Monthly Archives: July 2015

The Shape of Family – Part One

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Part One of a Seventeen-part serialized story, firmly in the fantasy camp, so fantasy fans rejoice? Find a Table of Contents at the bottom of this post.

This is the start of Volume 1 of my Shapechangers series. If you’ve read this one, you can hop on over to the start of Volume 2, The Wings Take Shape, right now!

The Shape of Family

Part One – Shadow-Dancer

by Rick Cook Jr

From Sind’s Sundry at the edge of town, Sadie bought the star map and a singed pamphlet with the last of her silver and struck out for the skinyard, fingers twitching to be gone. Sind hisself hadn’t said a word. No one had. They all knew she was going, that she couldn’t be stopped.

She tucked the papers within her pack and hucked it over her shoulders, ignoring the tension in her neck and spine. Just a little ways, she thought. I can make it just a little ways.

Her feet pounded the packed dirt, and though it was getting on dusk and all the changers should have been on their way back, the road lay empty.

She sighed as she passed the tall barricades and entered the skinyard, and here discovered why the changers hadn’t left for home. Naked as the day they first changed, they stood in a circle in the corral of sand and gravel. Eyes on her. Continue reading →

Weeping Thief

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For best reading, turn on some instrumental scary music from Youtube, turn down the lights, and listen carefully for the call of the Weeping Thief.

Updated 2015-10-31: If you want to hear this tale told instead of reading it, head on over to Blurry Photos and feast your ears upon Ghost Stories 4, where it is featured as one of their submitted stories!

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Weeping Thief

by Rick Cook Jr

The Weeping Thief is outside my inn door and I don’t know what to do.

How she knows me as a wanted man, a robber of banks, is unimportant. She is here. The Weeping Thief has come.

I know the stories. I could call out, but she’d silence me before help arrived. I could barricade the door but she’d find another way in. I could arm myself with flintlock or saber, but she’s impervious and relentless.

The song that children sing drifts out from under the door, a woman’s voice and yet somehow thin, translucent:

The Weeping Thief is come
to sweep away your dreams,
when night forever falls
no one will hear your screams. Continue reading →