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Maggie doesn't know why her mother is acting so strange. Lily Wassenbloom, her mom and the resident psychic in the small town called Mirror Lake, starts acting differently after she faints during a television appearance.

Iris Dean called the studio during the show and spooked Lily, causing her to faint. Iris, unknown to Lily, is her twin sister, and the leader of the Ill Wind coven. She is intentionally confounding Lily, keeping her off balance at the direction of the demon Hakon.

Lily's boyfriend Randy James belongs to the Bright Star coven, the rival coven in town. His job is to love and care for Lily, yet he is dumfounded at Lily's behavior, and is afraid of losing her.

As the tension rises and Lily becomes more and more disoriented, Maggie begins to worry even more. When Iris contacts her and offers a solution, Maggie reluctantly agrees to meet Iris and discuss it.

Will Maggie succeed and save her mother? Or will Lily succumb and allow the evil Ill Wind coven claim her for the demon's plans to raise the devil again?

It is almost time for the ritual to commence. Time is running out.

Sample Chapter

In the beginning...

Fred Wilder, his wife, Mabel, and their three boys, Fred Jr (17), William (15), and Jeffrey (13), bought 40 wooded acres on the outskirts of Mirror Lake, Montana on July 1, 1923. Everything they owned filled a horse-covered wagon. Over the next three days, more wagons arrived, rolling in one by one filled with women, children, livestock, and supplies. On the fourth day after the purchase, a set of three wagons arrived, one containing a dozen good strong men and the other two wagons carrying building materials for a house, barn, pavilion, and Church. Altogether, they numbered about 40 people: men, women and children. Fred referred to all of them on his property as "family". They kept to themselves, busily setting about building a homestead, chopping down and planking trees for the structures they wanted.

A huge plantation house quickly grew in a cleared area on the right side of the front four acres. Painted dark green, the house had an enormous covered porch that wrapped around all sides of the house on both the first and second floor. A third story towered above the porch. Huge windows marked the rooms within on the first two floors. First floor had a huge kitchen, pantry, living room, dining room, gathering space, and several small servant's quarters along the back of the house. The second floor had 8 spacious bedrooms, and the third floor was an open spaced attic with a few storage rooms in two corners furthest from the stairs. A pretty little outhouse set off to the left side of the back door; a stone's throw away from the house. Mabel painted it white and hung light green curtains in it.

The pavilion went up next not too far from the house, essentially a cement floor furnished with picnic tables and a shingled roof suspended by poles in the center and the corners. Support poles were erected within the pavilion. The family gathered there for events. A regular barn was erected on the other side of the pavilion for the livestock.

About ten acres into the property, Fred and his fellow "family" members erected another building. Resembling a barn, it was twice the size with a peaked roof. They painted it bright red with bright white trim, and set an enormous white cross at the Apex of the gabled roof, above the double doors. The family only cleared some trees to erect the building and make a carriage road to it. The passage wound through the woods leisurely, a plain dirt road subject to the snowy winters and soggy springs of Montana. Automobiles were left at the house. Horse-drawn carriages were taken to the Church due to the road condition.

Quietly, Fred and his family made a living in the woods of Montana.

About 60 years ago

The old red barn sat quietly in the night on its ten acres. Not a cloud in the sky, the stars sparkled, and the bright moonlight from the full moon lit up the barn roof with a soft glow. The red paint was faded, a few of the boards were warped in spots, a state of being that Realtors called "weathered", yet it was a solid structure. The cross had been removed decades ago. A winding driveway swept gracefully through the property and ended at a paved parking lot to the left of the barn. A few cars dotted the space here and there. The inside was where it mattered.

Fred had been a farmer, but he was also the founder of the Ill Wind Coven. His barn was designed on the outside to look like ordinary barn, double doors in front, loft door on the second floor, but the inside was totally different. Members came and went through a smaller access door in the side of the barn.

The barn had two floors - the "dungeon" was smack in the middle of the first floor with a hallway surrounding it so that the Altar Room stood alone within the dungeon. The second "floor" had a half floor with a guard railing along it so nobody could walk off the edge. A railed stairway connected the two floors. No other rooms touched the Altar Room walls save for those small rooms that were inside the square space dedicated to the rituals and celebrations of the coven. Offices and workrooms were located under the second floor and had ceilings, the Alter Room did not. It was open to the roof of the barn, and was visible from all angles when looking down from the second floor. The alter room walls were painted matte black and absorbed light. Looking down on it, the openness didn't help.

An ominous space, the dungeon pulled light in and held it captive. Even looking at it from above, it was hard to make out anything moving within the space. Darkness lay over the room like a lid on a bowl. Straining your eyes, you might see silvery flecks moving within it like fish moving under the surface of a peaceful pool of water. Light directed into it from a flashlight didn't illuminate anything within the space, the beam of light just ended when it reached what would have been the ceiling of the room. No light reflected out of it either from the torches inside. It was as if the room was determined to hide its activities from the world. Members went in and back out hurriedly, as if they were wary of the space. Many of them mumbled to themselves about that room - as if evil emanated from it. Nobody lingered there unless they had too.

The Altar Room inside the "dungeon" was circular by design; 4 curving walls rose inside the square space, creating an inner circle where the coven participants gathered. The four curving walls opened once in each direction for an entrance/exit passageway. Each corner of the room between doorways sported leg chains and manacles used when torture was needed for a ritual. These hung from hooks set in the walls (six feet apart and a foot above the floor plus others placed in the walls well above 6 feet high) when not being used. Behind each set of chains was a door that swiveled open to reveal a small room. Two of these rooms were used for storage of coven regalia; the other two rooms were used for imprisoning ritual participants or punishing coven members for various infractions. There were no windows in these rooms, only a narrow opening along the top edge of the outer wall allowed air and slivers of light into the enclosed spaces so the captives were not in total darkness. Now and then.

On the alter room floor, there was a circle painted in gold. Within the circle was a pentagram with symbols representing deities and rituals or festivals celebrated by the coven. Standing on the center of the pentagram was the alter. Made of black marble, it had a solid base with a gold-filled pentagram etched in the surface. During the occasions of blood-letting, the grooves of the pentagram would collect the blood and channel it into containers for coven purposes.

Thankfully, those occasions were few and far between.

Welcome to the first volume of epic poems and short stories. I have compiled my favorites for you here.

Truth is stranger than fiction, and a lot of my poetry reflects real life situations and circumstances. There are poems about work problems, love, circumstances beyond your control, and some that tell a story. You can't make this stuff up, but you can write about it.

I belong to an online writing club, and a some of these were written for that genre, and some were written because they popped into my head and wouldn't go away. It's that inner voice that nags you.

The short stories are some of my favorites I have written over the years, and I really enjoy them, I hope you do too.