The Franklin Castle - Chapter 2

Table of Contents 

Floor Plan 

Day One

“The most exciting moment in any hunt for the supernatural is the buildup before arrival at the haunted site. At the starting point, the investigation is perfect where anything is possible.”

Sir Nolan Knight from his book The Royal Ghost Hunters Guide

***

           

“Geez, Dad, could you have gotten us a car that doesn’t stink?” Ashley Dunbar asked. “You spent long enough at the rental car lot.” She looked at the back of her father’s head.

Ashley pushed a button from the back seat. The gears groaned as the window slowly lowered. The stale air blew out, replaced by the smell of exhaust fumes from the cars in traffic near them and a fine mist produced by the unnatural dark rain clouds formed during their drive. The stained upholstery held a bouquet of old cigarette smoke and sweaty body odor with a layer of deodorant on top. The smell reminded Ashley of the inside of an old outdated motel on a little used road.

Darrin Dunbar sighed. “I take what I can get. The university is not paying for this trip. This car is an upgrade compared to the other cars on the lot. I’m afraid my daughter will have to rough it for the short ride to the investigation site.”

Ashley studied the residential neighborhood. The automobile passed by old homes, made up of large and stately as well as small box homes made up the strange part of town. Vibrant antique colors of road and brick offset by drab grays and whites of deteriorating structures. Everything about this town seemed different from her home, which consisted of new subdivisions, cookie cutter houses, and muted non-offensive colors, which popped up in every conceivable tract of open land.

Dr. Darrin Dunbar removed his Georgia Tech jacket while he steadied the steering wheel with his thighs. Ashley never saw her father wear any clothes other than freebies handed out to the faculty of the Psychology department. She wondered if he ever had to buy clothes anymore. Probably his underwear displayed the college logo.

“Are you aiming at every pothole on the road?” Ashley asked.

Her father peered into the rear view mirror, though at his own reflection, not at his daughter. He brushed a strand of dark brown hair out of his eyes. The traffic snarled with starts and stops not aided by traffic lights situated at every block. The professor wove in and out of lanes in the small four-wheeled torture chamber. Ashley laughed. She noted that it made the point clear his academic excellence did not translate to navigating bargain automobiles through city traffic.

“You’re going to kill us, you know,” Ashley said.

Her father remained focused on the road. He offered no response.

She continued through his silence, straining to think of conversation topics to break the silence. “You told me once that bumps in the road build character, I didn’t think that extended beyond metaphoric, but maybe you meant that,” she said. Ashley wanted to impress her father with her vocabulary, and expected a response.

The lack of response disappointed her.

The springs in the seat poked into Ashley’s behind while the vehicle trudged through potholes. A large rut in the road lifted her off the seat and banged her head on the sloped ceiling of the hatchback.

Dr. Dunbar switched the radio station several times until he arrived at a smooth jazz station.

“And it only took you fifteen minutes to find Cleveland’s version of elevator jazz,” Ashley said. “You’re getting slow.”

Her father shook his head and rolled his eyes. After a pause, Darrin focused on Ashley in the rear view mirror. “I’ve suspected for a longtime my daughter is high-maintenance, and this further proves it.”

Ashley turned her head toward the window and mumbled. “You’d have to spend at least five minutes with me to figure that out.”

In the front seat of the car sat her father’s research partner for investigations, Dr. Joyce Lyman. “What was that, young lady?” Dr. Lyman asked, as she turned in the front seat, she locked Ashley’s gaze with black eyes and hooked nose. A clinical psychiatrist, Dr. Lyman operated a private practice in Atlanta. Ashley despised her as she felt she treated everyone like a patient. Her demeanor appeared cold and judgmental, which happened in the absence of a soul, Ashley thought.

As Ashley’s father dragged her along on these investigations, Dr. Lyman came in tow with her son, Keith, junior to Ashley by a year. The two acted like siblings. Ashley experienced pangs of sympathy for the boy because she watched his mother treat him terribly, belittling him at every turn.

Four times a year, a team of researchers leaves their comfortable careers to assist Dr. Fran Rogers, head of the Physics Department at Georgia Tech University, in his study on paranormal events. Researching ghosts in non-technical language. Ashley accompanied her father for the first time on her fifth birthday nine years ago.

Ashley often pointed out despite all the degrees compiled by members of this team, they have yet to find a ghost, not once.

Dr. Rogers is a top expert in the subject of scientific paranormal research. At Georgia Tech, Dr. Fran, as he likes people to call him, teaches an experimental course called Parapsychology. His studies and research brought a scientific approach to the topic of supernatural and paranormal studies, and his critics suggest his conclusions are too scientific with no emotional elements.

Dr. Fran’s unofficial goal is to disprove anything supernatural exists. He refuses to acknowledge he is against the concept of paranormal as a reality, because that statement is an emotional conclusion and he only recognizes the scientific. Dr. Fran has not seen any scientific proof of supernatural events. For this reason, Dr. Fran’s reputation ranked high in the skeptical community, and his reputation allowed him to search for the most renowned hauntings.

Dr. Fran called his team Psi-Ence. The group covered all bases of paranormal research in the name of science in the form of multiple disciplines. One part of the team consisted of several scientists with high-tech equipment to study the site and the environment.

Another aspect of the group includes several psychics, which Ashley found funny because Dr. Fran thinks psychics are frauds. To back up his thesis a few years ago, he tested many psychics with simple controlled experiments, such as blindfold identification of playing cards. Not one psychic who advertised their professional services tested higher than non-psychic people off the street. Several friends referred a few individuals to Dr. Fran as potential psychics. These individuals were not professional mediums and did not advertise. They displayed an uncanny ability to predict the future and read minds. These people rated many standard deviations above normal guesses. Dr. Fran wrote his conclusions in several periodicals that these “higher than average people” do not read minds in actuality, see the future, or even talk to ghosts. His theory suggests they perceive the world differently by using different portions of their brains. Dr. Fran refers to these individuals as Perceptors and a part of his team.

Doctors Dunbar and Lyman offer psychological viewpoints to the experiments and events. Their running theory consists of two parts. The first is a psychological profile of people that have the need to see ghosts as a way of fulfilling a void in their lives that love or acceptance is absent. The second theory was the study of large rooms versus small rooms. Large rooms are more often perceived as haunted.

The only variance in the team is an occasional objective observer. These individuals bring no scientific expertise, only an honest and open viewpoint. The goal of any Psi-Ence investigation is to gather as much evidence, which can consist of scientific, psychic, and personal experience. From this point, every experience must have corroborating evidence.

To keep the experiment objective, Dr. Fran made all travel arrangements in secret to eliminate the risk of any research performed ahead of time. This morning, the team arrived at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta at ten o’clock. The associates only knew the travels were limited to the United States, as the trip required no passport. Upon arrival at the airport, they discovered the destination as Cleveland.

“So, do you know anything about where we’re going?” Dr. Lyman asked Dr. Dunbar.

“I don’t,” he said. “All I’m aware of is Dr. Fran is excited about this one.”

“Why is he excited?” Ashley asked.

No one in the car made a sound.

“Dad,” she asked again. “What is so different about this one?”

“You know I don’t know,” he said along with a snort.

“I hope we at least have a TV, this is usually boring,” Ashley said. “Unless we should actually see a ghost on this ghost hunt. I don’t think I’d know what to do if we saw a ghost.”

“There are no such things as ghosts,” Dr. Lyman snapped.

“Then why do you spend so much time investigating them?” Ashley asked.

Dr. Lyman sighed. “So we can disprove these silly notions people have about ghosts.”

“You don’t think this house may actually be haunted?” Keith asked in a hushed voice.

His mother shook her head in the front seat while there was silence in the car.

“I remember on our last gig, the scientists were excited when the temperature dropped two degrees,” Ashley said

“That was a big deal,” her Dad said. “At least, to them.” Ashley noticed the inevitable qualification to someone else’s observations in their answers.

“It was night, it gets colder at night, of course,” Dr. Lyman said. “That hardly proves anything.”

 “To think we came all this way to see the temperature change,” Ashley said.

The car jerked to a right turn on Franklin Boulevard. Less than a block on the road, the lead car in the caravan slowed before it turned left into a driveway. The remaining cars followed.

An iron gate opened to allow the vehicles in.

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Table of Contents

The Franklin Castle - Chapter 1

Table of Contents
Floor Plan 



 The wallpaper separated from the plaster, pieces dangled along the wall in curled strips. Archer Ryan inspected a large piece at the top of the third floor stairs. With a gentle tug, he pulled the section away from the wall. The yellowed flower print disintegrated in his hands.

Archer shook his head. A shock of bright red hair dropped across his eyes. With an unconscious flick of the wrist, he brushed the strands aside. With the same hand, the iPhone slipped from his grasp and clattered to the ground.

A small muffled voice emerged from the fallen mobile device. “Archer, what’s going on?”

Archer retrieved the phone and looked into the camera. “Sorry, Jules,” he said. “Just like the house, I’m falling apart. I guess when you buy a hundred year old house; problems are bound to arise, both with the house and the owner.”

“What did you expect?” Jules said with her round face visible on the small screen.

“You’re right, for the price I paid, I should be happy anything is still standing.”

Archer changed the view to look out and held out the camera in front of him so Jules saw what he did. He stepped off the stairway into the third floor library and strolled down the row of shelves, panning the camera while he ran his finger down the spines of the books, creating a cloud of dust. Each book appeared in an advanced state of decay.

“It looks like many of these books are first editions from the 1950’s,” he said. “The Wall by John Hersey, Steamboat Gothic by Frances Parkinson Keyes, and This I Believe by Edward R. Murrow. They should be valuable. However, with their condition in such poor shape, the books are probably worthless. I think the only future for the books will be for kindle in the fireplace for heat when I’m broke and cold in the winter.”

“You won’t be broke. I’m sure you will invent some new software app and get rich all over again. And besides, you could keep these book and actually read them, you geek,” Jules said. “Put down your Kindle for a minute and look at three dimensional books.”

“Keep them, oh no,” he said. “Besides print being dead, the castle is already enough of a firetrap. I read that last winter some homeless man was cooking rat downstairs and nearly burned the place down with all the papers in here.”

“That’s a pleasant image,” Jules said. “Are you turned off by the concept of antique home ownership yet?”

“No, Jules,” he said. “I will not let this spoil the reveling in my conquest. This is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. I wish you could be here for the celebration rather than working out in the Valley.”

“You have the next best thing. You should invite your mother to join you.”

Archer laughed. “Oh, no, my mother will not be here for this. My whole family thinks I’m quite demented for buying this house.”

“This place just reeks of nineteenth century opulent traditional style. So stuffy. So bourgeoisie. So unlike you,” she said.

“What do you mean it is unlike me? I love every part of this old house,” Archer said.

“Oh, yeah, that bright red hair is so nineteenth century,” Jules said. “Speaking of which, it still looks pink after Antwan botched your dye job last week. Are you ever going to fix it? You should sue over that.”

“I thought it looked pretty good,” Archer said. “I like how it clashes with my yellow checked pants and red tennis shoes.” Archer panned the camera down at his pants and shoes.

“You look like you’re wearing clothes that even Goodwill rejected,” Jules said.

Archer panned the camera around the hall of books. The north side of the library, beyond the stairs, opened into a large hallway that lead to two rear bedrooms and a bath.

“The built-in bookshelves look beautiful,” Jules said.

“It breaks my heart to know that behind the shelves lay patches of rotted wallboards,” Archer said. “I’m afraid all these shelves will come down with the walls. On the surface, this place doesn’t look too bad and it is functioning. Move my furniture in, and I should be able to live with the renovation crew.”

Archer continued with the tour. “Set in the west wall in the middle of the books is a remarkably preserved functioning stone fireplace.”

“Perfect to burn all the worthless books in,” Jules commented. “I can’t believe I’m actually encouraging someone to burn books. You know, now that you have a stately mansion, you must adopt a fake British accent.”

Archer laughed and intoned in his best English inflection. “The south wall contains a large picture window with an expansive view of Franklin Boulevard,” Archer started to laugh. “I can’t do the accent. My father would turn in his grave knowing that a third generation Irishman does anything British.”

Archer tried to wipe his sleeve on the glass. “If you could actually see Franklin Boulevard through the streaks of age and grime on the glass pane, you’d see a small park across the street.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Jules said.

Archer turned around and bumped into a pile of broken furniture. He fell forward and the mobile phone slipped from his hand and slid across the floor.

“You’ve got to stop doing that to me,” Jules shouted.

“Sorry, dear,” Archer said as retrieved the phone.

He walked through a door in the east wall.

“This is my favorite room in the house. This will be my master bedroom,” Archer said. “And it’s a good thing that you can’t smell the rotten smell coming out of this room. A little Listerine and we’ll be much better for a while.”

Archer swept the camera around the room. The unique bedroom served as the rounded turret on the front corner of the house. The circular wall consisted of five windows, each six-foot tall and rose from the wainscoting. Archer arched the camera view to the ceiling turret where it formed a steeple above the bed. Visible wooden support beams converged at the top to support the point. The evening sky peeked in through several absent boards.

“This will be an incredible room when finished,” Archer said.

A fancy chandelier hung from center of the turret. He flicked the light switch and expected that the fixture to brighten the room. Disappointed, Archer found only a dim beam of light from a single functioning bulb creeping across the ceiling. Even the halogen light that filtered in the windows from the streetlamp provided more illumination.

“Now the part you’ve been waiting for,” Archer said. He set the phone on a shelf between the windows at an angle where Jules would see him clearly. Archer laid a folder and a shopping bag on the table next to the window. He opened the manila folder revealed various closing documents related to this house, which Archer signed a little more than an hour ago at the attorney’s office. A newspaper clipping attached to the front of the folder displayed the title: “House of Evil.”

Archer held the article up to the phone and read the first few paragraphs of the text to Jules. He stopped on a line near the bottom of the first paragraph.

“No one can live in this house,” he finished. “So, Jules, with that ominous note, we shall proceed with our inaugural house warming festivities.”

He moved a decrepit wooden straight-back chair to the table and sat down. His gaunt lean frame made the chair groan. Archer opened the shopping bag and removed a rectangle box labeled Parker Brother’s Ouija Board. Archer purchased the glow-in-the-dark model at Target on the way to the house. He ripped open the box like a kid on Christmas morning. Without taking time to read the instructions, Archer set the board on the table. The cardboard square depicted the alphabet in two curved rows followed by a row of numbers from one to nine followed by zero. The words “Yes”, in the top left corner, and “No” in the right corner. The bottom of the board read “Good Bye”.

Archer tore open a plastic bag and removed a white, heart-shaped object called the planchette. It contained a plastic window on the narrow end to see the numbers and letters below. The concept is that a ghost will move the planchette around the board, spelling words and answering questions. He dropped the object on the board, and lightly touched both index fingers to the planchette.

“Now let’s see if there are really any ghosts here like they say,” he said aloud.

Archer sat immobile at the table. His hands lingered on the planchette, in anticipation of something happening.

From above him, Archer heard a clink. He looked up and saw the dingy chandelier sway in a slight circle.

Archer furrowed his brow. “I’m seeing the chandelier move, Jules,” he said. “I don’t know how this is possible since there is no air conditioning and I can’t feel any draught up here.”

The hairs on the back of Archer’s neck rose. “Something is in here,” he said. “Are you hearing any voices, Jules?”

“I’m hearing some background sounds,” she said. “I can’t tell what they are.”

“Maybe there are some kids outside.” He stood and peered out the window. The road and park were empty. “Not coming from outside. The sounds seem to be all around me. It sounds like children. It is getting louder. Do you hear it?”

“I hear something now,” Jules said. “It’s children.”

Archer felt panic rise in him. “I’m touching the spirit world, Jules,” he said. “This is freaking me out.” He started to rise from the chair, but stopped and took a deep breath.

“No, I am going to get through this,” he said. “This is the reason I am here. I bought this house because of its haunted history.”

The sound of giggles and shoes shuffling on the wood floor increased, despite the lack of any physical form. Archer felt a tap on his left shoulder. It seemed so real that he looked in that direction. When he did, an unseen hand tapped his right shoulder.

“Jules, they’re playing with me!” He laughed while the invisible children ran around his chair. “I could get used to this. I can live with this.”

Archer felt a shock when the planchette moved on its own under his fingers. “It’s moving, Jules,” Archer said. “I’ve never used Ouija boards before. I thought they were phony. But, look at this! My Halloween party this year is going to be such a hit.”

The plastic window on the planchette stopped over the letter “H”, next to “E”, then “L”. The object paused for a moment before it slid to “O”.

Archer furrowed his brow. “H-E-L-O? What does it mean?” Archer said. “Hello? Are you saying hello?”

“Ask them something,” Jules said.

“Are you having fun playing today?”

The planchette moved to the word “Yes”.

The murmured sounds died down and the footsteps stopped. Archer experienced the sensation of a soft touch on his shoulder that differed from the playful taps of the children. The touch comforted him.

“What’s going on?” He asked.

The planchette began to move over letters. M-O-M-S-H-E-R-E.

Archer considered the message for a moment. “Is Mom here?” He asked.

The planchette moved to “Yes”.

Archer’s face widened with a large, toothy smile. “I feel so many emotions. I feel love and a giddy joy inside,” he said as giggled.

He began to sing a song, Best of Both Worlds by Hannah Montana. All the activity stopped in the room.

“What’s wrong?” He asked.

“Archer, you moron,” Jules said. “Unless these children died in the last two years, they’re not going to know a Hannah Montana song.”

“Good point,” Archer said.

He began to sing London Bridge. Soon, the spirits reacted by humming along with him. Archer swayed back and forth to the tune.

“Why would anyone be afraid of this house?” Archer asked. “This is going to be great.”

“I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” Jules said. “I wish I were there.”

“Are you recording this?”

“Yes.”

“How convincing of evidence do you think it is?” He asked.

“You could probably have faked this whole thing, so by itself it doesn’t mean very much,” Jules said.

Archer started another song. “Ring around the roses, pocketful of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall—“

Like a kill switch, the sensation changed. The warm feeling ended abruptly and a new experience started. It began like a tickle inside, a sensation so subtle it nearly escaped his notice. The transformation alerted no concern in Archer right away. He experienced an imperceptible acknowledgement of something different in the room. The pressure in the room dropped, similar to the atmospheric change before a storm. The air contained a hint of electricity.

“Archer, what’s going on?” Jules asked.

“Something has changed.”

The mood started to transform. Increased energy swept through him, he felt the movement of the unseen children run from the room. The warm maternal hand on his shoulder vanished. The new sensation inside his body intensified to the pit of his stomach.

Archer lifted his hands from the planchette and wrapped his arms around his chest. He perceived anger and hatred becoming palpable in front of and inside of him.

The planchette on the Ouija board began to move without Archer touching it.

“Is it moving by itself?” Jules shouted through the phone.

The object moved with fast and deliberate action. Dread crept though Archer’s body while he watched the planchette.

“Who is this?” Archer asked.

The planchette stopped on “D”, then “E”, then “A”, before it moved across the board to stop on “D” again.

“Dead?” Archer whimpered. “I’m sorry.”

Archer’s stomach churned and he vomited on the Ouija board.

The Ouija board flew from the table, slammed against the wall, and fell to the ground. Lying on the wood planks, the board tore into pieces.

Archer sat for a moment in the chair, rooted to the floor, unable to move.

The chandelier above his head swung in wide circles.

He gathered the energy to push up from the chair and ran from the room. The door slammed behind him. The only memory Archer retained of leaving the house was the sound of Jules’ voice through the phone still placed in the room.

She was calling his name.

Go to Chapter 2
Table of Contents
Floor Plan 

The Franklin Castle - Floor Plan

The Franklin Castle

Floor Plan

 

Table of Contents 

The Franklin Castle

The Franklin Castle

by

Daune O'Shaunnessey

Table of Contents

The Franklin Castle is a story of an investigation of a haunted house. It is presented in serialized fashion with a chapter at a time, as I finish editing them. The Franklin Castle actually is a real Gothic mansion in Cleveland, Ohio, and it is reported to be extremely haunted. The history and back story about the original tenants and other former owners is largely factual. However I’ve added some morsels for dramatic purposes. The mansion still exists in Cleveland’s Ohio City district, where many people over the years have attempted to live or turn the house into a business. Recent years have seen the house remain abandoned and catch fire. The structure of the house in the story is somewhat different than that of the real Franklin Castle for dramatic purposes. 

The Franklin Castle does not contain any gratuitous violence, strong language, or sexual situations. It is intended for a general audience from Young Adult up.

Franklin Castle - Floor Plan

Chapter 1


Day One

Chapter 2 
Chapter 3
Chapter 4 
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9a
Chapter 9b
Chapter 9c
Chapter 10



 

NANOWRIMO and Future Serialized Fiction in my Blog

New years resolutions are coming early for me.

 

NANOWRIMO stands for the National Novel Writing Month. The goal of NANOWRIMO is to start and finish a first draft of a novel during the month of November. This is a great motivation tool for me, and has been very successful in the past. Over the past two years, I’ve written the first draft of the Fenian Avenger and The Order of the Benevolent Souls. As I reflected on what I was going to do this year, I realized that starting and finishing a first draft has never been a problem for me. I can do that in a matter of weeks with the right organization and thought. It’s finishing the second or final draft with editing that is the challenge.

I’ve recently purchased a book written by a friend of mine named Bobbie Christmas. The book is called Write in Style. The book is about editing and fixing grammar in a way that publishers and editors like. It approaches the concept from the Find command in a word processor. For example, look for the word “was” in your works and replace it with a stronger action word. Something simple like this is ingenious, as it finally connected what I needed to do.

However, I discovered that in a first draft novel, there is a HUGE amount of finding and replacing required bringing it up to speed. I’ve found that I’ll spend a couple of months writing a first draft – while my editing skills get cold, and then a couple of months editing it – while my writing skills get cold.

I’ve decided that I’m going to try something different this fall, hoping to keep both skills sharp (and potentially eliminate a lot of the editing I need to do). My NANOWRIMO project is not going to be a first draft, but finishing an edit in one month on a novel.

Many years ago, I wrote a short story called The Franklin Castle. Several years ago, I lengthened that story into a novel. Then a terrible thing happened in my attempt to keep my data safe. I saved the copy of the first draft of the novel on a jump drive, since I didn’t want to leave it on a work laptop. I thought I put that jump drive in a safe place. Maybe I did, but it didn’t stay there. When I went to look at that book to edit, I couldn’t find the drive. I looked everywhere; I could not find the device. That was over two years ago. One day about a month ago, my daughter Lexi was sitting in the front seat of my car, and reached down into the crack of the seat and removed that very jump drive. For two years it was nestled down with trash, crumbs, and French fries. I quickly inserted the drive, and there was the last version of the book.

I am going to turn that first draft into a final edit during the month of November.

In keeping with the resolution to keep both my writing and editing skills sharp, I’ve decided to use this blog to publish serialized fiction. Every week or two weeks, I plan to continue a storyline, adding a chapter at a time. This forces me to think ahead and have my plot down solid (because there will be no going back and editing what is already published), work the first draft a chapter at a time, and immediately edit that first draft for final publishing quality.

I’m really looking forward to the serialized fiction. I have one story line to start with, a secret group called The Green Trinity that I’ve referred to in a few other pieces of my work. I’m interested in establishing their back story, and then potentially moving forward to episodic fiction. I may include other works in this, for example, The Franklin Castle as that is finished in November may lend itself to presenting a chapter at a time.

I hope you all are able to follow along and I hope you’ll enjoy my work.

The First Paperback I Ever Read

When I was eleven years old, I saved my allowances and went a few weeks without comic books, because I was going to buy my first paperback novel.

I don’t know what it was in me that decided that I wanted to read something more concrete, and maybe comic books were not in-depth enough. Maybe comics as a medium suffered with me because the subsequent serializations were not readily available. I had to wait a month for each new release and to find how the story continued after the last page cliff-hanger. Maybe I felt that a novel game the ability to immediately read next month’s installment today. It’s a lot like watching television series on Netflix. All I have to do is click the button that reads “Watch Episode 23” and I can see what happens next without waiting.

Reading stories outside of comic books, up until that point, was a drag. We had to read stories in school. And they were horrible. Here’s a clue: when making a child read a story in school, how about making it something that they will enjoy and want to read? My grade school syllabus consisted of reading short stories by authors whose names I still can’t pronounce today, and the old standards of things like Wuthering Heights. I can’t remember if I had been assigned WH by this time, but it was like torturing me with little needles to my head. I know that there are people that will defend WH and have me quartered for this statement. But I hated, and still hate, the type of stuffy writing that makes up the classic genre of WH.

Somewhere I decided to find something that I wanted to read for fun. So, I started searching to paperbacks at the Acme to select the perfect book. If you’ve ever shopped for books with me, it is an arduous thing. This is something that I will be hitched to for a month (I don’t read a lot at one time, so it takes me a long time to read something). I can never have someone buy me a book to read, because I have no skin in the selection and it is potentially doomed to failure because of that.

I selected Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot. I thought the name sounded really cool and the cover was great. It released in the previous year, and I’d seen it on the bestseller shelf for a year. I actually thought it was going to be about witches (with the title including the word “Salem” and all).

In reviewing what I liked about this book, I’m struck about how much I learned about writing from it, and how much I’ve patterned my own writing based on it.

My first reaction to the book was noticing King’s casual style of writing. There were no arcing descriptions of the moors every couple of pages. It was as if the writer was sitting with me telling me the story. I was sold on this type of writing, as I was enjoying it. A casual writing style is something that kept with me for many years.

And there was swearing in the book! To an eleven year old, whose reading list was supervised for its classical elegance, it was exciting to see a bunch of four-letter words in print. This was a particularly bad habit that took me a long time to shed. Now, I am almost four-letter word free in my writing (a few Gaelic one’s thrown in there). But, bad words in a book that I was reading had the desired effect that a choice word should – it shocks the reader into understanding either the character or that they situation is critical. Swear words are like salt. We know that too much salt will turn the impact of the creation into something that is overpowered by it. So, we know to use just a bit of salt. But, when you’re younger, you like salt a lot, and use it so often it can turn off people or turn your work into something bitter. That was how it was with swearing in my stories, I needed the years of aged wisdom to realize that salt wasn’t good for my stories. (Okay, now I’m hungry.)

For those who don’t know, ‘Salem’s Lot is a story about a writer named Ben Mears who goes back home to a small town in Maine, called Jerusalem’s Lot or ‘Salem’s Lot for short, to face his fears and write a book about it. His fears revolve around a creepy mansion called the Marsten House on the hill above the town. The house was the setting of a grizzly murder/suicide back before WWII. As a child on a dare, he snuck into the vacant house to remove an object to join the Bloody Pirates. He ventured farther into the house than he needed to in order to prove to the boys his worth. It was there that he saw the bloating, hanging body of Hubie Marsten. We don’t know if the boy imagined the body, saw a ghost, or was the victim of a prank. Ben returns to town at the same time that two men also appear and buy the Marsten House. Two boys quickly go missing, and people begin to act strangely as the town becomes inhabited by vampires.

‘Salem’s Lot is less of a horror story and more of an adventure that contains vampires. The pace is at breakneck speed, and it is as exhilarating as it is scary. It reminds me of the classic horror story, Dracula, which was paced like an adventure story with characters trying to keep up with what is going on around them. This is another aspect that appeals to me and my writing over the years. I love adventure stories: the setup, the ride, and the payoff. My horror stories are much less about gore and violence (the modern horror movie and book) and more about adventure and excitement.

Another aspect I loved about this book is that it contained a lot of characters, in fact the town itself became like a character. I liked that different attitudes about the day and the town are displayed by different people. The town had a distinctive feeling of its own, you could almost see the map in your mind. From the opening chapter when Ben Mears sees the sign that read:

Route 12 Jerusalem’s Lot
Cumberland Cumberland Ctr

Then you can feel yourself in a New England country back road in the fall as Route 12 became Jointer Avenue and led you into the Lot. King did not spend a lot of time describing the countryside, as a certain gothic English classic set on the moors might. But, you get the feel for the setting in the description of the action and dialogue, as listening to a filling station attendant describing how to get downtown.

The thing that King did better than anything else, and I learned a lesson from this book that I’ve tried to use in everything that I’ve written, is his sense of suspense. King ends chapters or sections of ‘Salem’s Lot with scary and suspenseful cliffhangers.

Part one of ‘Salem’s Lot, titled “The Marsten House” ends in Matt Burke’s house, a high-school English teacher. Matt ran into Mike Ryerson at the pub and noticed that he looked ill. Later that night, Matt hears some unsettling things in the guest room.

And in the awful heavy silence of the house, as he sat impotently on his bed with his face in his hands, he heard the high, sweet, evil laugh of a child –

- and then the sucking sounds.

At eleven years old (what am I talking about? Even at forty years old), this is a chilling passage. The suspense really sets in as this is the end of the first section of the book. Leaving it standing like this, I could not stop reading.

Later in the book, Ben has teamed up with several others that he has just met, and they enter the Marsten House in the daytime in pursuit of the vampire named Barlow. They come upon a coffin they think belongs to Barlow. Lying on the closed surface of the coffin is an envelope with a letter in it. In this letter is one of the most chilling sections of any book I’ve ever read:

My Dear Young Friends,

How lovely of you to have stopped by!

I am never averse to company; it has been one of my great joys in a long and often lonely life. Had you come in the evening, I should have welcomed you in person with the greatest of pleasure. However, since I suspected you might choose to arrive during daylight hours, I thought it best to be out.

I have left you a small token of my appreciation; someone very near and dear to one of you is now in the place where I occupied my days until I decided that other quarters might be more congenial. She is very lovely, Mr. Mears – very toothsome, if I may be permitted a small bon mot. I have no further need of her and so I have left her for you to – how is your idiom? – to warm up for the main event. To whet your appetites, if you like. Let us see how well you like the appetizer to the main course you contemplate, shall we?

…

My good friends – Mr. Mears; Mr. Cody; Master Petrie; Father Callahan – enjoy your stay. The Medoc is excellent, procured for me especially by the late owner of this house, whose personal company I was never able to enjoy. Please be my guests if you still have a taste for wine after you have finished the work at hand. We will meet again, in person, and I shall covey my felicitations to each of you at that time in a more personal way.

Until then, adieu.

BARLOW

I still get chills reading this passage. Ben’s group thought they were catching up with the ancient vampire, when in fact, he was steps ahead of them.

‘Salem’s Lot remains, to this day, my favorite book, along with The Bourne Identity. I’ve compared every horror book I’ve read since to ‘Salem’s Lot. Most horror books do not have the sense of adventure that this one does, replacing it with dreary settings and violence. The state of the vampire story has completely gone in different directions. Starting with Interview With the Vampire, the vampire turned into a flowery bore. I got so sick of reading about how wonderful the sights and sounds of being a vampire is, and page after page about the inner monologue of moody vampires. I struggled with IWTV, and found that I couldn’t even finish the second book, The Vampire Lestat.

Don’t even get me started with sparkly love-sick vampires who can go out in the daylight. The bloody daylight!

Student 3D Artwork

This fall on Wednesday nights I've been teaching 3D graphics. My class consists of eight boys ranging from 3rd grade to 5th grade. Now, put eight boys in a room, and it's a challenge to keep them on task. But, sit them in front of their own laptop doing cool things, that is a challenge.

Their computer skills ranged from not at all to pretty good - their artistic sensitivity was nearly null. After several sessions trying to introduce 3D concepts and making them pay attention, we finally arrived to the last three weeks of class where they needed to start working on their final project that would be shown to all the parents of all the classes.

Below is a sample of their work so far - some pretty really cool things. One boy accidentally made a sky out of water and produced a really cool starting concept of mountains under water. The other boys latched on the sci-fi aspect and worked on their own planets or deathstars.

I'll post the final projects as soon as they are available.

Halloween

My favorite holiday of the year is Halloween. Before anyone reacts, I will say I love Christmas. But, I love Halloween. I love to be scared. I love attending haunted houses. The only thing I look forward as my children get older are when they are able to join me in my love of Halloween movies and activities.

As a child, my friends and I built a haunted house in our basement every year. We planned and built for weeks. My Mother’s profession was as a porcelain doll artist and the basement her workshop. Doll heads and parts on shelves in the semi-darkness is pretty bloody scary. We needed very few decorations. My basement scared most of my friends just as is.

Every year, I scan the channels for Halloween shows and movies (with Netflix, perusing my favorites is so easy). I have two categories of movies, those I watch with the kids (no easy task finding that these days) and those I watch late at night.

As you can guess, Halloween is my favorite Halloween movie. It is a late night movie, not yet consumable by my children. This film came out in 1978 and is directed by John Carpenter, written by Carpenter and Debra Hill, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance.

The film starts out in 1963, where six year-old Michael Myers snaps and kills his older sister. The family sends young Michael to a mental institution, where he does not speak or move for fifteen years. During this period of Michael’s non-activity, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) determines Michael is pure evil. I’m not sure how Loomis came about this diagnosis, but I will forgive a few plot holes if the ride is worth the suspension of disbelief. I don’t believe anyone saw Halloween and expected to see character development similar to Citizen Kane.

Back to the good doctor’s diagnosis, on Halloween in the present day, Loomis will petition the state to lock Michael away for the rest of his life. As they come in the front entrance, Michael overpowers them and drives away in their car (okay…I don’t know how a man in a catatonic state since age six can drive a car…but I’m willing this last time to forgive these hole, because the characters wondered the same thing on screen).

Michael goes on a rampage, he stalks and kills random people until he goes up against Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), who has the hapless job of babysitting on Halloween. Laurie, the good girl bookworm, doesn’t engage in any of the other vices or bad activities as the other unfortunate victims. This story seems a cautionary tale, as if a virtuous life will save you from the boogey-man. We find out in Halloween 2 that Laurie is Michael’s sister and this rampage was not so random after all.

Killing Michael Myers is no easy task. Stabbing him in the chest and eyes will not kill him. Shooting him and knocking him off a balcony only annoys him. Okay, that’s cool. I’ll suspend disbelief on that point. Adds a little bit of panic factor when he’s in the room with a character we like. But, at some point, I need to know some information. What happened to Michael to make him this way? We don’t learn any of that in the initial installment of Halloween.

This movie remains a vivid memory in my mind. I did not see the film in the theatres. I believe if I saw it there, it would not be as frightening. I saw Halloween in the fall of 1979 on HBO, when my friends Bruce and Keith came over to my house after a Friday night high-school football game. Because we watched in my dark family room, and the scariest parts of this film were set in a normal dark house just like mine. The experience was far more terrifying at home. At any moment, Michael could pop out of a room in my house and that would be the end.

The most memorable moment came after the movie. Bruce and Keith lived just a few blocks from my house, and my parents went out for the evening. The only way to get home was to walk home. On a normal night, a walk of two blocks at midnight in my neighborhood caused no concern to anyone. But, not this night. I watched from my room, Bruce and Keith sprinted home as fast as their legs would carry them.

This film impacted us after viewing. Greatness is a funny thing; Halloween was not blessed with an incredible plot or phenomenal writing. In fact, the stiff dialogue was forced. John Carpenter made this movie for $325,000, a bargain even for 1978. For us, the movie lived on after the final credits. For weeks after the viewing, I paused before entering a dark room. I looked out my window at night hoping not to see someone standing in the street watching.

Even though critics panned the film as too violent, the movie contains little blood and gore.

Three things come to mind when I reflect on this film.

1. The setting for the street in the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois was actually a street close to Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. The setting looked and felt like fall in the Midwest. You could almost smell the burning leaves in the crisp air (even though filming occurred in the spring).
2. The images of jack-o-lanterns. From the movie poster to the opening credits, the image the orange pumpkin glowing yellow through the slit eyes and toothy grin endures. The hue of the film just screams Halloween to me.
3. The music. With no budget to work with, instead of an orchestral score, John Carpenter composed and performed the moody soundtrack music using a piano and a synthesizer. The main theme is an uncomfortable piece of music, written in 5/4 time with ominous chords swelling along with the piano. The texture and rhythm of the music makes the listener off kilter and on edge. Thirty years later, even listening to a bar or two of this theme brings back the mood of the movie.

Like any successful movie, Halloween spawned sequels and remakes. Despite the lower quality of each successive installment, many of the sequels give me the same feel – and perhaps because of the music and fall setting.

• Halloween II – 1981 – Just more of the same, just with more violence and gore. Written by Carpenter and Hill, this story picks up immediately following the events in Halloween. Carpenter handed directorial duties to Rick Rosenthal. The primary milestone for the sequel is the realization that Laurie Strode is Michael Myers little sister.
• Halloween III: Season of the Witch – 1982 – Carpenter wanted to use different Halloween themes throughout the series, rather than just Michael Myers slashing people to death. This movie attempted to start a new line, as the film has no connection with the prior two films. This is not necessarily a bad direction, if only number 3 executed better. The plot centers on a Halloween mask manufacturer called Silver Shamrock. Each mask embeds a computer chip with a fragment of Stonehenge in order to invoke the magic of the Gaelic tradition of Samhain to kill all the children (I know, I don’t understand either).
• Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers – 1988 – I remember little about this movie, it contained so few remarkable aspects, except the setting, which still made me feel like the fall in the Midwest (this film they also filmed in the spring). The plot revolves around the daughter of Laurie Strode, who died (but we find out in a later film she lived and faked her death). Anyway, Michael returns to kill the little girl, after surviving the explosion at the end of number two. But, he’s been in a coma ever since. The only true shock appears at the film’s end, where the little girl dons a mask, picks up a pair of scissors, just like Michael all those years ago, and brutally stabs someone to death.
• Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers – 1989 – Another unmemorable follow-up, coming right on the heels of number four. We find Michael’s niece Jamie, from the previous film, interred in a state hospital. Brief clips of a man in black traveling to Haddonfield comprised the only items of interest in the film. This man’s tattoo was the same as Michael’s. At the end of the film, the man in black rescues Michael from the police station. This important revelation should provide fuel to drive the next movie. We were going to learn why Michael was the way he was. I eagerly waited for number six to learn the mythology.
• Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Halloween 6 or Halloween 666) – 1995 – I saw this movie the in 1996 on tape. I remember becoming furious after viewing the film. Not only was there no explanation of the Michael Myers mythology, but they ignored what happened at the end of number 5. aHI discovered the producers created several versions of this movie: a theatrical release, a producer’s cut, and a director’s cut. I found out one version contains the explanation for the man in black. I am looking for this version of the movie. The man in black belongs to a group of druids, who also kidnapped Jamie, Michael’s niece. The rest of the movie is boring traditional fare.
• Halloween H20: 20 Years Later – 1998 – Jamie Lee Curtis returns in this film, revealing she faked her death and has an adult son (Josh Hartnett). The movie ignores the events from the fourth, fifth, and sixth installments. The story is set in Northern California, where Laurie Strode lives. This doesn’t fit right. Halloween movies belong in the Midwest. Twenty years passed since Michael Myers first returned. At the end of the movie, Laurie beheads Michael at the end of the movie.
• Halloween: Resurrection – 2002 – Again, this movie ignores everything from movies four through six. We learn Laurie did not behead Michael Myers at the end of the last movie, as we witnessed. In a change of events from the previous movie, Michael switched clothes with a paramedic and taped the mask to his face. Laurie beheaded a paramedic, thinking him Michael. Weak, very weak. There are so many ways this doesn’t work. At the beginning of the film, we discover that Laurie lives in an institution her accidental beheading of someone dressed up as Michael Myers. Three years later, Michael shows up to kill her. This scene elapses over twenty-five minutes. At this point the movie takes a left turn. We are introduced to a reality show set in the old Myers house. And guess who shows up?
• Halloween ­– 2007 – Rob Zombie attempted to reinvent the series. Zombie is responsible for some of the most violent movies I’ve ever seen. I hate cruel pointless violence and killing in movies, and I felt Zombie’s other movies were almost pornographic in their violence. As a result, I hated this movie as I felt it a pointless exercise and a taint against the original movie.
• Halloween II – 2009 – Rob Zombie’s sequel to his horrible remake. I didn’t even bother to see the film.