Where’s Mummy?

 

by Harris Coverley

 

       He was about sixty, and a rough sixty at that. He just started rambling it out when I was packing up my spade and whatnot.

       “Yeh, ‘bout five years back. Was our cat and mutt from next door. Both dead now. But the priest came ‘round one day, uninvited, parish church y’know, came in ‘ere, and the dog and the cat were sat there, ‘bout five feet apart, and, I swear, he said: Let these two be in union! And he left, just like that.”

      “Mmm.” I wrapped a spanner with its mates.

      “Then, ‘bout ten weeks after, cat gave birth. Just the one. And it was the oddest thing: it was like a cat, but a dog.”

      “Oh yeah, really?”

      “Like, a halfway. This and that. Like that priest had set somethin’ in motion, somethin’ weird.”

      “Hmmm.”

      “Wanna see it?”

      He nodded to the shed.

       “Lives in there. Never comes out, much.”

       He creaked the door and I leant in. It smelled grim. I could see it at the back, a short crippled shadow in the gloom, crowned by two eyes, one green, one brown. I heard a hissing breath.

       I said I had to get going, and I grabbed the last of my stuff and walked.

       He called after me, but I didn’t hear it.

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Along with previously in Black Petals, Harris Coverley has had more than seventy short stories published across dozens of periodicals, including Curiosities, Hypnos, Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine, and Rivanna Review. A former Rhysling nominee, he has also had over two hundred poems published in journals around the world. He lives in Manchester, England.

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J. Elliott is an author and artist living in a small patch of old, rural Florida. Think Spanish moss, live oak trees, snakes, armadillos, mosquitoes. She has published (and illustrated) three collections of ghost stories and three books in a funny, cozy series. She also penned a ghost story novel, Jiko Bukken, set in Kyoto, Japan in the winter of '92-'93. Available in  Paperback and eBook on Amazon.