With ravens passing the.., p.1
With Ravens Passing the Moon, page 1
Paul John Lyon is the author of THE BENNINGTON BOY and FLOWERS OF THE MOON, amongst others.
He lives in the north of England.
Find more of his stories at herebeshadows.com
With Ravens Passing The Moon Copyright © 2025 by Paul John Lyon. All Rights Reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
The End
Timekeeping
The Unremarkable Death Of A Terrifying Man
The Inheritance
Sunrise At The Sunset
The Time And The Place
The Complaint
dEar
The Mexicans Have Complained Quite Strongly About The Noise
A Failure Of The Light
Stella Is Not Here
A Red Unbroken Mile
With Ravens Passing The Moon
Landmarks
Title Page
Cover
To the dearly departed.
"The meaning of life is that it stops"
FRANZ KAFKA
The End
We were gathered there to hear the Last Will and Testament of Arthur Parris, aka Robert Mort, aka P.J. Lowe, aka Max Faust, aka Sam Roskoe, aka so many other aliases and nom de plumes his solicitor didn’t even begin to name them.
“Shall we proceed?” He said, and when nobody disagreed, he began the reading. “I, Arthur Parris, being of sound mind and body, do solemnly attest to this being my Last Will and Testament.”
The body was sound, I’d agree, but Arthur’s mind was a mess. No surprise for a man who’d spent twenty out of every twenty-four hours in the company of a chattering typewriter for the last forty years.
“To Agatha, you murderous hack, I leave an unsolvable mystery with a hundred red herrings, ten dozen poisons, fifteen smoking guns and not a butler in sight.” The solicitor waved for his tall assistant, who handed a bow-tied manuscript to the prim and proper woman on my right.
Agatha pinched her face over pince-nez glasses. “The rotten bastard,” she said, under her breath, but her fingers had already started to rifle through the pages.
“To Louis, you old leather-faced cow-poke, I leave a town with no horses, a gunslinger with no bullets, and a thousand good and alive Indians to whoop and holler. Yippee-key-aye.”
Another manuscript, this time twice the size as the last, was handed over to a big, red-faced man, who hid his anger in the shade of a ten-gallon hat.
“To Isaac, a slender poem I leave for thee, not a rocket nor robot in sight. No faraway planets. No big ideas. A purple flower grows in a garden somewhere, and it is beautiful. I hope you choke on its perfume.”
The assistant dropped a single page into Isaac’s broad lap. It sat there untouched like a sleeping dog.
“Finally, to my young and oh so earnest assistant, Jonathan, I leave you a wish and a commandment. I leave you the greatest gift of all. Thank me later. The end.”
“The end?” Agatha, then Louis, then Isaac asked in turn.
“That’s what’s written here,” the solicitor said. “I can’t begin to tell you why. But it’s here in black and white.”
He held up the will for all to see. And there it was, in block capitals at the foot of the document. THE END. As though Arthur Parris’ was finishing off a story, not a life.
“The old fool,” Louis said.
“On his deathbed and still writing. You have to admire his tenacity, I suppose,” Agatha said.
“Or decry his stubbornness,” Isaac added.
I wasn’t concerned with the strange flourish in his will, only what had preceded those words: I leave you the greatest gift of all. Thank me later.
Thank him later? How could you thank the dead and buried?
I soon found out.
The solicitor waved for his assistant to hand over an envelope.
And in that envelope, a slip of paper.
And on that slip of paper, the words: GO TO MY CRYPT AT MIDNIGHT. START UP THE MACHINE.
* * *
A spotlight moon shined on Arthur Parris’ crypt. I followed the light down to where his coffin rested on a plinth.
“Evening, Arthur,” I said, patting the top. “I see you’re resting.”
Arthur didn’t answer, and I hadn’t expected much conversation from a corpse. Still, I continued speaking.
“Where’s this machine of yours, then?”
He didn’t—he couldn’t answer, so I gave the crypt the once over, searching for the obvious, and when I found nothing, I searched a little more.
My hands slid over the smooth drawers set into the wall, beyond which generations of Parris’ slept that long and never-waking sleep, but nothing opened to my touch.
I performed a clumsy tap dance across the marbled floors, listening for the hollow echo of a room beneath, but the floor was solid.
Lastly, I searched the ceiling, hoping to find a painted map that would hint at the machine’s location.
The ceiling, like the floor, was smooth and without a clue.
“So, Arthur, what is this?” I asked his coffin. “A practical joke?”
He’d liked to pull pranks. His favourite was hiding beneath his desk, then popping out and shouting, ‘Surprise!’ as I entered. Dead, he wasn’t shouting anything.
I knocked on the coffin lid just in case. “Hello? Anybody home?”
The dead couldn’t answer, I knew that, but they could leave instructions. I noticed then the writing on a bronze plaque set into the top of the coffin:WIND ME UP.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked, and the crypt returned my words to me.
How did you wind up a dead man, anyhow? Was there a hole in the coffin and a key that fit? Where would that key be?
I knew the answer, and I didn’t like it much.
“Arthur, you old weirdo,” I said, wincing at what I’d have to do next.
On display at the funeral parlour, they’d done a good job of making Arthur’s body more presentable than when he’d been alive. They’d dressed him in a neat black suit and combed the bird’s nest out of his hair. The eager undertaker had painted colour onto Arthur’s cheeks that he’d never possessed and scrubbed the typewriter ink from beneath his nails.
Still, I didn’t relish opening the coffin.
“You’re going to make me do this, aren’t you?” I said.
If Arthur had something to tell me from beyond the grave, he wasn’t speaking just then.
“Okay, have it your way.”
I slid my fingers under the coffin lid, lifted, then pulled, my head turned away throughout.
The smell of lavender and bleach wafted into my nostrils. Death’s scent was flowers and cleaning products.
“Now, where’s this key of yours?” I asked, before I looked, and then looking, another question quickly followed. “What?”
Arthur Prentiss’ body hadn’t changed since the funeral parlour, but now he wasn’t alone in the coffin. His typewriter, a distinctive teal Smith Corona Zephyr II, with its alphabet worn away over time, sat on his stomach, and Arthur’s pale dead fingers rested on the home row.
The roller held a single sheet of paper, and a new instruction: The key is under the typewriter.
I found the key, then the lock in the side of the typewriter, just below the return carriage.
I turned the key in the lock.
I waited.
I expected a loud bang. Another prank to make me jump, but the typewriter slowly came to life with a whir and a click.
The keys started to move. They carried Arthur’s fingers along for the ride.
I took a step back, wondering how much was puppetry, and hoping none of it was reanimation.
Words appeared on the paper.
It’s been lonely in here, Jonathan. I’m glad to finally have some company.
* * *
The dead didn’t talk, except on the pages of Arthur Prentiss’ books. They certainly didn’t type, yet here was a dead man doing just that.
Aren’t you going to ask me what’s happening, Jonathan?
“I know what’s happening. This is a prank,” I said, trying to convince myself.
Far from it.
“It must be. There’s an elaborate machine built into the coffin that’s responding to my words. That’s how this works.” I walked a circle, twice, around the coffin searching for cogs and gears, but found none.
This is not a prank. Believe me.
“Then what is it? What are…you? A ghost?”
Something like that.
“Oh,” I said, still not understanding.
I didn’t think you were this incurious, Jonathan. Don’t you want to ask me why, or how all this came to pass?
“Why?” I said.
To continue.
“Continue what?”
Telling stories.
I repeated my earlier curiosity. “Why?”
I still have stories to tell. Why should I let a little thing like death get in the way?
I said the obvious then, but it didn’t sound so obvious spoken out loud in a crypt after midnight. “But you are dead, Arthur. Aren’t you?”
A mere formality if you cross the palm of the right person with silver, and they say the right words under the right moon.
< br /> “What’s that supposed to mean?”
The dead man typed, but the paper had reached its end. The keys chattered out an answer, but it was ink on ink.
“We’ve run out of paper, Arthur,” I said, feeling foolish for talking to a dead man.
The keys chattered on, so I grabbed the sheet, yanked it out and fed it in backwards to trap the last part of a sentence.
…under my head.
Carefully, I lifted Arthur’s head to find his pillow wasn’t a pillow at all, but a ream of paper.
I had my relatives removed, and in each tomb lies a fresh white corpse of paper. You’ll buy more as we go on, I’m sure, but for now, we’re fully stocked.
“I will?” I said, even as I pulled the wrapping off the ream and stacked it neatly beside the typewriter.
You will. And I’ll gift you something special in return for your help.
“What?”
What every writer wants.
Fame? Money? A good agent?
“What’s that?” I asked, leaning into the corpse.
The keys chattered.
The secret to a good story.
Five years I’d been a scavenger at Arthur Prentiss’ typewriter, picking up scraps of words here and there to feed my ambition, but always going hungry in the end.
How could I pass up such an offer now, even if it was from a corpse?
“Really?” I asked. “How?”
Simple. I write the stories, and you’ll carry them out into the world. For your troubles, you’ll learn my secret along the way. No longer my assistant, Jonathan, but my student.
I wondered then how long a dead man could type without losing mobility? What was the shelf life of a reanimated corpse? How long could a madness last?
Long enough, I thought, to learn a secret.
“Okay,” I said.
The dead man typed.
Let’s begin.
* * *
Most midnights I fed Arthur’s Zephyr II a fresh ream of paper. And in return, the dead man would feed me new words.
Each night a new a new story, a new chapter. A novel in that first month, two novellas, and six stories. And my name sat beneath each, haunting the by-line.
But it didn’t matter. The secret Arthur had promised was no closer to me than in the five years I’d worked as his assistant. At home, my own pages remained as blank as my mind.
Arthur sensed my mood one night in the second month.
What’s the problem?
“Nothing,” I said.
Something.
“A bit tired, that’s all,” I told the dead man.
Of me?
Yes, Arthur, I wanted to say. I spend my days in the company of the blank page, and my nights watching your corpse type. I want neither now.
“No,” I said.
Our arrangement is still intact, isn’t it?
It was. But already I’d broken the back of it. Instead of seeking publication using my name and his words, I’d kept his stories crated at home.
“Our arrangement is still intact, but…”
Where there’s a but, there’s an ‘and’, always.
“What?”
ButI can’t do this any longer,andI’m going to stop.
“No, I didn’t mean—”
ButI’m tired of this,andI think it’s time we quit.
“I didn’t say—”
ButI’ve had enough of you, Arthur,andit’s time we ended this arrangement.
It was hard to argue with a dead man. Harder to argue with words on a page. His fingers, now little more than white pegs, moved just as quickly across the keys as they had when his corpse was fresh.
“I’m worried, that’s all,” I said.
About what?
That I’ll never put a word of my own down on a page for the rest of my life. That your secret is just a lot of hot air.
“About someone finding out.”
Who?
“A critic, a fan. Someone who knows your work. They’ll know it isn’t my writing.”
Has anybody raised a suspicion so far?
Nobody could, I thought, with the pages locked away.
“No,” I said.
Forget it, then.
I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. It took me another week, but I knew then, with a clarity I hadn’t possessed in months, that I had to end my job as Arthur Prentiss’ assistant.
“It’s over, Arthur,” I said.
What is?
“This madness. I can’t go on.”
His dead fingers hit the keys hard enough to shake off a few flakes of stubborn skin.
And there’s the ‘and’ and the ‘but’ I knew was coming. You must carry on, Jonathan. You made a promise.
“I can’t anymore.”
You will, and you must.
I rose from the stool beside the coffin.
“It’s over. I’m sorry, Arthur.”
I took a few steps, and the keys rattled enough for me to turn and see what Arthur Prentiss had written.
It’s only just begun.
As I turned again to walk away, I felt a chill in the air and the space between my ears buzz like a bee trapped behind window blinds.
I clapped both hands to my ears, blinked, but it only grew louder.
I was waiting for a more opportune time to do this. I suppose that time is now, Jonathan. Now we’ll work together properly. As one.
The typewriter had grown silent, but now Arthur’s voice buzzed in my head.
“No,” I said.
It’s already done.
I shook my head.
If you won’t help me of your free will, Jonathan, I’m afraid we’ll have to do it the hard way.
I spun a circle, and Arthur pulled on the puppet strings within me.
Don’t fight this.
I whirled around, my hands no longer mine, my fingers twitching with new hidden pulses.
“Stop!”
Calm yourself, Jonathan. You should be proud. We’ll write a masterpiece together. Leave a legacy. Don’t resist greatness.
The pull was too strong. I watched as my hands found the typewriter. I observed myself setting up a desk from the coffin lid and plinth. He pulled, I pushed. He pushed, I pulled. But I couldn’t stop what was happening.
Sit.
I sat.
Feed.
I fed a clean white sheet into the typewriter.
Write.
My fingers stiffly struck keys. I looked down at words that were not mine; a title torn from me:MUST ALL ALIKE DECAY?
A good title, yes?
“What is it?”
A new story, of course. The first of many we’ll write together. Semi-autobiographical. It’s the tale of a dead writer who possesses the body of his earnest assistant.
I saw nothing in my head. No pictures. No words. Whatever he planned to write; I was a silent partner.
My stiff little fingers started to type again and stopped after only two letters:
By
By?
What name shall we use? Yours or mine? I think mine, from now on. Seeing as I’m the one in the driver’s seat now.
My fingers spidered across the keys and spun the black web of Arthur Prentiss’ name.
“No,” I said.
You’ll become used to it. In time. As will the fans. We’ll tell them you found a hidden stash of my manuscripts. Hundreds of them. Masterpieces, all.
Never! Once I leave here, I won’t ever come back, I thought.
You will. You’ll carry me with you wherever you go. I’ll be your muse, even when my own body rots to nothing. Think of that, Jonathan. Together. Forever.
It was then I realized what Arthur Prentiss had meant to do since the beginning. I wasn’t to be the face of his writing, I was to be the body, the machine which his ghost would pilot long after his corpse had rotted away.
“No,” I managed to say, but Prentiss had my hands and started to type.
Jonathan thought he was free, but the spirit who haunted his head did not agree.
“No.”
A good first line, I think you’ll find. There’s enough mystery there to keep the reader intrigued and wanting to know more. See, Jonathan? As I promised, you’re already learning the secret. Here begins the first lesson: leave them wanting more, always.
I shook as I fought his control. I managed to lift one hand and crab my fingers over the paper in the machine.
“Sod your lessons!”
How ungrateful of you, Jonathan. Here I am, gifting you the wisdom of my years and you throw it right back in my face.
