In the last post: Morris sets off to look for magic toadstools. Alf sees his fright and rubs his hands with glee...

Dear friends, on Tuesdays and Saturdays I'm blogging nibble-sized chunks of new ‘Life in the Clouds’ stories. You can check in regularly and read them free, or wait to buy the whole story when published. Rather than miss an instalment, please subscribe and I’ll give you a nudge as they come out.

---

​Eerie Eve ® James Field. Part 12

Alf followed Morris at a safe distance and glanced at his watch: five minutes to midnight. The moon had risen high and shone with an uncanny brightness. He watched as Morris shook the tension from his shoulders, shamble deeper into the trees, and clamber to the top of Trollop Knoll.

Then, at precisely midnight, around Morris’s feet, the moss-covered ground began to shift and rustle. Alf stared wide-eyed. Toadstools pushed up through the mulch, growing with unnatural speed and glowing with a brilliant fluorescence. When they had reached the size of saucers, Morris picked a few and placed them carefully in his basket. Within two minutes the basket was full.

Alf crept closer. He crossed a piece of spongy bog and hid behind the trunk of a large oak tree. Legend said that Merlin had stopped here once on Trollop Knoll and trimmed his beard, the little tufts of hair swallowed by the earth. Could that have something to do with the strange toadstools? wondered Alf. Twaddle!

Morris’s wife, Sibyl, the Cloud Mansion’s governess and self-proclaimed white witch, wanted the toadstools for her potions. Although Alf considered Sibyl a canny woman, with almost as much gumption as him, he worried she might poison someone. What worried Alf, even more, was that Morris had actually found the toadstools: making the pompous little git a champion!

The best for all, reasoned Alf, is that Morris goes home empty-handed. Time to act a troll and put the fright of hell into him.

Image by kalhh from Pixabay