second book, Adulthood Rites, published in 1988, takes place years after the events of Dawn. Humans and oankali live together on earth though everything is not peaceful. Some humans have accepted the bargain and live with the oankali and give birth to hybrid children called constructs. Others, however, have refused the bargain and live in separate, all-human villages. The ooloi have made all humans infertile so the only children born are the ones made with ooloi intervention. This creates a great deal of tension and strain as the humans see themselves being outbred by the oankali-human constructs. Desperate humans often steal human-looking construct children to raise as their own. The main character of the second book, Akin, is the first male construct born to a human mother. Akin has more human in him than any construct before him. This book focuses on Akin’s struggle with his human and his oankali natures. As a human, he understands the desire to fight for the survival of humanity as an independent race. As an oankali, he understands that the combination of the species is necessary and that humans would destroy themselves again if left alone.

The final book of the trilogy, Imago, published in 1989, shows the reader what has been hinted at in the first two books: the full potential of the new human-oankali hybrid species. The story is told from the perspective of the shape-shifting healer Jodahs. Through Jodahs’ unique heritage, it has unlocked the latent genetic potential of humans and oankali. In order to survive its metamorphosis, Jodahs must find suitable human male and female mates, and it finds them in the most unexpected of places: a village of renegade humans. This book brings a sense of completeness to the story by allowing the reader to understand the oankali better by understanding Jodahs.

Themes

Throughout the Xenogenesis series, themes of sexuality,

Octavia E. Butler’s Birthday Special:

An extraordinary writer.

⁓The Voice before the Void

Octavia E. Butler, Part 1: Biography and Themes

compiled from Wikipedia

Octavia Estelle Butler (1947 June 22 – 2006 February 24) was an American science fiction writer. A multiple-recipient of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, Butler was one of the best-known women in the field. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Fellowship.

Biography

“I began writing about power because I had so little.”

-Octavia E. Butler, in Carolyn S. Davidson’s “The Science Fiction of Octavia Butler”

Early life

Octavia Estelle Butler was born in 1947 in Pasadena, California, the only child of Octavia Margaret Guy, a housemaid, and Laurice James Butler, a shoeshine man. Butler’s father died when she was seven, so Octavia was raised by her mother and maternal grandmother in what she would later recall as a strict Baptist environment. While growing up in the racially-integrated community of Pasadena allowed Butler to experience cultural and ethnic diversity in the midst of segregation, she became acquainted with the workings of white supremacy when she accompanied her mother to her cleaning work and witnessed her entering white people’s houses through back doors and being spoken to or about in disrespectful ways. Many times, Butler’s mother would bring home books and magazines the white families had discarded for her young daughter to read.

From an early age, an almost paralyzing shyness made it difficult for Butler to socialize with other children. Her awkwardness, paired with a slight dyslexia that made schoolwork a torment, made her believe she was “ugly and stupid, clumsy, and socially hopeless.” Eventually, she grew to almost six feet tall, becoming an easy target for bullies. As a result, she frequently passed the time reading at the Pasadena Public Library and writing reams and reams of pages in her “big pink notebook.” Hooked at first on fairy tales and horse stories, she quickly became interested in science fiction magazines such as Amazing Stories, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Galaxy and began reading stories by Zenna Henderson, John Brunner, and Theodore Sturgeon.

At age ten, she begged her mother to buy her a Remington typewriter on which she “pecked [her] stories two fingered.” At age twelve, watching the televised version of the film Devil Girl from Mars convinced her that she could write a better story, so she drafted what would later become the basis for her Patternist novels. Happily ignorant of the obstacles that a black female writer could encounter, she became unsure of herself for the first time at the age of thirteen when her well-intentioned aunt Hazel conveyed the realities of segregation in five words: “Honey… Negroes can’t be writers.” Nevertheless, Butler persevered in her desire to publish a story, even asking her junior-high science teacher, Mr. Pfaff, to type the first manuscript she submitted to a science fiction magazine.

After graduating from John Muir High School in 1965, Butler worked during the day and attended Pasadena City College at night. As a freshman, she won a college-wide short story contest, her first fifteen dollars earned as a writer. She also got the “germ of the idea” for what would become her best-selling novel, Kindred, when a young African-American classmate involved in the Black Power Movement loudly criticized previous generations of African-Americans for being subservient to whites. As she explained in later interviews, the young man’s remarks instigated her to respond with a story that would give historical context to that shameful subservience so that it could be understood as silent but courageous survival. Butler graduated from PCC in 1968.

Rise to success

Summer Vacation Special:

The great promise of death.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“On the Dunes”

Sara Teasdale

If there is any life when death is over,

These tawny beaches will know much of me,

I shall come back, as constant and as changeful

As the unchanging, many-colored sea.

If life was small, if it has made me scornful,

Forgive me; I shall straighten like a flame

In the great calm of death, and if you want me

Stand on the sea-ward dunes and call my name.

Days and nights are long; life and death continues.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“The Crowded Street”

William Cullen Bryant

Let me move slowly through the street,

Filled with an ever-shifting train,

Amid the sound of steps that beat

The murmuring walks like autumn rain.

How fast the flitting figures come!

The mild, the fierce, the stony face;

Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some

Where secret tears have left their trace.

They pass–to toil, to strife, to rest;

To halls in which the feast is spread;

To chambers where the funeral guest

In silence sits beside the dead.

And some to happy homes repair,

Where children, pressing cheek to cheek,

With mute caresses shall declare

The tenderness they cannot speak.

And some, who walk in calmness here,

Shall shudder as they reach the door

Where one who made their dwelling dear,

Its flower, its light, is seen no more.

Youth, with pale cheek and slender frame,

And dreams of greatness in thine eye!

Goest thou to build an early name,

Or early in the task to die?

Keen son of trade, with eager brow!

Who is now fluttering in thy snare?

Thy golden fortunes, tower they now,

Or melt the glittering spires in air?

Who of this crowd to-night shall tread

The dance till daylight gleam again?

Who sorrow o’er the untimely dead?

Who writhe in throes of mortal pain?

Some, famine-struck, shall think how long

The cold dark hours, how slow the light,

And some, who flaunt amid the throng,

Shall hide in dens of shame to-night.

Each, where his tasks or pleasures call,

They pass, and heed each other not.

There is who heeds, who holds them all,

In His large love and boundless thought.

These struggling tides of life that seem

In wayward, aimless course to tend,

Are eddies of the mighty stream

That rolls to its appointed end.

U.S. Memorial Day Special:

The best of contemporary war poetry.

⁓The Voice before the Void

“Paratrooper”

Sean Barnett

Deteriorating cartilage,

torn meniscus,

bruising of the femur.

Arthritic diagnosis,

disabling infusion

of shrapnel, peppered

by an explosion.

Then, my parachute’s

canopy partially inverted,

slamming me to

the weakened joint.

Early morning clicks,

occasional popping midday,

and an aching in the evening

only endured by way of

abusive substance.

And that’s the good knee.