Creativity is such a weird, unpredictable thing.
Why does a song or staring up at the stars spark that creative impulse? The urge to create...
something. Why do ideas lose energy? Why do we wake up in the middle of the night with a bit of dialog or the solution to a plot point?
Why ask why?
Anyway, I've been working on
Ill Met By Moonlight. I'm enjoying it, I'm making progress...it's slow going because it's painstaking work. I have to constantly check my facts (I almost goofed on a Batman reference the other day). And even more important than the facts: getting the right feel, the right mood, the right voice, the right mindset. Historical fiction is a genre that attracts, even breeds pedants. Writers who will sacrifice plot and character for a chance to show off how much they know about buttons or legal procedures in the 1700s. I don't want to be that writer.
So I'm enjoying the work, enjoying the story, I'm immersed in the period...and suddenly, without warning, into my head pops the idea for a short series of spooky, contemporary novellas.
Huh? Where did that come from? I have no notion, but there it is. Four interconnected novellas following the course of one year in a man's life. Spooky and funny. That was my idea -- and it's not so easy to be funny and spooky because humor undercuts spookiness and spooky...well, it's just hard to write genuinely spooky stuff.
The Haunted...Museum. Hm. No.
The Haunted Heart.
Yes. That's it. A man inherits the contents of a creepy, oddball museum. It is his job to catalog and sell the items. But not all the items are that easy to catalog -- or get rid of.
So suddenly I'm working on two stories at once. In the morning I'm working on my spooky contemporary. And in the afternoon I'm working on
Ill Met By Moonlight.
Here's a taste of the story that came out of nowhere.
The Haunted Heart: Winter
I didn’t see him see until
it was too late.
Even if I had seen
him, I’m not sure it would have made a difference. My only thought was getting
downstairs and out the front door as fast as possible. It turned out the
fastest means was crashing headlong into someone bigger, and letting his momentum
send us both hurtling down the staircase.
My…er…companion yelled
and cursed all the way down the first flight. Well, in fairness it was one long
yelp and a prolonged curse. “Yooouuu’ve
gotta be fu-uh-uh-uh-uh-cking kid-ding me!”
We landed in a
tangle of limbs on the dusty and none-too-plushy carpet. My elbow whanged one
final time into the balusters and my head banged down on the floor. I saw
stars. Or maybe that was just the dust, which had probably crystallized with
age.
“What the hell was
that?” moaned someone from the ether.
Good. Question.
What the hell had that been? It sure wasn’t a trick of
the light. Though I’d done my best to tell myself that’s exactly what it was –
and had kept telling myself that right up until the moment the figure in the
mirror had tried to reach through the glass and touch me.
“Sorry about
that,” I mumbled. His bare foot was planted in my gut, and I couldn’t blame him
when he dug his toes in for leverage before lifting off me. “Oof!”
“What do you think
you’re doing running down the stairs in the dark, in the middle of the night?”
I groped for the
railing and pulled myself painfully into a sitting position. “I…thought someone
was in my room.” Lying was second nature to me by now, but that was a stupid
lie. I knew it, the instant the words left my mouth.
404-A – What was
his name? Something Murdoch – got to his knees and gaped at me in the dingy
light. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“I am saying so.”
We both turned to
stare up at the wide open door leading into my rooms. My lamp-lit and
noticeably silent rooms.
We looked at each
other.
404-A was older
than me, bigger than me, shaggier than me. He had a beard and shoulder length
black hair. His eyes were dark and sort of hollow looking – that was probably
the lack of sleep. He looked like those old posters for Serpico, but he wasn’t a cop. He was a writer of some kind.
And a lousy
guitarist. Then again, I wasn’t anyone’s ideal neighbor either. As indicated by
current events.
“You think
someone’s up there?” He asked me slowly, skeptically.
I weighed a
possible visit from the local fuzz, and opted for resident whacko.
“I did. But…maybe
I was wrong.”
“Maybe? Maybe? Why don’t we find out?” He was on
his feet now, yanking his red plaid flannel bathrobe shut and retying it with a
couple of hard, businesslike tugs that vaguely suggested a wish to throttle
something. Without waiting to see if I was following or not, he stomped up the
flight of stairs. Guiltily, I noticed he was limping.
It was actually
amazing either of us hadn’t been seriously injured or even killed in that fall.
“Coming?” he threw
over his shoulder.
“Uh…”
He muttered
something, and not pausing for an answer, disappeared through the doorway.
I admit I waited.
He couldn’t fail
to see the mirror first thing. It was as tall as I was, oval, mounted on an
ornate ormolu frame. It stood propped against a Chinese black lacquer curio
cabinet. The slight angle created the effect of walking up a slanted floor to
peer into its silvered surface.
A draft whispered
against the back of my neck. I shivered. This old Victorian monstrosity was
full of drafts. Drafts and dust. And shadows and creaks. All of them harmless.
I shivered again.
Footsteps squeaked overhead. “You can come in
now. There’s nobody up here,” 404-A called at last.
I let out a long
breath and jogged up the stairs. The elfin faces carved in the black walnut railing
winked and smirked at me as I passed.
I reached the top
landing and walked into the jumble sale of my living room. My gaze fell on the
mirror first thing, but the surface showed only me, tall and skinny and pale in
my Woody Woodpecker boxers. My hair looked like Woody’s too, only blond, not
red. Definitely standing on end, whatever the color.
“I guess I
dreamed…it,” I said by way of apology.
“First time living
alone?” 404-A asked dryly. He was standing right beside the mirror, his own
reflection off to the side.
“Ha,” I said.
“Hardly.” But come to think of it, he was right. I’d lived at home until
college and then after college, I’d lived with Alan. This was my first time
completely on my own. “Anyway, sorry about dragging you out of bed and knocking
you down the stairs. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.” He continued to eye me in a
way that seemed a bit clinical.
Yeah. I got the
message. Maybe I had dreamed it. What
a relief to realize it was just a nightmare.
If only I slept.
“Come to think of
it, you were already on your way up here,” I remembered.
He said bluntly,
“I was going to ask you to stop pacing up and down all night. The floorboards
creak.”
“Oh.”
My face warmed at this rude but
effective reminder that I wasn’t alone in the world. Not even this dusty and
dimly lit corner of the world. “Sorry.” To be honest, I forgot he was even in
the building most of the time. He was pretty quiet, other than the occasional
fit of guitar picking, and it was just the two of us here at 404
Pitch Pine Lane. It was a big, ramshackle house,
and we were neither of us the sociable type.
I glanced at the mirror again. Just me and the
edge of my neighbor’s plaid bathrobe in its shining surface. The reflection of
the ceiling chandelier blazed like a sunspot in the center, obliterating most
of us and the room we stood in.
I looked more
closely. Had something moved in the very back of the reverse room?
404-A glanced down
at the mirror and then back at me. He said, “I have to work tomorrow.”
“Sure. I didn’t
realize you could hear me.”
He unbent enough
to say, “I mostly can’t. Only the floorboards. Mostly at night.”
“I’ll make sure to
pace in the other room.”
“Great.” He pushed
away from the cabinet and headed for the door. “I’ll let you get back to it.”
His reflection
crossed the mirror’s surface, large bare feet, ragged Levi’s beneath the hem of
the bathrobe.
“Night,” I said
absently. I remembered to ask, “What’s your name again?”
“Murdoch. Kirk
Murdoch.”
“Right. Night, Kirk.”
“Goodnight,
Flynn.”
I watched the
mirrored reflection of the door closing quietly behind him.
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