Dear Reader…
Happy August and welcome back to The Weekly, your overview of all things Talebones!
We’ve got some pretty cool stuff on the horizon, so let’s get started…
August Announcements
Can you believe it’s already August??
This is the final month for our Summer Season here on Talebones, and we’re going out with a bang!
First, our August Short Tale, called The Gospel of Agnes Candle, will be heading to your inboxes this week! In this follow-up to The Revelation of Scott Candle, a pastor’s wife goes on a dangerous search. Stay tuned for an excerpt at the end of this missive!
And second, next week (Aug 6-12th) is a pretty special one for the citizens of Ferris Island: it’s Ferris Island Founder’s Week! Since none of us has the time to take a physical trip over there and experience the week-long festivities for ourselves, look out for some bonus content here throughout the week made in collaboration with the good folks at the Ferris Island tourism office! I heard they’re trying to bring the island’s PR into the modern age, finding new ways to teach the island’s history. We’ll see how that goes…
Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss a single thing!
Round-Up!
In case you missed it last week…
The Orchard Hounds - in this piece of flash fiction, a young woman attempts a most unusual rescue. (This story is also eligible for the Lunar Awards!)
Mrs. Hatch Explains - Issue Eight of our serial novella, Ivy & Ixos! In this issue, Ivy finds safety and answers to some of her burning questions…but knowing might be worse than leaving the mysteries unanswered.
Excerpt - “The Gospel of Agnes Candle”
In the giant parking lot of Emmaus Road Church’s Ballard location, Agnes Candle walked alone to her car in the gathering dark of a summer Sunday night.
All four services had finally finished for the day, and Agnes was exhausted. All day she had been on her usual weekly hamster-wheel of running the church’s espresso stand, volunteering in children’s ministry, and answering questions at the information desk. But this moment, this time on a Sunday night was the worst of it. The quiet after it was all over was worse than the overstimulation of the music, the same sermon four times with the same canned laugh-points, the constant stream of sorrowful faces, the hands outstretched, the offered hugs.
Oh, Agnes. How are you holding up?
Ten months. For ten months she had been asked the same damn question every week. And her answer never changed, nor did her pasted-on smile:
I’m doing okay. God is good.
Automatic. Safe. The kind of answer that lets the other person know that they can walk away without guilt. They asked. They received an answer.
Agnes reached her car and unlocked it, climbed inside, locked the door behind her, and sat for a while in the driver’s seat, staring ahead at the rhododendron bushes planted by the landscapers in the medians of the parking lot, drenched in sickly orange light from the streetlights. In this urban environment, shaded out by the towering condos all around the church, the little shrubs were not thriving.
Agnes twirled her wedding ring around and around on her finger. She didn’t want to go home. She wasn’t sure she could face the quiet.
But the city night was moving on without her, the huge square church building closed and locked with only the janitorial staff still inside sweeping up the empty sugar packets and the plastic communion cups and the paper bulletins featuring the bored, slightly heretical doodles of college students attending church as a matter of habit rather than faith.
Sighing, Agnes started the car and headed home.
*******
It was nearly 11pm when Agnes finally arrived home to her condo on the hill in Magnolia, changed out of her church clothes and into her comfies, and sat down at her laptop with a glass of wine. This ritual had taken on its own life over the past months, to the point where it was more muscle memory than anything else.
Agnes clicked on the tab marked Port Salish Chronicle Online and refreshed the page, sipping her wine.
The Chronicle was the hometown newspaper for Ferris Island, a place she had never even heard of a year ago. But now, Agnes pored over the mundane little local news stories. The high school’s sports victories from the past schoolyear, a mayoral election coming up, construction updates, grand openings of stores, a handful of obituaries.
Agnes scrolled and sipped, only partially paying attention, scanning the stories.
Suddenly, a headline near the bottom of the page caught her eye:
LAKE DAMASCUS FARMERS REPORT MISSING LIVESTOCK
That name, that place: Lake Damascus. It struck a memory, something white-hot and still painful. A phone call early one Monday morning, a man on the other end of the line introducing himself as a police officer from Ferris Island. A detective.
Mrs. Candle, your husband has been reported missing…
And the tumble of it all, after that. The noise. The information she could be given, the stuff they were keeping close to the chest. It was all a mess.
Scott Candle, pastor of Seattle megachurch Emmaus Road, missing.
No one could explain to her what had happened. Scott had been on a Northwest-wide book tour, and tiny Ferris Island was only one place of many he was meant to visit. Just one day to preach at a little church there, sell and sign his new book, and head on his way. But that’s not what happened.
Andy, her husband’s personal assistant, had given a bizarre story to the police about a wild animal attack before he, too, went off the radar. The pastor of the church where Scott had visited said something about Scott acting erratic before he disappeared. But there were no answers, nothing definitive.
Lake Damascus. That was the name of the little church where he was last seen: Lake Damascus Community Church.
Agnes skimmed through the article, wine forgotten beside her elbow. The story was fairly straightforward: farmers in the area around the lake had experienced sheep, goats, chickens, and other livestock vanishing into thin air. As there are no large natural predators on Ferris Island—no bears, wolves, or cougars—theories abounded as to what could be the culprit, including human thieves.
But there was a tiny detail near the bottom of the article, buried as though the reporter had been given strict instructions to keep it quiet, that made Agnes sit up and take notice.
One farmer reported seeing a strange, beastly animal in the woods in the days prior to his goats being snatched.
Agnes scrolled back up to find the reporter’s byline: Caroline Phelan, along with her Chronicle email address.
Before she could convince herself out of it, Agnes opened up her email, addressed it to the reporter, and wrote:
Dear Caroline Phelan,
My name is Agnes Candle. My husband disappeared on Ferris Island several months ago, and no one can tell me what happened. I saw your recent piece on the livestock disappearances in Lake Damascus and I would love to talk to you, if you have the time. Please call me at your earliest convenience. All I want is answers.
Agnes Candle
Agnes included her cell number under her name and then, satisfied, she left the rest of the wine untouched and went to bed.
I'm going to go for a naturewalk in a forest near my neighbourhood!
I’m going blueberry picking and then hitting up a local brewery! 🫐 🍻