Midnight Storm Moonless Sky, Excerpts, Audio, and Art
Excerpt from Alex Soop's Preface
Indigenous storytelling goes back at least a millennium. Quite often myths and legends were concocted to scare the wits out of the kids so they wouldn’t stray away from the camp at night and encounter the real horrors of life. Imagine the horror of a bear attack, or a wild pack of hungry wolves, or even big wildcats.
But horror isn’t just the world of paranormal ghosts and demons. To many others, horror may bring about a whole different meaning in life. Everyday situations can be anyone’s horror story—real-life scenarios like a lone woman being stalked through a darkened back alley; a merciless case of road rage gone terribly wrong; worrying about a teenage daughter while she’s out on her first date; getting lost while out on a hike, and so on. Anything can happen in everyday life, and quite often they can be a whole new-fangled tale of horror on their own. So, in the following pages, I have concocted my own scenarios and eerie tales which I hope will keep you up at night. Enjoy, my loyal readers. — Alex Soop 2022
Listen to a Sample from the Audiobook
Voices, Julian Hobson and Trent Agecoutay
Illustrations by Patricia Soop and Alex Soop | Download the pdf (soon)
Check out Pictures from the Book Launch!
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Chapter Excerpt
“Sorry, Mr. Injun, but no can do. I can only offer ya’s the four strips of smoked moose meat for your two beaver pelts.”
“My name is Jackson, not Injun,” declared the man standing before the fur trader.
The trader shrugged. “Whatever ya say. My offer’s the same. You can take it or leave it.”
As Jackson contemplated this offer, he noticed the blank, staring gaze of a wolf head hanging on the wall behind the merchant counter. The wolf’s energy was frozen in a state of defence, an aggressive snarl revealing snow-white teeth which gleamed in the dim, fire-lit room.
“That’s the absolute best you can do?” he asked without averting his mesmerized gaze from the wolf’s glassy stare.
The trader shrugged as he made his lame excuse. “It’s been real bad for us these past few months. I’ll tell you that much. The game just ain’t comin’ along here like they used to do.”
Jackson studied the trader and his long-arched, hawk nose that protruded beneath his thin wireframe spectacles. His bushy handlebar mustache brushed over the top of brown, tobacco-dripping lips. A recent haircut was the only decent attribute to the man’s otherwise disheveled appearance.
“Okay then,” Jackson huffed. “I guess we will have to take it.” He whirled around and summoned his son, Jed, who was busy wandering around the small cabin, gazing in awe at the trophy kills of stuffed animals and head pieces hanging on the walls.
“Son, come, and bring the beaver pelts.”
Jed scurried over and looked up at his father with big, round eyes. He handed over the buckskin pack he had slung over his slender shoulders. Jackson grasped the bag with both hands and overturned it, spilling out the contents: two freshly cleaned beaver pelts.
The fur trader’s eyes lit up at the sight of the prized beaver skins with their soft auburn fur. He flashed a broken smile of half-rotted teeth, browned from years of neglect and chewing tobacco. “Damn, them is some hella good lookin’ furs. I reckon ya just got ’em cleaned didja?” Jackson nodded half-heartedly. It was an inequitable exchange but his family needed food. The long winter at hand had no end in sight.
Snatching the beaver pelts for a closer examination, the fur trader tossed them in a darkened corner behind the exchange counter. “I’ll just be a quick moment. You two gentlemen jus’ sit tight now. Hell, y’oughta have a look around.” The man looked down and winked at Jed before turning to exit the room. He spewed a sickly fluid into a rusted spittoon at the foot of the counter and vanished into the back room through a makeshift door of an unknown, tattered fabric.
“Pa, we aren’t trading two whole pelts for but only four strips of meat, are we?” Jed asked in Anishinaabe.
Jackson’s attention was back on the wolf head hanging on the wall behind the counter. A wolf on a wall is a tragic insult to its spirit, he thought to himself. His train of thought sunk deeply in the blank, dead gaze of this grey and white wolf, its glossy marble eyes reflecting the dancing red from the room’s corner fireplace. He was reminded of a similar winter’s night when he’d been much younger and had crossed paths with such a wolf as this—a momentous turning point in his life. He had gone adrift from his cousin while they were out on their first solo hunting voyage. They were twelve years old, and Jackson’s own papa, Jed’s granddad, had felt it was time for he and his cousin to learn to hunt on their own.