the midden
The Midden is not an archive.
It’s a heap of things nobody managed to kill properly.
I’ve outlasted enough wars between humans, demons, and angels to know they all start sounding the same after a while. A noble cause. A power trip. A body count.
Here you’ll find field notes, case studies, folklore, artifacts, testimonies, and redacted reports. The scraps worth salvaging once the fire dies and the liars lose interest. There’s also the occasional recipe. Don’t ask.
I won’t promise any of it is safe.
I won’t promise all of it is accurate.
Only that it has been worth keeping.
Read what you like. Doubt what you must (I would).
Just don’t mistake my weariness for weakness. I’ve buried prettier things than you.
—Digger
The Children
I was in the village two miles east yesterday morning. Errands. Nothing worth reporting. On the way back I passed…
Conn O’Cuinn’s Rifle
New Haven, Connecticut. 1866. A rifle comes off the line at the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Model 1866. Brass receiver,…
Mythology of Giants
There’s a hill in Shropshire that a giant built by accident. That’s the story, anyway. He was carrying a load…
Jegudiel: The Longest Falling
I’ve known a few people who loved the wrong thing so completely that by the time they understood what it…
Tricksters
There was a man in a pub in Carlisle — this would have been the late nineties — who held…
The Liminal
On a train. Headed south. The roads are impossible this time of year. Tourists and caravans and people who bought…
Tazia’s Bowie Knife
There are objects that accumulate invisible history the way wood accumulates rings. To understand, you have to know what you’re…
Conn O’Cuinn: Three hundred years and counting
I’ve been putting this one off. Not because I don’t know what to write. Because I know too much, and…
Angels
I sat in St. Cuthbert’s this morning. Don’t read anything into it. The heating works and it’s quiet before ten….
What the Colours Know
Tuesday. The farm shop on the edge of the village. I need eggs. That’s the whole of the errand. Late…
Billy Nadig: Just Billy
There’s a little boy on the Tube in the 90s. One, maybe two years old. Jam on his face. Waving…
English Magick
The chalk is close to the surface here. You notice it when the ground dries out—white showing through like bone….