To whom it may concern

The halogen lights clicked and buzzed overhead, casting a sickly yellow illumination that blinked on and off in a manner that seemed random at first, but which, Marshall was pretty sure, was actually designed to let all manner of creepy junk from the Things Incorporated's sub-sub-basement sneak up and perform jump scares on him.

The lights came back up and he screamed as a filing cabinet that hadn't been there a moment ago loomed over him, all dull grey metal and temptingly half-open drawers.

"Marshall," said one of the Micheals - the tall one - wearily. "Can you please cut that out?"

Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Marilyn Teller grasped the little cardboard tab between thumb and forefinger, used her free hand to hold the box steady against the cluttered kitchen countertop, and pulled.

Her children, four and seven and already exhibiting the kind of smarts that had her stuck in a perpetual motion machine that swung from pride to exasperation and back again, appeared in the kitchen doorway.

"Your nana's cat knew that trick," she told them, turning. "Open the icebox, pick up a can opener, there she was, begging for treats."

She held out two full-size Icky-Sticky bars.

"Here," she said. "Before the trick-or-treaters arrive."

Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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The dandelion wine tasted like summer, the sort of summer that Sara Sue had read about in those children's books which had left her sitting, sad and angry, in some secluded corner of the Eerie Library, back when she was Sara Bob and her life was her father's house, her brother's demands, and an almost unbearable need to escape from it all.

"Cheers," said the woman from the Ladies Society for the Beautification of Eerie, raising a glass in one white-gloved hand and clinking it against Sara Sue's own.

"Cheers," said Sara Sue, deciding then and there to sign up.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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"So," said Simon, sitting at the Teller's kitchen table with a plate of bacon and eggs arranged to look like a smiley face in front of him. "Do you think the message really did come from future-you, or do you think it was another of your evil Doppelgangers trying to trick you again?"

"I'm not sure," said Marshall, rubbing his eyes and wondering if he could sneak a pot of coffee before his parents caught me. "I asked my Dad if the other me had a goatee, and he just laughed and said not to rush growing up too much."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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"I don't hate Brussels sprouts," said Marshall. "I don't buy them because there's better vegetables out there, but I never hated them."

"Really," said Syndi. "Because I remember seeing them wrapped in napkins and hidden in the trash multiple times when we were kids."

"Okay," said Marshall. "I hated that sometimes they stopped me from leaving the table to do more important things, but it was never personal against them. I just hated what they represented."

Farmer Ephraim Chambers surveyed the full-grown Teller siblings with baffled amusement.

"You can always choose something else," he said, gesturing at his loaded stall.


Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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"Hi boys," said Marilyn, backing out of the kitchen with a tray piled high with the sort of sugary treats all children need when tackling math problems set by a probable sadist and, if the little red horns peaking out from beneath his rapidly receding hairline were any indication, possible literal demon. "I made you a snack."

She set the food down on the little end table beside the mantel, the only space not currently covered by textbooks and graph paper, and smiled at her guests.

"Michael," she greeted one of them. "You're looking very smart today."

The Michael who wore black-rimmed window-pane glasses that had nothing to do with his eyesight smiled politely.

"Thank you, Mrs. Teller."

"Michael," she greeted another. "You're shooting up like corn during a sighting of the Eerie Wolf. I bet the basketball team feels lucky to have you on board!"

The Michael who was once the smallest, but now the tallest, grinned down at her.

"Thank you, Mrs. Teller."

The final Michael, whose edges blurred and ran together like watercolours in the rain, jumped a little as Marilyn addressed him.

"And Michael," she said, reaching out to grasp one translucent hand, squeezing it with her own warm and solid fingers. "I'm so glad you came over today. I heard you were thinking about an exchange trip to Paris, and I have so many old phrase books and bits and pieces that need a new home. I've left them in a box by the stairs - help yourself to whatever looks useful."

The final Michael's lips moved soundlessly for a moment, but eventually he managed to scratch out, "Thank you, Mrs. Teller."

"I'll leave you boys in peace now," she said, pausing to press a kiss into Marshall's hair. "Let me know if you need anything."


Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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"It was worth a try," Marshall consoled his most trusted associate, as they wrapped the irreparably tainted kitchen table in biohazard tape and sat down to wait for the disposal team.

"I just kept thinking about that picnic your dad took us to," said Simon. "Watching it wander through all the trifles and jellies and those weird things in aspic that the Foreverware ladies made. Like it was looking for something. Looking for more of it's own kind."

"I was really hoping Syndi would take a bite of it," Marshall said, wistfully. "It would never work, though. She hates trifle."

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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"I've been thinking about it," said Syndi, letting herself into Marshall's room uninvited and taking up space on his bed. "I don't think the new guy at Dad's office is a Headless Horseman at all."

"Really," said Marshall, in a tone intended to indicate that, since he was the expert on weird and Syndi was the expert on nothing at all that he could see, her opinion didn't matter unless she agreed with him.

"Yup," said Syndi, laying back and staring at a bedroom ceiling covered in Day-Glo stars. "I think he's afraid of starting a sex riot if he lets loose. I bet he's got an eight-pack under all those work shirts, and everywhere he goes, people fall in love with him and hound him until he has to pack up and move on. The only way he can protect himself and the people around him is by remaining buttoned up at all times."

She turned to look at her brother.

"That's my theory," she said.

"Sex riots," said Marshall flatly. "From some guy our dad's age."

"That's a disguise," said Syndi. "Like the hair-loss and bifocals."

She snickered, and Marshall scowled in realisation.

"Get out of my room."

Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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The Teller siblings stood side by side in their parent's darkened living room, a thin lace curtain pulled across the window they stared out from. In the road beyond, a single trash can lay on it's side, the remains of a Saturday night takeaway spilling onto the black asphalt.

Syndi's brow furrowed with concentration as the metal can began to shift back and forth, slowly picking up momentum as it rolled towards the nearest streetlight. Behind it, a gangling figure coated in gingery fur followed, drawn by the scent of leftover chow mein.

Marshall Teller raised his camera, and waited.

Ongoing Verse: Weather

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Simon reached for the untidy pile of takeout menus shoved into one of the many unused alcoves in the Teller kitchen's built-in wine rack, pulled them out, and froze.

"Mars," he said, speaking slowly and carefully as he set the glossy trifolds aside and reached into an adjacent dark recess.

"Yeah?"

Simon pulled out something clunky, black, and decorated with large red buttons designed to track well on a small 90s television.

"Isn't this your dad's universal tuner gizmo?"

Marshall froze, all the colour draining from his face.

"I just started a war with the Bureau for that," he whispered.

Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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The blender whirred, and what had been a pint of chocolate fudge ice cream and the world's tiniest handful of frozen strawberries jumped and spun and gradually turned a lighter shade of brown as Marshall slowly added the milk.

On the carton, a little girl with heavy eye makeup and a tall Elvira-style wig waved frantically, but by now ignoring the Dairy's lost children had become second nature.

The blender abruptly changed pitch, and Marshall cursed, realising he'd knocked the settings onto "frappe". The milkshake vanished, the mix replaced by a frothing black hole that clawed at the jug's edges.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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The shadow people were gathering, tall and thin and flickering dark and dull against the merciless and hungry blue of an August afternoon. They crowded the sidewalks, pressed against the windows of local businesses, and walked across perfectly manicured lawns without leaving a single mark.

Syndi Teller, wrestling with a parasol that sagged stubbornly at half-mast, watched the slowly-moving ribbon of gloom as it streamed past her parent's sun-drenched front yard.

"Hey," she called. "Hey, weird shadow people."

One or two of them stopped and, as best she could tell, turned to face her.

Syndi grinned.

"Want to hang out?"

Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Marilyn Teller added a single finishing touch, then stood back to admire her creation. At her back, her husband collected various whisks and bowls and stirring implements of varying sizes and levels of complexity, and ferried them to the sink.

Marilyn cocked her head, eyes narrowing critically as her gaze moved from the thing that sat tall on her mother's finished green glass serving plate, to the book open on the counter beside it.

"What do you think?" she asked Edgar, who left the washing up to stand beside her.

"Its beautiful, honey," he said. "The best Jackalope cake ever."

Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Marshall eased the crisper drawer open, holding his breath behind clenched teeth and tensing his muscles in case he needed to make a quick getaway from some long-rotted tomatoes bent on avenging their wasted existence. The sight of unblemished off-white plastic, a little grimy around the edges but otherwise devoid of threatening plant life, was almost a disappointment.

His mother appeared at his shoulder, clicking her tongue in maternal disapproval.

"Sweetheart," she said. "You've got no fruit or veggies in at all?"

"I've not had a chance to go grocery shopping lately," he offered weakly.

Marilyn reached for her purse.


Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Marshall and Simon watched as the two men from the Eerie Art Gallery, Performance Space and Recycling Centre lashed what was left of the crumpled four-door sedan onto their flatbed. With the wreck successfully extracted from the grassy slopes that marked one of Wolf Mountain's more forgiving faces, the boys could see the deep gouge carved by the vehicles' passage where it had gone over the railings.

Simon whistled.

"Mars, check it out," he said. "Looks like there really is a phantom hitchhiker haunting this stretch of road. Looks like Syndi won't be losing her driving privileges after all."

Marshall rummaged in his backpack until he found a cheap disposable camera - no way he was wasting expensive Polaroid film trying to get his idiot sister out of trouble - and snapped a few photos showing a set of glowing ecoplastic footprints in the curve of the road just ahead of where the driver lost control.

"I wonder why the ghost's never appeared to us," he mused, prompting a strange look from his most trusted associate.

"She probably doesn't want to hitch a ride on our handlebars," he said.

Marshall sighed.

"True," he said. "I guess bikes aren't that great for haunting."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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It was raining, the heavy pounding rain where the water falls in great splattering gobs of moisture and the sky is slate-grey and the street lights come on at noon and still struggle to keep the dark at bay.

Marshall Teller looked through the streaming kitchen window at the half-drowned back yard beyond, and grinned. There was a box and a half of brownie mix at the back of the cupboard, a nearly-full jar of peanut butter in the refrigerator, and a stack of rented horror movies in the living room, which is where they would stay since his father would almost certainly not want to return them to Eerie Video in this weather.

He crept up the stairs, careful not to make any undue noise that might stir his parents or his sister, and retrieved his walkie-talkie from beneath a pile of discarded bedclothes.

"Simon," he whisper-hissed, pressing hard on the big red "talk" button. "You awake? Over."

A burble of static on the other end confirmed that, yes, Simon was awake, though perhaps not fully if the slightly muffled response was any indication.

"Come 'round the back," said Marshall. "Everyone's asleep, we can call dibs on the TV."

Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Smooth jazz was playing from the loudspeakers mounted atop tall poles all across Eerie, and in the climate-controlled and lightning-proof vault beneath WERD-TV, Weatherman Wally was panicking.

"Are you sure you didn't summon something?" he asked, for at least the third time since she'd arrived.

Syndi Teller smoothed down the puffy blue-grey skirts of her Miss Tornado Day outfit, hastily retrieved from the back of her closet when the summons came.

"No," she said, taking a deep breath that raised tiny zephyrs even in the sealed room. "I don't even like jazz. Whatever's haunting the warning sirens, it isn't me."

Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Ongoing Verse: Weather

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The day was bright and sunny, and a stiff breeze rattled the tree branches and disturbed their new coats of pale green leaves. It was the perfect day for hanging laundry and already a dozen yards bloomed with detergent-scented bedsheet ghosts.

One of these was trying to steal from the Teller's washing line, fuzzy patches of distorted air marking the space where the spirit had yet to successfully clothe itself.

"Not that one," said Marshall, gripping the corner of his bright blue New York Giants duvet cover and glaring. "Take Syndi's."

The ghost glanced at the proffered fabric and shivered.

Ongoing Verse: Euclid

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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"How many?" Marshall asked, and braced himself.

"Two," said Simon, and it wasn't great, but it was better than Mars had expected. He allowed himself a short sigh of relief, and felt his shoulders, hunched with tension, relax marginally.

"Okay," he said, already uncoiling a length of iron chain and laying it across the fairy ring like a makeshift bridge. "We can work with that. Put the rest back and come out of the circle."

Simon made a face. It was the sort of face Harley made a lot, Marshall himself only marginally less so, and Syndi occasionally, but memorably.

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Ongoing Verse: Holmes Brothers

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For a single moment, Chisel gave serious thought to the prospect of calling in one of the many Garbage Men currently roaming the empty lot on which his temporary office was situated, the better to pack Eerie's premier weirdness investigation team off to the big landfill at the end of time.

He suppressed the urge. They really did do good work, and besides, Eddie Teller was very nearly a friend. Sort of. Close enough that banishing his son to an uninhabited curve of the universal Mobius Strip would make things awkward, anyway.

He tried a different tack. Money usually worked.

Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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It's not his fault, not really, Marshall thinks, as Things Incorporated's latest foray into artificial intelligence spits out a seemingly endless scroll of ones and zeroes that resembles nothing so much as tears pouring down a square and backlit face.

The Michaels glance at each other, then turn as one to stare at him.

"Mars," says the Michael-who-once-was-small, "Did we just give your dad's program a nervous breakdown?"

Marshall swallows. Their ubiquity aside, he has nothing against the Michaels, but they aren't exactly trusted associates.

"Probably just a short," he says, knowing that's what his dad will say. "Don't worry."

Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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The backpack at her feet is sturdy, durable nylon in a no-nonsense dark blue that does not easily show stains or wear.

It's full of all the things a Lady might need; dry socks, wet wipes, a crochet hook threaded with Creten twine that will allow the user to navigate her way out of any labyrinth.

Syndi gestures to it, her head tilted at an interrogatory angle. It's a polite fiction, that she's asking permission, and one Miss Eerie grants with a gracious wave of one lustrous hand.

Syndi picks it up, holds it on her lap. Grips her knife.

Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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The bouncy castle had thirteen turrets, an entrance shaped like the gaping mouth of a leering vampire complete with long and inflatable fangs, and a red and black colour scheme that made Marshall think that maybe Tod McNulty wasn't the only goth kid in Eerie after all.

"Where did you get this?" he asked his father.

Edgar glanced up at it, his expression turning from beaming to concerned as he took in the giant rubbery visage now occupying most of his front yard.

"Do you think it might be too scary?" he said. "We wanted to make Simon's tenth birthday special, and your mother and I know how much you boys love old horror movies, but..."

Marshall shook his head.

"Trust me, Dad," he said. "He's going to love it. It's just that I know another guy from school who's probably going to want the bounce-house company's details after this."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Syndi waved two fingers and the doors closed behind the transdimensional beauty queen. The rest of her Ladies would be here any moment, and she didn't want them caught in the crossfire.

For a moment, the faintest hint of a smile twisted the corners of Miss Eerie's impeccably-lined lips. In the branching mirrors that were still spreading across the tired paint of the little meeting room, her smiles were full of broken glass and sharp and perfect teeth.

Syndi pulled out two flourescent-orange bucket chairs, sent one sliding towards her visitor.

"I imagine you've come here to discuss those crystals."

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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When she'd first arrived at the small community centre, getting there a few minutes early in order to set out the chairs and prepare tea and coffee for the rest of the Ladies, the floor had been covered in a hard-wearing linoleum that was never-the-less beginning to show signs of it's age.

Now, as Syndi watched with growing apprehension, it turned to a hundred thousand fractured mirrors, the broken glass spreading out from the heavy double doors that were slowly swinging open.

She stepped away from the tea urn, inhaling deeply and standing straight-backed with shoulders squared and jaw set.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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