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By Martin Pearson
It is fair to say that the islanders of Hopeless, Maine, can never be accused of being overly materialistic. When living in an environment which is generally agreed to be hostile to both life and limb, any preoccupation with trivial baubles and trinkets is widely regarded as being shallow in the extreme. Having said this, there is one item which is valued above all others, and tended with the reverence that certain cultures might reserve for an artefact of deep religious significance. I speak, of course, of the Edison-Bell Phonograph.
Seasoned readers of ‘The Vendetta’ will recall that the arrival of the phonograph on the island was, at first, regarded with some suspicion (as related in the tale ‘Ghost in the Machine’). However, once the populace had been exposed to the sound of a strangulated Irish tenor warbling ‘Molly Malone’, and had joined in a few refrains of ‘Alive, alive-o’, all was deemed well and the Edison-Bell machine, along with the ‘Molly Malone’ wax cylinder, was trotted out at every possible opportunity. It was a year or two later that the dance troupe ‘Les Demoiselles de Moulin Rouge’ became shipwrecked on Hopeless. They brought with them a huge trunkful of costumes and wax-cylinders of Offenbach’s ‘Infernal Galop’ (or the Can-Can, for most of us) and the Parisian Apache dance, ‘Valses des Rayons’, also by Offenbach. From then onwards, the status of the phonograph reached new heights. Had it been the Ark of the Covenant itself, it could barely have been treated with greater respect.
“Do you mean to tell me,” said Reggie Upton, “that you have this marvellous machine, and it only plays three tunes?”
“That’s all anyone wants to hear,” said Philomena. “Everybody likes to see Les Demoiselles, and Molly Malone is a particular favourite at any event, especially when it comes to the chorus, and they can all join in. Personally, I wouldn’t care if I never heard it again.”
“Are there other cylinders hidden away somewhere?” asked Reggie.
“Oh yes, but nothing anyone seems very interested in. All classical stuff, I think. They’ll be up in one of the attics, somewhere.”
Reggie pursed his lips thoughtfully, then, without another word, wandered into the bar to speak to the landlord, Bartholomew Middlestreet.
“We really must do this,” said Reggie, the following day. “I have discovered an absolute treasure trove of music up in the attics.”
The others seated around the table seemed sceptical. The ‘Music Committee’, as Reggie had insisted on calling the hastily assembled group, comprised of himself, Philomena, Bartholomew, Norbert Gannicox and Mirielle D’Illay, who represented Les Demoiselles.
“While not wishing to be a killjoy,” said Philomena, “I don’t honestly think that there is anything there that anyone is likely to want to hear.”
“Sorry, but I don’t agree,” said Reggie. “Most of the music on those cylinders is very accessible. Heaven knows, I am but a simple soldier with a limited knowledge of music, but I could certainly be entertained by what we have.”
Much of this, of course was blatantly untrue. Reggie was from an old, aristocratic family, he had enjoyed an eye-wateringly expensive education and had risen to the rank of brigadier in the British army. What was correct, however, was that his musical tastes would never be considered as being remotely highbrow.
“Give us some examples, then,” challenged Norbert.
“Well, there’s the Drinking Song from La Traviata, that’s great fun. Then we have the Turkish Rondo by Mozart, Danse Macabre by Saint-Saëns… believe me, there is plenty to go for.”
“And will you be presenting this?” asked Bartholomew
“Definitely not,” said Reggie. “If we have a concert it should be a young person running the show. A difficult audience won’t warm to some old fuddy-duddy like me telling them what’s on the programme.”
“Then who will it be?” asked Philomena, anxiously hoping that she would be regarded as being much too old for the job.
“Septimus will do it,” said Mirielle.
“That would be good,” said a much relieved Philomena. “Will you ask him, please, Mirielle?”
“Non. I will tell him. He will do as he is told,” said Mirielle firmly, and no one was in any doubt that her fiancé would have no choice but to present the forthcoming entertainment.
“So, you’re really going to do this?” Egbert Washwell said to his brother, a hint of mockery in his voice.
“It will be easy,” said Septimus airily. “It’s just a few old composers’ names and the titles of their tunes.”
“Who have you got there?” asked Egbert, not really caring.
“Mozart, Verdi, Saint-Saëns, Grieg and Rimsky-Korsakov.”
Egbert burst out laughing.
“Rips His Corset Off? Who is that – it’s surely not his real name?”
“No, Rimsky-Korsakov. He composed something called ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee.”
“Good old Rips His Corset Off,” chuckled Egbert. “I bet you get that one wrong.”
Septimus practised introducing the various pieces of work for a whole week before the concert took place. He was confident that he would be able to memorise each composer and their music. Mirielle had ensured that he was able to pronounce Saint-Saëns correctly, and the only name that was still giving him trouble was, inevitably, Rimsky-Korsakov. Every time he tried to refer to the composer, it came out as Rips His Corset Off. If only Egbert had not put that thought into his mind, all would have been well.
The Big Night came, and to the great relief of the Music Committee, the event seemed to be progressing without a hitch, partly because the audience had been promised that if they could sit quietly through the concert, they could have at least one rendition of ‘Molly Malone’ at the end of the evening. The song had apparently achieved something resembling the stature of a national anthem.
Despite fears to the contrary, everyone was happily tapping their feet to the Turkish Rondo, swaying in time to Verdi’s Drinking Song and genuinely enjoying the experience. Only Septimus was uneasy. ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’ was the last classical piece on the programme, and he was still having a barely-disguised panic-attack at the thought of having to introduce the dreaded name of Rimsky-Korsakov.
“Rimsky-Korsakov… Rimsky-Korsakov… Rimsky-Korsakov…” he kept repeating to himself, desperately trying to avoid thinking about Rips His Corset Off. To make matters worse, Egbert was sitting in the audience, just a few feet away from him. He had a huge grin plastered over his smug face and was obviously willing his brother to get it wrong. Catching Septimus’ eye, he gleefully mouthed the words ‘Rips His Corset Off’.
Septimus’ heart sank and his mouth felt as though it was full of dust when the inevitable moment arrived.
With sweat trickling down his neck and his face flushing, Septimus loosened his collar, drew a deep breath and said,
“And finally, a piece of music from the great Russian composer… Rimsky-Korsakov…”
A huge feeling of relief swept over the young man, as he gratefully added, with an expansive wave of his hand…
“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… The Bum of the Flightle Bee.”
Mark Hayes did a thing.
Don’t you hate people who go to a gig and spend the whole time recording the event on their phone rather than just living the experience? I know I do. Such people need a firm talking to about their priorities in my opinion. You should be dancing about, shuffling your feet and tapping them in time. Enjoying the experience, letting yourself be drawn into the music… Not trying to keep the camera steady and viewing an event happing directly in front of you through the screen of your smart phone…
Really, just stop such heinous behaviours and enjoy the music, the experience. The vibrations of crowd. The joy of the performers. Live in the moment, not vicariously through digital remembrance of a gig you were supposed to be as much a part of as the band…
Okay, rant over, here are six videos I recorded at The Ominous Folk of…
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Coffee beans do not grow on the island of Hopeless. Anything that cannot be grown or made here might occasionally wash up from a shipwreck. For people who have lived on the island all their lives this isn’t much of a problem because real, proper coffee has never been a thing.
However, if you’ve known true coffee, then what happens on the island is a source of pain and dismay. There really is nothing quite like salt soaked, wood flavoured coffee that’s been in the sea for a day or two.
Then there are the coffees the islanders like to make. Much of this is inspired by having consumed salty wood flavoured coffee. Or by having survived the coffees made by other islanders. Sometimes, the people who have consumed proper coffee in the past go a bit mad and try to make coffee out whatever is to hand. This never goes well.
In the picture, we see a cup of Master Scutcheon’s hairy coffee. The hideous origin story can be found over here – https://hopelessvendetta.wordpress.com/2017/05/19/master-scutcheons-hairy-coffee/
Desperation breeds terrible choices. Yes, there are plants that taste bitter and not all of them will kill you. Yes, a bit of dirt will give you exactly the right colour. Yes there are two kinds of berries that give you a buzzy, lively feeling. One causes chronic flatulence and the other may lead you to temporarily believe that you are a duck.
Last year, we did an online Hopeless, Maine festival. It was a lot of fun (I know this may undermine our horror cred a bit, but fun it was). During that process we discovered that Andy Arbon had an Eldritch Broadcasting Corporation that he’d stashed somewhere down the back of his labyrinthine underground layer. Having retrieved it and dusted it off a bit, there’s been some careful oiling and hand cranking and the whole thing looks ready to roll.
On Saturday the 4th of February there will be an online festival over on the Hopeless, Maine facebook page. The whole thing should migrate to youtube afterwards and we’ll share that here when it does. This year it will be a broader event and we have some exciting new contributors in the mix as well as plenty of familiar faces.
On the Hopeless, Maine side, the Scientific Society have been decidedly busy. Sorry about that. The ones who survived their recent research projects will be giving talks on said research.
There’s new material in from The Ominous Folk as well, and some of the Hopeless, Maine crew will be in the mix doing non-Hopeless things, just to add to the fun and confusion!
Andy Arbon will be reading The Cursed Letter Opener of Otley Chevin, which first appeared here on the blog.
Come and wave your tentacles in our general direction!
We’ve got a new song – written for us by Keith Errington! And we know there are more to come, so this is an exciting development.
I know it’s more normal to wait until something is entirely finished before putting it out into the world. However, I’m excited about this song, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to talk about processes. Song arrangements don’t happen by magic, and how we do things as The Ominous Folk is quite interesting.
The song then – is about Annamarie Nightshade, a witch from the Hopeless, Maine project. It was written specifically for Susie to sing, and it was written for us by lovely Keith Errington. Keith has been part of the Hopeless, Maine project for many years. He’s written in the setting and he’s also performed with us at events. This is his first song for us, and we know there are more to come. I’ve known for some time that Keith is a songwriter, but it’s not something he’s been putting in public. It’s great…
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Starry, grabby pie
With tentacles green blue and grey
To warm you on a Hopeless day
The sky eyes know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the tentikills
Catch disease and winter chills
In eldritch colours corrupting my hand
Now I understand
What you tried to feed to me
How you suffered for your pantry
How tentacles bring insanity
They would not stay still, they don’t know how
Perhaps we’ll eat them now.
Starry, grabby pie
Sea monsters that we must erase
Swirling pie filling in violet haze
Reflect in sickly splatters in the loo
Colors changing hue
Unstable horrors we’ve consumed a few
Hopeless faces lined in pain
Cannot be soothed by what the chef has planned
Now, I understand
What you tried to feed to me
And how we suffered your insanity
You just wanted to be free
We would not listen, then we had a row
We will not listen now
(With all due apology to Vincent.)
Sixteen can be a difficult age. For Naboth Scarhill things had escalated from being somewhat difficult to becoming annoyingly complicated when he discovered that he was dead. It was not the business of not being alive that concerned him particularly. To begin with he had tried to look on the bright side. At least there was no more work to do, his days and nights unhindered by the niggly little inconveniences that bother the rest of us, smug in the knowledge that our mortal coils are as yet unshuffled. There was no one to berate him for leaving his clothes on the bedroom floor, or neglecting to put the toilet seat down, or forgetting to wash behind his ears, all things that the average sixteen-year old boy might be forgiven for not doing. He found that there was no great joy to be had, even if he decided to revel in this new-found freedom. It would have meant nothing, for Naboth was now a ghost, an apparition as insubstantial as the grey mist that lingered sullenly over the island of Hopeless, Maine.
Being murdered is not at all pleasant. There is more to it than simply having one’s life taken away; there is the sense of being targeted and knowing that someone, somewhere has gone to the trouble of singling you out for a particularly unpleasant method of extermination. It is, indeed, a dreadful thing. More dreadful still, however, is when your violent death has been brought about by a case of mistaken identity. Can you imagine it? Oh, the injustice of it all, especially when you are, or, more correctly, were, just sixteen with the exciting promise of life sitting before you like a map, waiting to be unfolded. This left the shade that was Naboth raging and howling through the night, intent on revenge but having no idea how to exact it.
He had learned from Marigold Burleigh – whom, regular readers may have gathered, had been possessed by the recently returned Trickster – that his death had been caused by a vicious thought form, conjured by Durosimi O’Stoat. In the dim chaos of its mind the thought form only knew that it was to kill the Night-Soil Man, a post that Naboth had held for just one day. You can see why he was not best pleased. Now the angry spirit of Naboth Scarhill desired nothing more than vengeance, and to see Durosimi suffer horribly. The drawback to this plan was that, while Naboth had both a voice and ghostly presence, he had no power to inflict physical harm upon anyone. When he burst into Durosimi’s home and tried to frighten the sorcerer, the only reaction was scorn.
“You cannot frighten me, you deluded fool,” scoffed Durosimi, derisively. “I have consorted with dæmons, ghouls and foul creatures of the pit, each more hideous than you can imagine. Do you think some stunted phantom muck-shoveller is likely to concern me? Now clear off, go and haunt one of your vile cess-pools. That’s all you’re good for!”
To say that Naboth was taken aback by this response would be an understatement. It had always been his understanding that almost everyone is frightened by ghosts, and even those who aren’t would not be so dismissive of an obviously angry spirit. He needed to go away and think of what to do.
It was a few nights later when he next appeared in Durosimi’s parlour, screeching, wailing and banging his bucket lid up and down.
“Go away, little man,” said Durosimi languidly. “Did you not hear me the first time? I am not scared one iota by you.”
“Fair enough,” replied Naboth, between wails. “But I ain’t going nowhere. I’m going to haunt you every night. You’ll get no rest from me…Oooooooooooooooh.”
And so, for night after night, over the next two weeks, Naboth made Durosimi’s life a misery, until, out of the blue, the sorcerer said,
“Alright, I give up. I apologise for killing you. Now please go away.”
“No chance,” said Naboth, “you’re stuck with me. Dusk until dawn for the rest of your days… oooooooooooweeeeeeeeeee.”
A few more nights passed by in this way, until it seemed that Durosimi had really had enough. Clapping his hands over his ears he ran like someone possessed, out into the darkness.
“I cannot stand this anymore,” he wailed, “I’ve got get away from this awful noise before it drives me mad.”
Delighted, Naboth chased after him, through the trees and out into the folds of the Gydynaps, banging his bucket lid for all he was worth and screeching like a banshee. This was more like it!
Durosimi ran frantically into a dark, yawning cavern etched into the side of the hill. Enjoying his new-found power, Naboth followed.
“Enough, I beg you stop,” cried Durosimi, holding out his hands, as if in supplication.
“Never!” laughed Naboth, “I’ll never give you any peace… ooooooooaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrggggghhhh”
‘His wailings are becoming ridiculously theatrical,’ mused Durosimi to himself, then, quite unexpectedly, washed the cavern in a ghastly green light, and smiled unpleasantly at Naboth.
“This is one I made earlier,” he said, sprinkling a handful of salt on to the floor, and completing the circle into which the spectral Night-Soil Man had drifted.
“Try and get out, by all means, but I can assure you that you won’t, not as long as the salt circle is unbroken. This is something that every ghost should know. Oh, and by the way, just in case that bony mutt, Drury, comes looking for you, I’m going to block up the entrance when I leave. Goodnight dear boy. Enjoy Eternity.”
And with that Durosimi was gone and the cavern was plunged once more into darkness, save for the faint luminesce that hung about Naboth, eerily reflecting on the ring of salt that encircled him.
In the distance he heard the tumble of rocks, rigged earlier that day to block the cavern’s mouth.
Philomena Bucket laid a basket on the doorstep of The House at Poo Corner. As usual she had brought Rhys Cranham, the Night-Soil Man, his supper of starry-grabby pie and two bottles of Old Colonel, courtesy of The Squid and Teapot. Rhys would always consume this half-way through his round, often giving a scrap or two to Drury, whose attempts at eating always ended with the chewed food dropping through his skeletal frame on to the ground, later to be enjoyed once more, but this time by the crows.
Tonight Philomena discovered that Rhys had left her a letter. Intrigued, she picked it up to peruse later, in flickering candlelight, back in her room at The Squid and Teapot.
“My Dear Philly, I hope you are well. I am just letting you know that the troubled spirit of poor Naboth seems to have disappeared. I have not seen him for some time now. I think, maybe, he has come to terms with his dreadful fate and has found some peace at last… “
There were some loving words following this, but these are for Rhys and Philomena’s eyes only.
The barmaid read the note once more. Had Naboth really found peace? The old magic that resided deep within Philomena stirred restlessly.
Something was definitely wrong.
This year’s Ominous Folk Show starts with a chap called Michael, who is not entirely sure who he has killed.
Folk enthusiasts familiar with the song Crazy Man Michael may see where we are going with all of this.
We included the song Crazy Man Michael the first time we tried using folk music as a way of getting a graphic novel onto a stage. I’ve been singing it for more than 20 years and it really is the perfect song for Hopeless – death, madness, crows, magic, murder on a beach…
We’ve now got an image of The Ominous Folk for this show. It’s good to have something that makes an explicit visual link between the performance wing and the comics.
While Helltopiary is a particular risk in the woodlands, it also turns up around ruined properties and will invade lonely, isolated buildings. When not in motion, the Helltopiary looks a lot like shrubbery. You may chance upon it in a wood and find yourself wondering who on earth would have come out here to sculpt such a thing. It is best to run away at first sighting.
The method of attack favoured by the Helltopiary will be informed by its shape. More abstract looking entities tend to favour crushing, smothering moves. Helltopiaries who have grown into creature-like forms will likely pounce and bite. Once the prey is subdued, the Helltopiary inserts thorns into the flesh of the victim – so many thorns – and then slowly takes all of the blood from the prey’s body. A hurried attempt at saving someone from a Helltopiary may result in considerable thorn damage. Helltopiary is less likely to attack people who are wearing a lot of metal, so it is as well to go in with a colander on your head and a washboard strapped to your chest, at the very least. Vulnerable to fire, wary of axes.
The Hopeless Vendetta 