“Just fireflies?” Lumprella shrieked. “See for yourself! They are upon us!”
All the witches screamed and ran for the hills, and the hyenas and raccoons followed suit.
Slub Glub and Willowmina stared into the darkness, but didn’t see anything.
“Do you see anything?” asked Willowmina.
“No, but my ears do,” said Slub Glub, listening to the faint sound of drums in the distance, which were playing a helter-skelter rhythm.
Slub Glub began to dance. Willowmina put her branches to the ground to better pick up the vibrations, and as the strange beat got louder she started to shake, her leaves fluttering in the yellow moonlight.
Then the first apparition appeared.
A disheveled man in a striped shirt appeared, dragging his limbs behind him. He was semi-translucent, emitting a faint greenish glow.
The weeds and rocks were visible through his pale torso. He wore a cap and one eyeball was dangling from his head. It looked like it had been a long time since he was alive.
“Wuuuuuuugh,” he moaned, approaching Slub Glub and Willowmina, who stopped moving and stared back at him and his drooping orb.
“Let me get that for you,” Willowmina said, poking his eyeball back into its socket with one of her branches.
Instead of being grateful, the phantom became irate, flailing his ghostly arms and emitting a mournful howl.
“Well, never mind then,” Willowmina said.
The striped once-was-a-man looked back towards the darkness, and soon a whole motley crew of broken-down specters appeared, all in various states of decay, and all of a see-through green composition.
They muttered and shambled, dragging their bones behind them, slowly scraping past Willowmina and Slub Glub.
“Hey, the witches went the other way,” Willowmina called after the last of the crusty derelicts.
“Witches?” said the shadowy man, seemingly confused.
“Aren’t you chasing after the witches who conjured you from your graves with their spells?”
“No, we’re not after any witches, we’re just going where the Baron tells us to,” he answered, and shuffled on.
Slub Glub and Willowmina stared at each other. “The Baron?” they both repeated aloud, wondering …
To be continued.
Table of Contents: “Slub Glub in the Weird World of the Weeping Willows”
Get the graphic novel from Eraserhead Press.
Illustration & text copyright (c) Andrew Goldfarb