Welcome to The Bell, the Book, and the Candle series!
Trigger Warning: This series is set in a post nuclear war monster apocalypse. It is brutal and involves the murder and abuse of people of all walks of life, including children, so you were warned.
This series of short stories was originally published as a book in 2019 titled: Jack Be Nimble on Amazon, and that book has long been discontinued. Well…the book was a disaster. I’d released this book around the same time The Mandalorian had aired, and The Witcher series had been out since 1986, neither of which I had watched or read.
Aside from not having any kind of good cover art for this book, the premise to this series was simple: A dark anti-hero must escort a child, a little girl, through dangerous terrain to a predetermined point. Now, this idea has been around forever, but I had no idea that it had been, so you can understand my confusion when this concept popped up everywhere for me overnight. In fact, there’s an old anime titled Dororo that aired in 1967 that explores this concept to some degree.
Aside from having terrible cover art because I have no artistic talent when it comes to drawing, this series had some difficulties due to similarities to other figures. Jack (the protagonist to some degree) is dressed in black soldier armor, and he wears a black facemask that has a corrugated breathing filter, and considering his ability to move things via telekinesis, he was too close to Darth Vader in look and style.
I’ve decided to put this series on this site, because the stories are good in spite of these problems. I’ve remodeled Jack’s armor and look to change in every chapter. Jack even switches from male to female and back again between certain chapters.
For a rundown on the plot of this series, the world has been destroyed by nuclear war and the last survivors of humanity are now engaged in a monster apocalypse. Maria is a special little girl who is the world’s last hope, as she has the power to alter reality. Jack is a monster she has inadvertently created in order to protect herself, but Jack’s true agenda is to lead Maria to a predetermined point in the United States in order to finish the end by having Maria ascend to Heaven.
The first story starts in a southern state, probably Texas, though the state is never mentioned, and the stories will always lead farther north until the destination is reached.
Jack is a combination of three different monsters, and those three monsters are the Boogeyman, Spring-Heeled Jack, and Slenderman, none of which are considered real by the inhabitants of this world, even the monsters that already exist in it, so Jack is considered an abomination, which is one of the many reasons the Angel of Death is hunting him, and why the Archangel Raphael is actively involved in Jack’s journey.
The Bell represents the Archangel Raphael, the Book represents Maria, and the Candle represents Jack.
Jack has the Fear Stare and shadowkinesis like the Boogeyman, he can breath fire and jet jump like Spring-Heeled Jack, and he has super strength, super toughness, and can teleport like Slenderman. Thusly, he is the perfect foil to the various creatures and monsters of a monster apocalypse.
If you’ve read any of my James the Riftwalker stories, then you’d know this series is where our hero James came from. James actually appears as a young man in one of these stories, so you’ll come across him at some point.
As for changes to these works, I’ve removed the cuss words and cringe, because neither contributed to the works, but the main heart of the story is still in these brutal tales…Enjoy!
THE SHAME
“I first met Jack in the sagging and torn shanty-cloth hovels of the Shame; he had come at the last moment to save me in that dark time. For some reason, I knew him, as if I had met him before at some other time, but I was only six, and my memories of the time before the Great Purge were nothing more than a series of strange dreams when I slept at night. No, it was there in the Shame that my memories first began, and those memories were always hand in hand with Jack…”
PART
He was on his guard as he approached this tall man in black, but a red flag went up in his head when he noticed what this guy was carrying…This stranger was carrying a little girl in his arms, and she did not look well…
Author’s Note: The pictures for this page were generated via artificial intelligence courtesy of Canva.com and SendFame.com.
RORY
“James stuck with us for obvious reasons…We were pursued that whole time by a cabal of vampires. They couldn’t best Jack, and I think they were afraid of him, so they followed and waited. They tried to get at James and I several times, and they never stopped their hounding…until we reached Rory…”
SOUTH SPRING RIDGE
A swarm of large black bugs came up from the pit, roaring upward on tiny fluttering wings, and the four of them were engulfed a second later. Helen panicked as she swatted the menacing insects off of her, feeling the painful nips and bites on her arms and bare legs. She backed out of the darkness of the abandoned building and followed Blane and Marcos out into the sunlit street. She brushed the bugs off of her before they could take large chunks of her skin with them, and in the light of day she could tell exactly what it was she was dealing with…
CENTRAL SPRING RIDGE
Oddly enough, of all the people to help me, it was Paige who came to my rescue at that critical moment. The young woman had been seriously mentally ill before her nightmarish transformation into a vampire, but something about being one of those creatures inflicted a strange form of mercy upon her, because it gave her a conscience she had not previously possessed…
NORTH SPRING RIDGE
Upon the wall was a simple and crude white-chalk drawing of a fat figure with stick arms and stick legs. It had a round face and round eyes with small period-like points in them for pupils, and its smile was a wide slash filled with sharp teeth. It wore a crudely drawn baker’s hat, and in its right stick hand was a large butcher knife. The words “Have you seen the Muffin Man?” were written in large white-chalk letters next to it…
