Isabelle Myfanwy, unexpectedly deceased

Having been missing for several days, remains of Isabelle Myfanwy were unexpectedly discovered late yesterday, inside a glass heron. Due to the whole issue of being inside a glass heron, there will be no burial, but a memorial service of some sort is expected.

At present, the cause of Isabelle’s death remains unknown. As a 14 year old she is unlikely to have been dismembered by the bird who ate her and should really have lost no more than a hand to a glass heron attack. It seems most likely that her remains were already in pieces before the glass heron ingested her. We may never know the truth.

Doc Willoughby said, “The most likely cause of death is gothicism, which is a frequent killer of young ladies. Isabelle had taken to wearing black clothing and dramatic hoods, which is never a good sign. She was probably hanging about in graveyards, and either got herself exsanguinated, or torn apart by werewolves.”

Doc Willpoughy encourages any other young ladies afflicted by gothicism to call in at his surgery after dark where they can admire his collection of unsavoury things in bottles while he undertakes to cure them of their unwholesome inclinations. I am sure this is as reasonable as it sounds.

Friends of the deceased fear that she may have been taken by the island’s black dog, or indeed a werewolf.

“She always did love fluffy things,” one family member told me. “And some of those werewolves can be really fluffy at this time of year.”

Mister Adams probably died last year

How long Mister Adams has been dead, no one is entirely sure. His haunted house attraction was without a doubt the least popular commercial enterprise the island has ever seen, and as no one visited it for months, his body has remained there, unremarked for an embarrassingly long period of time.

I don’t think any of us truly understood why Mister Adams felt the need to build a haunted house attraction. It’s not like we’re short of actual haunted houses. He put a startling amount of work into creating from scratch the kind of creepy, mouldering environment that occurs naturally all over the island.

The only known visitor to the Haunted House was Weevil Chevin, who said “It was great, it was just like my old gran’s house before she went mad and burned it down.”

It was Weevil who found the body, having gone back for a second visit. He thoughtfully removed Mister Adams from the property and summoned Doc Willoughby, who is quoted as saying, “I don’t know why you bothered, you don’t need a trained professional to see that this man has been dead for quite some time.”

Weevil told me that what impressed him most on his second visit, was how the bloody handprints on the wall still looked fresh and were damp to the touch. “Tasted like blood and all. Dead impressive.”

 

(This death is a nod to the work the real life Mister Adams did for the This House is Not Haunted video, and is a belated addition to last year’s obituaries. We’re sorry it took so long to find his body!)

Helke Jonkman’s fateful map

By Frampton Jones

Helke Jonkman had not, it turned out, even intended to be on this side of the Atlantic, but is not so very good with directions. And of course sometimes directions here are complicated. We’re so used to the way paths come and go. There are places you can only ever reach at the full moon, doors that only open in winter, graves that are only properly visible at twilight – if you’ve been here a while, you likely already know this. It bemuses newcomers and of course there are always people who are confused by directions that include questions of time, or wind direction.  Perhaps as island people we are more used to thinking about tides, and places that are sometimes unavailable.

The shortage of reliable maps has always been a problem, but how do you map that which changes? Being someone who struggled with directions, Helke became one of the few people to ever try and map the island, in all its oddness.

Helke has gone, but the maps remain. One map could never be enough. There are paths painted in silver, and one marked with a note that it requires blood to walk it. There are paths on these maps that I have never seen myself and would not venture down.

I speculate that there is also a missing map; the one Helke took along on that final journey. The one that tracks the route into whatever mystery occurred, two weeks ago. The map from which Helke may well never return.

We none of us know what might wait for us in the trees, in the darkness, in the silvery trail of moonlight we have never seen before. The unknown is always so alluring, but seldom treats anyone kindly.

John Kokkonakis embraced the darkness

By Frampton Jones

I always have to remind myself that a love of darkness in a shipwrecked resident is not the same as a love of darkness in someone who grew up here. It takes newcomers a while to realise that the beloved velvet darkness of home, with all its charm and whimsy, is not to be found here. Our darkness is full of teeth and eyes, and hunger.

The shift from one calendar year to another generally causes fights. At the moment, the most popular choices of date for next year are 1837, 1896, 1924 and 2215. This is why our consensus about the year recently has gone 1846, 1923, 1860 with last year rather confusingly being 1492. We all keep our own calendars in practice, it may be best that way. And so last night we passed from one calendar year to another, and some of us felt the need to get drunk and punch each other over this, as is traditional.

John Kokkonakis apparently felt the need to celebrate midnight outdoors. I’ve seen this before, and it seldom goes well. People who expect the darkness to be full of merry bells and neighbourly good cheer are always disappointed. Sometimes, I rather suppose the darkness embraces them, instead.

Knowing John’s birth sign, I shall have to re-write the horroscopes for this year, as I firmly believe the prediction of death by nostalgia in the night was meant for him. We’ll just have to see what’s in store for the person most likely to die, who shares his birth sign.

And so we have another obituary in which the departee always claimed to have been born in what I consider the future, and whose year of death is equally impossible to pin down. Years are cruel, unreasonable entities, we should not trust them, and it is clearly unsafe to try and celebrate their capricious comings and goings.

Mark Goodman’s unquiet heart

By Frampton Jones

Last Christmas, Mark Goodman gave me his heart, still beating, and contained in a beautifully decorated box. I was, as you can imagine, rather troubled by this. The next day, I showed the heart to Doc Willoughby, who said he would take it away and examine it. Mark turned out to be rather upset about this, and later retrieved his heart, making it clear that he intended to give it to someone else.

I saw Mark this morning, looking pale and with distinct bite marks on his throat. He also seemed dazed and at first did not appear to recognise me. I was concerned, but did not initially associate this with the strange business of his heart and what he did with it last Christmas. I tend to forget all about Christmas unless reminded.

When he collapsed in the street, I went to his aid. I was able to get him into the shelter of Jed Grimes’s store, where he raved for some time. I can give you only an approximation of his words.  “I gave it to someone special,” he said. “I thought this was someone I could rely on, but I was wrong. Fooled again. But it’s worse this time.”

I managed to ask if this was about his heart. “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart,” he said, “I thought you were a responsible sort of person.” If only he had explained to me what he wanted me to do with it! I am still mystified. It was hardly a romantic gesture, it was a bleeding organ in a box that had no business still beating whilst being in a box. I was more than a little disconcerted at the time and would have benefited from some guidance.

Whatever happened to Mark’s heart this year proved fatal, this Christmas has killed him. I admit to feeling deeply disturbed by the whole experience, a kind of personal Armageddon, a sense that some heavy, blunt object has been whammed into my own innards.

 

 

Captain Samuel Roberts did not smell like a pirate in the end

By Frampton Jones

You may have noticed over the last three years, the new tradition of ‘Smell like a Pirate’ day. Started by a number of younger folk from the Jones clan, the initial aim was to celebrate our shared piratical history. None of us has admitted to being a practical pirate for several generations now, so it’s all been rather silly and harmless.

This year brought us Captain Samuel Roberts, an all round splendid fellow, and experienced privateer. He was inevitably attractive to young Jones cousins wishing to celebrate their piratical history, and so it was that this year’s Smell like a Pirate day involved boats, for the first time. It was, I have been told, intended to be a colourful, amusing sort of a day with fun for all the family and all the usual social opportunities to contract a nasty dose of food poisoning.

No one has come forward to take responsibility for deciding to use round cheeses as substitute cannon balls. No one has admitted to supplying the cheese, or the cannon, and no one has admitted to being in the boat that fired these unholy projectiles.

What we can say with confidence is that Captain Samuel Roberts was in the boat struck by cheeses, and that he was thrown into the water. There, topped with a charming patina of cheese, he proved a tasty snack for a passing sea creature. Surviving members of the Smell like a Pirate project returned to the shore, shamefaced and mournful in about equal proportion.

This makes Samuel the first person to die in a pirate-related incident off Hopeless, Maine, in living memory. On the whole, I do not think it was what he would have wanted.

Paul Jarman’s final chapter

By Frampton Jones

In the months since his arrival on our island, Paul Jarman has made a number of startling suggestions. That libraries should be places where people can go to read and borrow books has divided opinions. Many young islanders are taken with the notion of having more reading material than my humble newssheet. A fair few people like the idea of a library as a place you might visit, not nervously avoid.

Our deceased Librarian Theophrastus Frog has maintained however, that people are not good for books and that frequently, books are not good for people and it is best to keep the two separately.

The launch of The New Hopeless Maine Library for People Who Want to Read was initially a success. Many book owners donated from their own collections, and offered their own writings. As a consequence, Paul Jarman’s new library had dozens of books in it, and regular visitors. However, in recent days things have taken a dramatic turn.

Paul’s body was found this morning, in a blood spattered scene that spoke all too clearly of murder. Paul’s ghost was very much resident at the scene as well, but unable to say anything useful about how he had died. What he did say, goes as follows.

“I understand now. Some books are not good for people. Some books should be hidden away. I must remain here now, and make sure that the books are safe from the people, and that the people are safe from the books.”

So now we have two libraries with ghostly librarians who see it as their job to keep people out, and frankly, I do not believe this to be a coincidence.

Mirco “SteamTinkerer” Sadrinna has been remade

By Frampton Jones

There are some people whose lives you watch with a feeling of morbid unease. Mirco was one such – a tinkerer by nature whose fondness for messing about with devices seemed likely to prove fatal. The risk of attracting a demon into a warm, comfortable device is one I wish more people would take seriously. But, I shall not use Mirco’s untimely death as a reason to lecture on the dangers of demonic infestations.

Not least because I am fairly certain demons were not to blame on this occasion.

In recent weeks, Mirco’s workshop had ever more figures in it. I’ve been seeing more of these little figures around town for a while now – at first I thought they were amusing sculptures made of rubbish. Then, having seen a few of them move, I assumed them to be clever automata. Now, I am unsure and uneasy. Those figures, with their vegetable and bucket heads, their whimsical anatomies do not seem so innocent now.

Mirco was found propped outside the workshop, having been reassembled to resemble one of these creatures. I am no longer sure what to call them. Where Mirco’s actual head went, no one knows. About half of the available body parts are missing, according to Doc Willoughby. All of the automata, sculptures, creatures… whatever they were, they have all gone. Not a one remains in the workshop, and I have not seen one about town for a few days. I am afraid we will start finding parts of Mirco in other assemblies of parts made to resemble a person.

Reverend Davies will be performing the funeral rites for a percentage of a person, where the unburied parts are assumed to have taken on some kind of unwholesome second life. It will be an unsettling service, these forms always are, but we can hope it will bring some relief to the departed.

Lord Loverduc – a jest too far

By Frampton Jones

Arthur Foot III, Lord Loverduc of The Cogkneys gave me a curious education into the strange world that exists somewhere beyond our unquiet waters. I was never able to ascertain to my satisfaction where The Cogkneys are, but understand it to be a small kingdom with its own language, based on English, but wholly inexplicable to non-natives.

Arthur’s ribald poetry made him a popular figure at any gathering, saving for the Church picnic, from which he was banned at least four times for making lewd remarks. Not that the ban proved effective. I think Arthur saw all gatherings of people as potential audiences and acted accordingly.

His death was unfortunate, and it seems that he was killed deliberately – with repeated blows to the head. As the killer left a helpful letter to explain their motives, Doc Willoughby has not needed to assess the body and there’s not much need for further investigation. A note was left on Arthur’s fallen form, that clearly reads, “Let this be a warning to all of you who live careless, unGodly lives and bring this island into disrepute.” Clearly, any of us could be next by that reckoning, and we can safely assume that either Reverend Davies or Mrs Beaten is to blame.

Arthur is survived by fellow shipwreckee from his Cogkney kingdom, Miss Tilly Maydme, who said “He was a dirty old man, but I’ll miss him.” When I suggested that Arthur had not seemed so very old, she burst into tears, and said, “That’s what he always said.”

 

Jeffrey Fleisher’s ghastly premonition

“I am so sorry to see me go,” announced Jeffrey Fleisher at a meeting he called last night. “I have had a premonition that I will shortly be eaten by an Elder God, and thought it only fair to warn everyone. In the meantime, I thought you might all like the opportunity to say something nice about me while I’m here to appreciate it.”

On the whole it was a pleasant evening and a cheerful sort of party. Curiously Doc Willoughby felt the need to publicly declare that he did thought people preparing for sacrifice should take the whole situation a lot more seriously and not make jokes about it. “You never know when you’re going to be sacrificed,” he said. “That’s part of the point.” When questioned, he refused to comment further on this.

At the end of the evening, Jeffrey called out a cheerful “See you in another life,” to the crowd and opened the door into the street. There was a puff of something sulphurous and suggestive of old decay. The three people nearest the door were reduced to trembling wrecks and could not find any decent adjectives to describe what they had seen. Or they were already exceptionally drunk – it was hard to tell. Rather than risk whatever was outside, the rest of us stayed in the hall overnight and kept drinking.

Of course by morning, there wasn’t much to see. Perhaps it is for the best.