Jam-Session Fanfiction?

Yep... it now exists! Because, as Bibi and I recalled the ghost stories of Friday night, sitting on the stump in front of the school building, we thought there should be a ghost story set in the Jam itself. So here, for fun, (with a picture for context), is

The Demon of the Stump: a Jam-Session Story















The summer night was cool and dark in the shadow of the distant mountains; but a street-lamp shed a golden glow over the long, low building that had once been a church and was now a school.

In the silence, something stirred by the stump a few feet from the door. Two glowing red eyes shone evilly from a black, hideous face; two black bat wings unfolded to the night air, fouling the clean desert breeze as a great figure rose to tower menacingly over the little building.

The Demon of the Stump growled to himself. For many years he had hidden there, waiting for his chance; but now, he would wait no longer.

"Souls I will have, tonight," he hissed. "Oh, yes... These little fools who think they can win souls for the Enemy by their drumming and fiddling and four-part screeching! Oh, they will suffer for it..."

He vanished back into the stump and waited, peering out. A fifteen-seater van pulled through the gates and a crowd of laughing girls jumped out, chattering about the opera they had just heard, preceded by a bespectacled young man who gave each one a hand to help her out and the priest who had driven them, at the sight of whom the Demon snorted in disgust.

"The kind, the wise, the athletically gifted, the.... the idiot!" he muttered. "How did he come up with these jam things anyway? Sickeningly 'wholesome fun'... ugh."

"One of you should come and take the key and lock the gate," the priest remarked.

"I'll go," one of the girls spoke up - a tall, slim girl with a mass of bright golden-brown curls tumbling over her shoulders and merry brown eyes.

"All right, Bibiana."

"I'm coming too," said another, a smaller girl with straight brown hair and dark-brown eyes, clad in a frilly light-blue dress which made the Demon snort again.

The girls poured into the building, and the Demon watched the two girls walk down toward the gates after the van. The priest passed them the key and they closed the gate, bidding him good night and turning back toward the building.

The Demon glared at the two approaching figures.

"Those two. The ones who wrote that song..." (adding a couple of demonic adjectives not to be repeated.) "Well, good... they will suffer for it!"

He rose from the stump, reducing the lamp to sparking smithereens with one blow of his hellish fist; and the girls backed away in terror from the towering shadow with the glowing red eyes, clinging to each other, voiceless with fear.

"You can run, but you can't hide," the Demon hissed with an evil chuckle.

Both began to recite the Hail Mary, voices shaking. At the detested name, the Demon cowered. Seeing it, the two advanced on him, repeating the prayer in louder tones. He rose up with a roar of fury and pain that echoed from the very mountains. The voices faltered; but the two had reached the foot of the ten-foot Crucifix that stood at the corner of the building, and as he sprang on them he fell back as if burned.

The younger girl set her back against the Crucifix and spoke in a voice that did not seem hers - clear and ringing as a bronze bell, with a power that was beyond her own, with words that were not her own.

"Vade retro, Satana! Scriptum est enim: "Dominum Deum tuum adorabis et illi soli servies."

Her companion gasped; and she looked at the Crucifix above her in time to see the right hand pull away from the wood and point at the Demon, who, with a scream that left Albuquerque shivering all the rest of the night, vanished in a flash of flame, leaving them in absolute darkness.

The two fell to their knees, with a prayer of thanksgiving; and went in to explain to the girls, who were all shivering with terror, what that sound had been, and what had taken them so long.

The next morning, as they all came out to wait for their ride to Mass, one of the girls exclaimed, "Look at the Crucifix!"

The right arm of the Crucifix still pointed to where the Demon had stood; and where the stump had been was only a burned and blackened patch of ground.