Monday, April 6, 2009
Cartography
Well, it's done now. The map of my city, Belport, is complete. Well, mostly. I hope to someday get street names onto it, but this will work for now. It was quite difficult to come up with at first. I initially wanted a neighborhood approach like Chicago, Frisco, and of course New York, but after seeing just how many neighborhoods there were in such a small space, I decided to go for something more along the lines of boroughs. Smaller towns that ended up merging together into one city. I may go back into each area of the city to flesh out neighborhoods for it, but that's a debate for later. I rather enjoy each area of the city keeping the name it had throughout the city's history. I will likely put up the history I developed a piece at a time, but now, hit the jump to see the map.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Into the Fray! . . . Sort of
Well, I'm a little late to the party, only hearing about this particular news item from a friend last week, which is why I spent a few days looking into it, then mulling it over to come to a conclusion. The issue was a comment Stephen King made about Stephenie Meyer's writing. First, I'm not tackling that issue. I don't know King's or Meyer's writing to make any kind of comment. Much of it is up to personal preference, as well. In my book, Hemingway cannot write. His prose is too simplistic and subject matter very boring for me. Nathaniel Hawthorne should be denigrated instead of praised in my opinion, but I know there are people that love both of them. I have no problem with that. Likewise, I have no problem with people loving both Meyer and King. However, there's something else that disturbs me, and I simply can't remain quiet on it any longer.
There seems to be a common thread in the comments of many, if not the majority, of Meyer's supporters, and that is quite a few of them write and read at the level of her novels. I've perused the comments here and here and cringe at the poor grammar, style, and rationale within them. That's not to say that there aren't quite a few who express themselves adequately and rationally, but those aren't as numerous. I see many laden with texting conventions that do not belong in any kind of written argument, and I long to send Mr. Period (NSFW language) in to attempt the problem, but think Cap might lose his temper. Many of the commenters do not even address the topic at hand and simply write what they like most about Meyer's books. Others simply spew hate towards King in language more reminiscent of an elementary school yard than by young (and not so young) adults. Furthermore---I'm not sure if this is more disturbing or not---whole legions have no idea who Stephen King is, and do not bother to take the two minutes necessary to use the Internet to find out even basic facts about him, such as the books he's authored, the ranking of those books in best-seller charts, the movie adaptations from those books, and the man's estimated wealth. The level of ignorance given off by Meyer's supporters is palpable, and it frightens me.
I'm frightened because I believe that many of them will never go on to realize that there is much more and better literature out there. I'm not talking about King, either. I've never read his works. I'm talking about the likes of Shakespeare, Milton, Twain, Homer, Dickens, and a host of others it would take me far too long to list. I do not begrudge Meyer at all. I think it's wonderful that she has written, published, and become popular, yet I think that the true worth of books is that they inspire us to move on and read more, yet the sense I get from many of these supporters is that they will never move beyond Meyer's young adult books to the incredible universe of stories out there. They will never see the majesty of two star-crossed lovers so reminiscent of Twilight in Romeo and Juliet---by the by, I believe that R&J (as Will let's me call it) is one of the Bard's more mediocre works. For my money, go with A Midsummer Night's Dream, Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and King Lear.
I suppose here at the end I just want to appeal to those who do read and adore Meyer's works to move beyond your beloved series and discover what else is out there. The world of literature is so much richer than one author and one series that it should be explored. I applaud anyone who reads voraciously, but don't close the door off to other books. If you enjoyed Twilight, consider Romeo and Julie, or perhaps even Bram Stoker's Dracula. Look at the stories you've read and loved and look for more of them. You may just find that other works speak more truly than what you've read before.
There seems to be a common thread in the comments of many, if not the majority, of Meyer's supporters, and that is quite a few of them write and read at the level of her novels. I've perused the comments here and here and cringe at the poor grammar, style, and rationale within them. That's not to say that there aren't quite a few who express themselves adequately and rationally, but those aren't as numerous. I see many laden with texting conventions that do not belong in any kind of written argument, and I long to send Mr. Period (NSFW language) in to attempt the problem, but think Cap might lose his temper. Many of the commenters do not even address the topic at hand and simply write what they like most about Meyer's books. Others simply spew hate towards King in language more reminiscent of an elementary school yard than by young (and not so young) adults. Furthermore---I'm not sure if this is more disturbing or not---whole legions have no idea who Stephen King is, and do not bother to take the two minutes necessary to use the Internet to find out even basic facts about him, such as the books he's authored, the ranking of those books in best-seller charts, the movie adaptations from those books, and the man's estimated wealth. The level of ignorance given off by Meyer's supporters is palpable, and it frightens me.
I'm frightened because I believe that many of them will never go on to realize that there is much more and better literature out there. I'm not talking about King, either. I've never read his works. I'm talking about the likes of Shakespeare, Milton, Twain, Homer, Dickens, and a host of others it would take me far too long to list. I do not begrudge Meyer at all. I think it's wonderful that she has written, published, and become popular, yet I think that the true worth of books is that they inspire us to move on and read more, yet the sense I get from many of these supporters is that they will never move beyond Meyer's young adult books to the incredible universe of stories out there. They will never see the majesty of two star-crossed lovers so reminiscent of Twilight in Romeo and Juliet---by the by, I believe that R&J (as Will let's me call it) is one of the Bard's more mediocre works. For my money, go with A Midsummer Night's Dream, Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and King Lear.
I suppose here at the end I just want to appeal to those who do read and adore Meyer's works to move beyond your beloved series and discover what else is out there. The world of literature is so much richer than one author and one series that it should be explored. I applaud anyone who reads voraciously, but don't close the door off to other books. If you enjoyed Twilight, consider Romeo and Julie, or perhaps even Bram Stoker's Dracula. Look at the stories you've read and loved and look for more of them. You may just find that other works speak more truly than what you've read before.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
March Wrap-up 2009
Well, another month gone. The time seems to go by so quickly now, and my totals seem to dwindle now that I'm also throwing revision into the mix. Also, I've had some difficulty with a cold and a sore back, not to mention my teaching, which has taken a toll in terms of time, but I'm still getting a goodly amount done.
With all the extra things pulling at my time, it's been difficult to stay disciplined, especially on the weekends when I just want to crash. Not too long ago I just let writing for the day go after pushing it aside all day until no more time was left. I'm working on finding the time and forcing the writing out of me even on those days when I just want to veg. If nothing else, I should take that time and use it to do some revision to at least remain somewhat productive towards writing.
I think something else I'm having difficulty with is the third book. I don't have Halloween Scourge mapped out yet---though I haven't with the others, either---and I think I need to spend some time fleshing out the story some more in an outline than blindly writing. Of course, the early parts of the stories always seem boring to me as I'm trying to set everything up, so I'll just keep plowing through until inspiration strikes.
I've also started on another short story with my intrepid hero, which I'm having quite a bit of fun with thus far. I'll be posting it up when finished, probably in a couple of weeks.
I've also finished the map and the short history of it. The map should be coming up soon, and I think I may slowly release the histories of each section of the city to get into the habit of more regular posting here. Until then, here are the monthly charts.
With all the extra things pulling at my time, it's been difficult to stay disciplined, especially on the weekends when I just want to crash. Not too long ago I just let writing for the day go after pushing it aside all day until no more time was left. I'm working on finding the time and forcing the writing out of me even on those days when I just want to veg. If nothing else, I should take that time and use it to do some revision to at least remain somewhat productive towards writing.
I think something else I'm having difficulty with is the third book. I don't have Halloween Scourge mapped out yet---though I haven't with the others, either---and I think I need to spend some time fleshing out the story some more in an outline than blindly writing. Of course, the early parts of the stories always seem boring to me as I'm trying to set everything up, so I'll just keep plowing through until inspiration strikes.
I've also started on another short story with my intrepid hero, which I'm having quite a bit of fun with thus far. I'll be posting it up when finished, probably in a couple of weeks.
I've also finished the map and the short history of it. The map should be coming up soon, and I think I may slowly release the histories of each section of the city to get into the habit of more regular posting here. Until then, here are the monthly charts.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
February 2009 wrap-up
It's a bit late coming (half a month) but here's what I did in February. There were some sick days and the total will seem low because of that, but also because I went into revising Blood and Stones with gusto.
I finished an initial revision, but there are a couple of things I'm still mulling over, such as one scene in the story where my detective and Nikki get into a highly repetitive verbal sparring match that I think needs some streamlining. I'm also still mulling over a couple of neighborhoods on the map. I think I'll have to revisit Google Maps to get some inspiration from existing cities, maybe Frisco this time.
I've also started the third book, which I've had the idea for since about the time I started Vampire Shadows, and have decided to call this oneHalloween Scourge after many hours tossing title ideas back and forth. I've always had difficulty with titles, trying to find the right mix, and part of me still isn't sure of Blood and Stones but I've gotten used to it, for now.
I'm waiting to hear back from a couple of friends before I start revision number two of the book, but I've also started looking at potential agents, and hope to start drafting some query letters. More to follow soon, but for now, here are the charts for February.
I finished an initial revision, but there are a couple of things I'm still mulling over, such as one scene in the story where my detective and Nikki get into a highly repetitive verbal sparring match that I think needs some streamlining. I'm also still mulling over a couple of neighborhoods on the map. I think I'll have to revisit Google Maps to get some inspiration from existing cities, maybe Frisco this time.
I've also started the third book, which I've had the idea for since about the time I started Vampire Shadows, and have decided to call this oneHalloween Scourge after many hours tossing title ideas back and forth. I've always had difficulty with titles, trying to find the right mix, and part of me still isn't sure of Blood and Stones but I've gotten used to it, for now.
I'm waiting to hear back from a couple of friends before I start revision number two of the book, but I've also started looking at potential agents, and hope to start drafting some query letters. More to follow soon, but for now, here are the charts for February.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Dread Words
I remember the first time rather vividly. There we were, the group of us, about six if I remember correctly, gathered together to play some D&D. We were facing off against something nasty (okay, so this part isn't vivid, but the important part is), and one of us makes an off-handed remark about something pretty much unrelated. That's when it happened. Chris, Chris of Infinite Crits, of the Blue Die, the very mover and shaker of the gods themselves, the DM, looks off into space, gets this cock-eyed smile on his face, then rubs his chin---sans goatee at the moment---and says simply those dreaded words.
All of us as players experienced the same feeling after he spoke, and I have gone on to DM myself, and had the same experience. Some player will make an off-handed comment, probably not even related to what's going on, and I just feel myself drift rather dreamily and the words come to my lips unbidden. As far as I know it's not any kind of rite or passage where a DM bestows the secret of the words along with the secret handshake and the knowledge of offering a couple of bucks to the pizza place for pizzas that were never picked up. No, this is something primal, something fundamental to the human condition, and in just a few everyday words put together.
Five words, to be exact, and these words cause such fear and dread in people that it must be witnessed to be believed. There are no words more fearsome that a DM can say. "Your character is dead" is nothing compared to these words. These words evoke fear and paranoia that haunt people in their sleep. Every shadow, every noise is feared as predators---real or imagined---loom ever closer.
Along with fear is the reaction to find out the cause. I remember as a player I frantically tried to puzzle out what I said that would cause my good friend to say the words to me. And when I say it to my friends, they, too, seek to discover just what caused me to say them. However, it's often moot. Efforts to learn what caused it are an attempt to discover the meaning I have inferred from them and to prevent future utterances of this dread incantation.
I have since learned that these words transcend the game. They apply to writing as well. A conversation with a friend, a random snippet from someone on the train, a song on the radio, a TV show, or any of a hundred other things can all cause me to utter the words. So it was last night in talking with a friend that something was said, and I was overcome by the power of the words. I knew I had that far-off look and smile on my face, and then the words came to me,
"That gives me an idea."
And so it did, and my mind whirls with the potential of this idea, and I will nurture it as a seedling until it is ready to bear fruit. It is clever, devious even, and will be something I truly enjoy. All that remains is for me to write it down and give it time to grow.
Perhaps I will one day do a kind of "behind the scenes" and reveal which idea is which, and what the random source of information was, and you will see just how bizarre the mind of a writer and DM can be . . .
That gives me an idea.
All of us as players experienced the same feeling after he spoke, and I have gone on to DM myself, and had the same experience. Some player will make an off-handed comment, probably not even related to what's going on, and I just feel myself drift rather dreamily and the words come to my lips unbidden. As far as I know it's not any kind of rite or passage where a DM bestows the secret of the words along with the secret handshake and the knowledge of offering a couple of bucks to the pizza place for pizzas that were never picked up. No, this is something primal, something fundamental to the human condition, and in just a few everyday words put together.
Five words, to be exact, and these words cause such fear and dread in people that it must be witnessed to be believed. There are no words more fearsome that a DM can say. "Your character is dead" is nothing compared to these words. These words evoke fear and paranoia that haunt people in their sleep. Every shadow, every noise is feared as predators---real or imagined---loom ever closer.
Along with fear is the reaction to find out the cause. I remember as a player I frantically tried to puzzle out what I said that would cause my good friend to say the words to me. And when I say it to my friends, they, too, seek to discover just what caused me to say them. However, it's often moot. Efforts to learn what caused it are an attempt to discover the meaning I have inferred from them and to prevent future utterances of this dread incantation.
I have since learned that these words transcend the game. They apply to writing as well. A conversation with a friend, a random snippet from someone on the train, a song on the radio, a TV show, or any of a hundred other things can all cause me to utter the words. So it was last night in talking with a friend that something was said, and I was overcome by the power of the words. I knew I had that far-off look and smile on my face, and then the words came to me,
"That gives me an idea."
And so it did, and my mind whirls with the potential of this idea, and I will nurture it as a seedling until it is ready to bear fruit. It is clever, devious even, and will be something I truly enjoy. All that remains is for me to write it down and give it time to grow.
Perhaps I will one day do a kind of "behind the scenes" and reveal which idea is which, and what the random source of information was, and you will see just how bizarre the mind of a writer and DM can be . . .
That gives me an idea.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Map
When I first started writing my PI, I didn't have any set place in mind. I was just winging it. I thought about setting it in a city, somewhere, but not where I lived because I just didn't find it interesting enough. I also didn't want to do a lot of research to make the setting "real," so I opted to create my own city. It's taken awhile, but I've put in some good work and come up with a map of the place, which I'll post when I've got a final version.
I'm not exactly sure how my city evolved into being. I think it all started with the Grind. The rough and tumble, yet trendy, neighborhood where a lot of the action takes place. I knew just from coming up with the name that I wanted a city with neighborhoods with lots of character, like New York, DC, and San Francisco. It made sense to me to divvy things up that way, and I could give more character to the city by doing so.
Something I noticed early on was that main locations were easy to deal with. I could describe them in full detail without any problem, but secondary areas were something else. I remember the city first began to pop in my mind when I created Kairos's Gyros. The Greek immigrant who made gyros really seemed to be one of these details that went beyond what was necessary, and made the place seem alive.
With the map I have also been generating a history of the fair city, which I may end up using for story fodder---or at least background detail---in the future. My next big challenge is to come up with streets that I can reference in the future, one of which I already have made pivotal, that will further bring the city to life.
I'm not exactly sure how my city evolved into being. I think it all started with the Grind. The rough and tumble, yet trendy, neighborhood where a lot of the action takes place. I knew just from coming up with the name that I wanted a city with neighborhoods with lots of character, like New York, DC, and San Francisco. It made sense to me to divvy things up that way, and I could give more character to the city by doing so.
Something I noticed early on was that main locations were easy to deal with. I could describe them in full detail without any problem, but secondary areas were something else. I remember the city first began to pop in my mind when I created Kairos's Gyros. The Greek immigrant who made gyros really seemed to be one of these details that went beyond what was necessary, and made the place seem alive.
With the map I have also been generating a history of the fair city, which I may end up using for story fodder---or at least background detail---in the future. My next big challenge is to come up with streets that I can reference in the future, one of which I already have made pivotal, that will further bring the city to life.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Mind Games
Mind Games
There I sat in the waiting room, not even bothering to page through the issues of Psychology Today and Highlights—I think there's a metaphor there, or at least something witty—while waiting for the guy to show up. I had a theory that anyone who holds appointments will never actually be on time for them. Doctors, lawyers, cable TV guys, and psychologists all seemed to have their own personal time zones where they existed outside of the clock. Mine was currently twenty-two minutes late.
The waiting room was, well, a waiting room. It had warm colors and semi-comfortable chairs—I think another rule was to have furniture that wasn't too comfortable. Abstract art hung on the wall in this one like some kind of preliminary Rorschach test. I was bored. Psychology wasn't my thing, and had nothing to do with what I did, so I was bored. Unfortunately, I didn't have a choice about being here, and it wasn't the first time.
The door opened to the inner office, and there was the guy, not looking at all like Sigmund Freud. He was young, for one thing, maybe younger than me. He had short brown hair with matching eyes and a warm smile as he showed his other patient out, a young woman in her twenties whose mascara ran a little bit at her blue eyes. Her long black hair was done in a pony tail, which bobbed as she nodded at his whispered instructions. In her hands was clutched a facial tissue with dark marks on it, no doubt from the mascara. I also noticed her ring finger. There was a patch on it that wasn't tanned, left from where a wedding band had been.
He escorted her out, asking if she was all right to drive, to which she nodded, and then she was gone.
"Thank you for coming Mr. . . . ?" he said to me, hand extended. I rose up from the chair and shook his hand.
"Allen. Matt Allen. Just like the last two times I was here."
"Of course. I apologize. It's been a busy week. Please give me a few minutes to get organized, and then we can begin."
"Sure thing, Doc. Take your time. Are things on the rocks for her or what?"
"Excuse me?" he said, perplexed.
"The girl. She headed for divorce court or some other marital trouble?"
"Recently divorced. How do you know that?"
"Ring finger looks like it had a ring, but now it's gone. That's a shame. Well, I'll just wait here for you, Doc."
He gave me some kind of look, then went back into his office to do his thing, so I sat back down in the chair.
I was bored. My jaw cracked as I yawned. I'd rather be working a case, even if it was a snowjob. In my pocket, my phone went off. I pulled the vibrating thing out and answered it.
"Allen."
"Matt, it's Jen. I know you're at the thing, but I wanted to tell you that Mrs. Rombova called and says she has your payment ready. I told her she could just send it in or drop it off, but she said she couldn't, so I called you." Jen was my assistant. In the old days of detectives I would have said she was my girl Friday, but somehow a lot of women thought that was sexist.
"Yeah, angel, it's all right." Mrs. Rombova didn't have much money, but she cooked a lot and well, so I let her pay me with food. I had jars of preserves as well. I didn't keep track of just how much she owed, just let her cook for me whenever she was able. With five kids she still managed to cook for all of them and run her small shop of, what else, home made foods. She could have dropped it off, but she lived all the way into Shadow Valley and didn't have a car. The bus system wasn't that great, either, so I'd go up there to see her.
"All right, Matt. I just wanted to check in with you. I hope this session goes better than the last."
"Me too, kitten, but somehow I doubt it. At least this is the last one."
"Well, good luck, Matt. I've gotten a couple of calls that might be cases for you, but I didn't want to bother you with them right now."
"That's good work, Jen. Just put 'em on my desk and I'll take care of them. Give me something to look forward to after this. I gotta go, the Doc is coming back out."
"Okay, Matt. Bye."
"Am I interrupting?" The Doc asked a bit snidely. Several responses came to mind that I could shoot back, mostly about why psychologists charged hourly, but I held off. I needed this guy right now. There was no way around it.
"No, Doc, I'm just finishing up."
"Very well, let's go in," he gestured towards the door, and I somehow felt like I was on a game show.
I went in, and this room was also very unlike the classical image. There was no couch or chaise lounge. There was a whiteboard on an easel with markers stuck to velcro on one side of it. There were some comfortable stuffed chairs, and the lighting was indirect. The room was overlarge, too. The guy's desk sat at one end, where his degree hung above it like some kind of halo, while the chairs were on the other. Psychology books dotted end and coffee tables around, all leather-bound and imposing.
I sat down in the chair, and just waited. He sat down almost opposite me, as if expecting me to start, so I didn't. Finally, it became too much for him.
"Why do you come here, Mr. Allen?"
"That a joke, Doc? I'm not exactly here by choice."
"Yes, that's true, and in order to expedite your required counseling, you need to at least participate in the process."
"Don't see much point to it, Doc. You wouldn't believe me. In fact you'd probably write me up for a bigger evaluation, if you didn't send for the guys with the straight jacket."
"Now, Mr. Allen, the field of psychology has made great strides. We recognize hundreds of different conditions, and have treatments for all of them."
"Yeah, the thing is, I'm not crazy. You'll just think I am."
"Well, why don't you tell me about it, and let me judge for myself."
"Because once I do, you'll feel obligated to try and 'help' me with my problem, even if it doesn't exist."
"Then we are coming to an impasse, Mr. Allen, and I won't be able to sign off on your evaluation."
"All right, doc, let me see if I can put it to you another way. You psychologists really are scientists."
"Yes, we are. We have struggled for decades to be recognized, but I don't see what that has to do with anything."
"Simple. You guys need proof. You won't believe something until it has been replicated in front of you. But there's one big problem with that, kinda like the tree in the forest making sound thing: Michigan J. Frog."
"I don't understand."
"That frog in the Looney Tunes cartoon. A guy finds him and the frog sings and dances, but only for that one guy. The frog never does it around anyone else."
"I think I remember that. Go on."
"Here it is. Everyone thinks the guy is crazy because they never see the frog singing despite what the guy is saying. I think in one cartoon he actually does end up in the looney bin because of this. My question to you, though, is he crazy? Just because others don't see the frog singing doesn't mean the frog can't actually sing."
"Well, I would have to say then, that he is not crazy."
"Remember, though, you can't break the wall."
"The wall?"
"The drama thing. You're not part of the audience, so you've never seen the frog sing or dance. You're just like the other guys who see the guy talk about a singing frog, but the frog just croaks for you. Is the guy crazy or not?"
"Well, based on that, I'd have to say that I believe he should have counseling."
"Come on, Doc, don't go waffling on the fence. You're not going to offend me by saying crazy or insane. The guy is obviously nuts, wacko, a few cards short of a deck, right?"
"Well, in my profession, we don't—"
"Hey, you want me to open up, then you have to do the same. I'm trying to make a point here, and you're running interference."
"Very well. For the purposes of this hypothetical, then yes, I'd say he is crazy."
"Based on your outside observations."
"Yes, of course."
"But as the audience, do you think he's crazy?"
"Well, no. I have observation that the man really does see and hear the frog. It's fact."
"See, that's where the problem is, though. The facts change. Before you're thinking the guy is crazy, just because you can't see or hear the frog singing. Now, if I start doing the same thing, you're going to think I'm crazy because what I'm talking about is so preposterous that I have to be off my rocker. With your science and your fancy degree, you can't think that I might be telling the truth and there might be something more out there."
"I see your point, Mr. Allen, but the court recommended that you either get some counseling or you serve some time in jail. The court already determined that you need some sort of counseling, so you see you're already at something of a disadvantage when it comes to me believing things that can't be seen or heard from you."
"Now, I didn't say they couldn't be seen or heard, Doc. That was just an example. The thing is, I can't make them appear for you. I'm your average joe, but I've seen and worked around stuff that's, well, pretty unbelievable."
"So, why don't you tell me what happened, and I promise to at least consider that the unbelievable is true. Will that suffice?"
"No, but I'm not going to get a better deal than that, am I?"
He shook his head no. Well, it was time to get to it, then.
"All right, so here's the skinny. This kid, well, this girl, maybe nineteen, comes into my office one day, and asks me to help her sister, who's becoming mixed up in some cult or with a witch or something. The details were all fuzzy."
"That seems little outside the normal work for a private investigator."
"Not for me. Well, it might be a little tame for a legit case, but I've handled weirder. Anyway, so I say sure, and she gives me a deposit of a couple hundred, and I'm on the case. I get some info from her, and then I'm off. Turns out that both things were right, only not in the way I thought. The witch and the cult are real, but it turns out that the sister is in charge of the cult and is the witch. Little details like that irritate me. Now, I'm not saying the girl that hired me knew because her sister was going by another name, and it wasn't Glinda."
"Glinda?"
"Geez, doc. Wizard of Oz? Good witch of the North? Ring any bells?"
"Oh yes, now I get the reference. I don't watch many movies or television."
"That explains something. You need to get your head out of those psych books, and into what people are doing. Anyway, she's the head of this cult, although it's not really a cult, more like a coven. She's training other girls to be witches."
"Like a sort of school?"
"Yeah, something like that, if you consider a group of women who routinely cavort about in their skins under the moon a school."
"I wouldn't normally consider that a school."
"Yeah, good for you, Doc, mind if I get back to this?"
"Please, go ahead."
"Right. So, I'm guessing you don't know much about witches or Wicca or whatever they're calling it these days. Most of them are pretty much harmless. They believe in nature and that they can cast spells that allow them to channel nature, but, and here's the thing that always cracks me up, they always insist that they only cast spells that are beneficial to people because they're some sort of karma or something that reflects selfish magic back at them three times over."
"That sounds like a rule to enforce moral behavior. I see nothing wrong with that at all, even though the idea of spells or incantations is ridiculous."
"Sure, Doc. Now, that's the party line, really. Or at least one of them. See, just like politics, there are splinter groups who believe something a little different. Maybe religion is a better example, but anyway. See, what I described is the everyday popular Wicca, but there's more than that. There are people who really get into it, who dig through tomes and find real incantations of spells to cast, but for the most part they toe the party line and are into goodness and nature and all that. But, like anything, there's always the extremists. This girl was one of those. And she was teaching others to be like her."
"And just what was involved in all of that."
"What do you want to hear, Doc? Black rituals where they fornicate with demons, make pacts with the devil, and engage in murdering men ritualistically to perform their rites?"
"No, that would be ridiculous. I don't think any rational person would do something like that."
"There ya go again, Doc, looking for the rational. What they do doesn't have to make sense to you, just to them. And, as it so happens, they didn't murder guys, just made them subservient to them and used them. There's a line of thought that says sex releases tremendous spiritual energy, especially under the full moon, so they go out and have fun at night a lot of the time. I've even heard some of the guys are even abducted for this, but I don't think the girls have that much trouble convincing a guy to go out and have a good time if you know what I'm saying."
"If the consumption of drugs and alcohol are part of this, I can readily believe something happening in the woods."
"I don't have any info on that one, Doc, but it wouldn't surprise me. That doesn't have anything to do with the story, though."
"How can the influence of drugs and alcohol not have a bearing on the story. It explains their irrational behavior."
"See, that's what I'm talking about. You think it's irrational. The thing is, though, you're looking at it only from your perspective. Naked people cavorting about in the woods because they want spiritual and natural energy is automatically crazy for you. Now, I'll grant you it's eccentric, but if they believe in it, then it's not crazy."
"I think I understand your point, Mr. Allen, but from an objective point of view, they are irrational."
"Yeah, but who decides on what's objective? You?"
"No. Many professionals have determined what constitutes normal rational behavior."
"Yeah, but that doesn't mean they aren't crazy. Just because the majority of people decide something doesn't necessarily mean they're on an even keel, but you're interrupting the story again."
"Very well, Mr. Allen, I think you do have an interesting point that can be explored somewhat. Please continue."
"Right, so I go down to talk to this girl, only I don't know what all she's involved in exactly. I start asking for the girl by name, but no one knows her by that name. It doesn't take me long to start asking for her by description, and bingo! I got her. They identify her as the one leading the coven, which automatically sets me on edge. See, I don't like dealing with witches. I had a bad experience with one a while back, and almost didn't make it out."
"Mr. Allen, I find it hard to believe that there is anything beyond a normal experience here. Perhaps there are some imaginings or some illusions, but nothing actually dangerous."
"Yeah, so much for the open mind. Anyway, I go talk to the girl, all of twenty-three, who's wearing these ceremonial robes of some sort. I don't know why. People like to show off for some reason. Okay, I should amend this, though. I didn't go talk to her so much as when I described her they took me to her. In fact, they wouldn't let me not see her. See, like I was saying, there's those who are involved in the not nice stuff trying to garner power for themselves. They're usually the ones who have gotten a hold of some kind of real magic. A tome, amulet, scroll or something which tells them the real deal on things. So, they take me in front of her, and she asks what I'm doing there, and I figure my only way out really is to play the sister card, so I play it. I tell her how much her sister is worried about her and that I'm just here to find her, I got no beef with anything she's doing. Really, I don't. There's so many screwed up kids out there doing these sorts of things I'm not responsible for them. I was hired to find the sister, and that's it. I'm not on a personal quest to fix everything that's wrong with the world, especially if I'm not getting paid. I don't like the idea of dying too much, either, so that's another reason not to stick my neck out."
"I can see that, now, what happend?"
"Right. Well, like I said, I had to play the sister card, and she gets this look on her face that's sort of sad and a little angry. She looks at me and says that those around her are her sisters, and that she didn't leave, her sister left her. Then she begins to tell me that, at first, they were both into this stuff, but when it got interesting—my words, not hers—her sister gets cold feet and backs off, saying they shouldn't be into that stuff. See, this is what I'm talking about when it comes to the details."
"Yes, I can see where that would be problematic. Go on."
"Well, I nod and do all the understanding stuff, but I tell her that she should at least talk to her sister, what with being family and all, since she did go through all the trouble to hire me, so that should count for something. I thought there was something pretty big going on here, but I wasn't hired to take this coven down. Not that I would take such a case. I just wanted to get the sisters talking to each other, then I felt I would have earned my day's pay. Of course, it ain't that simple. She goes on about how she has shunned the whole world and will not set foot out there again. She goes on like this for a few minutes, about how impure it is, and that behind their enchantments here they are safe. Now, I can see a wind-up well enough, and so I start to back away telling her that I'll tell that to the sister, and thanks for her time. In a perfect world, that would be it. Well, I should say that in a perfect world she would have been reasonable and gone to see her sister, but I would have settled for getting out of there. See, I've noticed that when people start talking about the impure, it can only lead to trouble.
"Sure enough, she says that I must be purified, which I take to mean offed, and there are women coming up all around me. Now, I could have made a break for it in the middle of this remote compound in the wilderness, but I knew that I wouldn't make it to my car before they nabbed me, so I went quietly, hoping to find a good opportunity to get out of there. I didn't think they would be used to taking people prisoner, and I was right. I was kept in a room, and they didn't even bother to pat me down. They shut me in there telling me that the magic will prevent me from leaving. I try the window, and there's something keeping me from going out it. Not like a force or a barrier, but rather whenever I got close to the window, I felt like I should go back into the middle of the room. Pretty disappointing, I know. There should be a blue sparkly field like in Star Trek or something."
"Well, it would make your story somewhat more interesting, if not any more plausible. What did you do?"
"Well, see, I know something that they didn't: faith works both ways. They had belief in their scrolls and enchantments, but I have belief in God, and I know that nothing can bar the way of God's power."
"You are clergy?"
"Me? No. Clergy don't have to do this for a living. No, I'm just a guy, but I know a few tidbits. I couldn't preach my way out or nothing, but I carry holy water in my flasks, and I figure that pouring some over me, maybe like a kind of baptism, will do the trick. The water has been blessed, and can go anywhere, so I figure it should help me overcome the thing that keeps me going back into the middle of the room."
"That sounds . . . incredible, really." The Doc frowned and pushed his glasses up on his face.
"Yeah, the logic really isn't there, but I believed it, anyway."
"I expected you to say that you engaged in a battle of wills until you overcame it."
"Nope. See, that doesn't work. I know my will isn't enough. The Man Upstairs, though, he's got it. So, I douse myself with a vial, say a prayer, and then try it. There's a little bit of a pull to try and get me to stay in the room, but I can ignore it now, and I'm out."
"That's it? I'm sure there must be more, Mr. Allen since the court sent you here."
"Yeah, there's more. See, I slip away easy enough, drive off in my car and back into the city with no problem. The next day I meet with my client and tell her what went down. Of course she gets emotional and teary because she's lost her sister. When it's over, she tells me she wants to go see her. I recommend against it seeing as I was already a captive, and I think I manage to talk her down, but really I know she's going to go out there and she's just humoring me, so I followed her out there."
"Why did you do that?"
"What do you want to hear, Doc, that it was the right thing to do? That even though I claim I won't stick my neck out I will because I'm a warm and fuzzy kind of guy? It's simple; she's my client. No one else is going to stick up for her, so I do."
"I see. What happened next?"
"So I followed her out there, discreetly, and yeah, it's hard to be discreet in the boonies. Well, I guess it's not that bad. It's the outskirts of Shadow Valley, near Mt. Kelly. Lots of the folks in Shadow Valley seem to think that Mt. Kelly has some sort of power to it. They go back and forth on it. Some say it's good, some say it's bad. I just say it's there, and it happened to be where my client was going."
"What did you intend to do?"
"There are no plans, Doc. There's no telling what I would run into, so I just wing it. The only sure thing is that I know it's not going to be anything good."
"In the movies I'm sure you're used to seeing the guy sneak in through the heavily guarded perimeter using stealthy training and such, well, this place wasn't exactly a military fortress. These were just people doing their thing, even as messed up as it was in the head."
"I think you are hardly qualified to make that assertion, Mr. Allen."
"Sure, Doc; you're the expert. Anyway, I just circled around to the side, hoping to get close to them so I could spy out my client. That's the easy part. I manage to get up higher than them by going up on this little ridge, which gives me a good view of their place with my spyglass. So I'm looking down there—"
"Excuse me a moment. Did you say spyglass?"
"Yeah."
"Wouldn't binoculars work better?"
"Nope. Binoculars are right out."
"And why is that?"
"Simple. Binoculars have mirrors. A spyglass just has a straight shot of lenses."
"Mirrors. Are you referring to vampires, Mr. Allen?"
"Among other things, but yeah. I don't figure any of the people in these camps is a vampire, but I don't see any reason to carry two different things that do the same job, so I stick with my spyglass."
"You are aware how all of this sounds, aren't you?"
"Yeah, like I'm a few cards shy of a full deck, but I told you that's what it would be like, Doc. So, I'm looking about, and I think I can sneak in there without causing a fuss, and I was sure that they'd have my client in the main building. That was where they took me, anyway. Only, before I can move down there, I see a line of them start to move out, the sister as high mucky-muck leader in front with her purple hood on. My client is a few back from the front, surrounded like they want to keep her from running. They all look like they're headed somewhere special, fourteen in all. I don't know what it is exactly, but there's a fascination with a coven having to be thirteen women. Now I figure my odds just went up."
"Why is that?"
"Well, like I said, there's thirteen. There's more than that in the compound, maybe another thirty."
"If there are supposed to be thirteen in a coven then why—"
"I don't' know, Doc. I'm guessing that others get promoted up so they can handle their own coven, and there's recruitment going on so they don't have all their numbers."
"Yes, I suppose that makes sense."
"So, I'm figuring that luck is turning my way and I've got a chance to grab the girl before they do something to her. I follow them from my position, moving alongside from my ridge until they come up to a clearing where there's a circle of white stones. I figure that this is the place, so I start getting closer. I lose sight of them for a bit, but when I get them back in view, my client is tied to a spike driven into the ground. She can't go more than a couple of feet from the spike because of the rope. One of the girls begins to use chalk dust to make a geogram on the ground."
"I'm sorry. A what?"
"A geometric pattern. The people who use magic think that certain shapes and substances produce certain results. More than a few of them are used for summonings of some sort. I got no idea what shape they're making exactly, but the curves make me think Celtic. Maybe that was just because they were witches. Just from that I start to get real nervous. I don 't like the idea of things popping in from other places to ruin my day, so I want to grab my client and get out of there on the double."
"A reasonable desire, given your state of mind."
"Yeah. So I get as close as I dare while they're preparing their thing for whatever, and I just wait patiently. When they're done drawing and pulling out herbs and arranging other rocks inside the geogram, they join hands and begin to chant. This ain't no girl scout campfire circle, either. I don't know what language it is, but it isn't English, and it ain't Latin; make sure you remember that, Doc. Magic spells don't use Latin! I don't know why every major book and movie out there seems to think Latin is used for magic. If that was the case, then high school and college students everywhere would shooting out fireballs and turning people into frogs or whatever."
"Duly noted. Continue."
"So, while they're wrapped up in that, I make my move. I head down there and up to my client. By this point she realizes I was right about her sister being off her rocker, and she wants out. So I pull out my knife and start cutting her free. Of course, one of the group sees, but it's not like they can stop their chanting."
"Why is that?"
"Well, bad things can happen if it's not completed like it's supposed to be. Things just kind of short circuit and there's no telling what can happen. A friend of mine told me that one time she tried to stop a spell mid-way through, and instead of what she was going for, a cloud of gas materialized in the room stinking up the place. It also worked on her like helium, making her voice high-pitched for about an hour."
"You have a friend who is a witch?"
Damn. I shouldn't have gone mentioning that. Well, I wasn't about to bring Janissia into this. "Yeah. Well, former witch. She's kind of hung up her hat and broomstick since the whole thing didn't pan out. So, anyway, I'm sawing away. In the movies knives can snap through rope pretty quick, but if there's no serrated edge, it can take awhile to saw through a good, thick rope like these women were using.
"You know that while I'm doing this the women aren't exactly doing nothing. They finish their chant just before I cut through the rope, and I hear my client gasp. That was my big clue something bad was about to happen. It was too late to do anything, so I sawed and yanked on the rope, and the rest of it broke, and I told her to run. I turn around in time to catch a kick to my hip instead of a knee to the face. It wasn't the sister, just one of the others. She was just a slip of a girl so I tossed her aside. I wasn't interested in fighting them, I just needed to know if all of them were about to drop on top of me.
"I was lucky, and they weren't, but that was just because there was light pulsing from the circle. You know, most magic doesn't have any kind of effect, but this one did, and it through me for a minute. Instead of doing the smart thing and running, I stared as a shape came into being. It was hard to tell if it came out of the light or the air. But the next thing I knew, it was there. I wasn't sure what I was looking at. It was big, had a greenish color to it and no real face that I could tell. No eyes, ears, mouth, or anything. It had a head, and it made noises from someplace. The women drop down to their knees and bow down in worship. The sister begins talking, but I'm too dumbfounded to do anything."
"What was it?"
"Hell if I know. I'd guess some sort of nature spirit or demon, but I didn't exactly ask the thing for ID."
"As I recall, you said something similar to the judge."
"Yeah, well, sometimes I've got a problem with doing stuff like that. Anyway, I didn't know what the hell it was, but I generally don't have a problem with things like this as long as they leave me alone. Some of them are pretty harmless, or at least will leave me alone, and that's all I ask. Not everything is about the end of the world. These things take place all the time, and as far as I know, the world hasn't ended. That doesn't mean these critters are nice, either. This one saw all the kneeling women, and at random it backhanded one with a paw the size of your head out of the circle. That's when hell broke loose. The women scattered except for the sister, who kept trying to talk to the thing. It turned, and I knew the thing was going to smack her next; I knew she deserved it, but I just couldn't let my client's sister get killed by this thing, and people who get hit hard enough that they fly fifteen feet through the air don't shrug it off like in the latest action flick.
"As I understand the accepted rules of these things from literature and movies, those circles are supposed to prevent things like this from happening."
"Well, yes and no. Most circles have it built into them, but not all. This one didn't. I have no idea why, but there it is. I'll have to ask someone about that. So, I get my gun out and I take a couple of shots at the thing, aiming high so I don't hit any fleeing women. I'm not a marksman, but the thing is the size of a barn door, so I plugged it. It roared from somewhere, which is when it noticed me, and it started racing at me. Evidently I didn't slow it down with my bullets, so I needed a new plan. The sister stared in horror at the thing, as if rooted. She wasn't going to be any help to me.
"I had about five steps before this thing would be on top of me, so I looked for something else. In the circle, I saw that the light actually came from the objects at each of the convergence points."
"Convergence points? What are those?"
"Nothing special, Doc. It's just where the chalk lines meet. Fancy words for them, I guess. So I see a rock and a, and a couple of other things too small for me to make out. The old oil lamp seemed like my best shot, so I lined up and took it. I squeezed off about four rounds before I knew to stop. I don't know which of my shots hit, but it did, and the lamp went flying out of the circle with flaming oil around it. Now the thing howled and disappeared like it had come. That's pretty much it."
"I think that there would have to be something more or my services would not be necessary, Mr. Allen."
"Yeah, well, the cops showed up right as I took my shots. Turns out that my client had called the cops just before leaving her car as a precaution. Now I know a couple of the uniforms saw the thing, but some lieutenant wasn't having any of it, so me and the whole coven were under arrest. My client vouched for me that I wasn't part of the cult, but I still got stuck with an illegal discharge of a firearm for shooting while people were around. Not exactly great for me, but it could have been worse, I guess."
"And the judge gave you a suspended sentence if you attended some counseling."
"Yep, that's the size of it. So, that's pretty much the end of the story, Doc. Guess you're free to not believe me, now." I reclined back, ready to hear the inevitable.
"I believe you saw these things, Mr. Allen." He closed his notebook and I sat up, looking at him.
"You're kidding me."
"I'm not. I believe you saw and heard everything you described. I believe you are suffering hallucinations and delusions. You are completely convinced about these things."
"So much for an open mind."
"I have listened quite openly, Mr. Allen, but there is nothing to substantiate what you say."
"Michigan J. Frog," I mumbled.
"Yes, your point is quite clear, yet there must be a standard of proof, or else all of the people in very serious need of help would never receive it. I can help you, Mr. Allen. Once we make a breakthrough in counseling, you'll be able to see that all of this was in your mind."
"No thanks, Doc. I appreciate it, but I'm not going to be telling you about my mother or Randy Stevenson who beat me up in fifth grade. Just sign off that I completed that required counseling, and we'll be square."
"I'm afraid it's not that simple, Mr. Allen. You see, as part of the required counseling, I must give my honest assessment of you, and I'm afraid that while mostly rational, you are quite deluded, and would constitute a danger to society. I'm certain that the judge would have no problem assigning your jail sentence. You may even find your gun license withdrawn. I think with help you can become a productive member of society. There are certain medications we can try to cut down on the hallucinations."
"I don't do meds, Doc. I can't afford anything that will play with my head. I need my head."
"Only because you believe, in paranoia, that there are people and creatures with magic that will come after you."
"So it's a stalemate. You're convinced I'm nuts, but I know I'm right in the head. You need your Michigan J. Frog in order to realize I'm not going crazy."
"But as you said, the frog is only visible to the audience, not those within the story, and the rules of society mandate that I act for the greater good. And this is not a stalemate since I will report to the judge. Please, Mr. Allen, let me help you. I don't want to see you have to give up your livelihood. You can still be a private investigator, probably more effective than you already are." The guy had me over a barrel. I didn't have any real choice, here. Well, maybe I did, but it meant calling in a favor, and I didn't want to do that. I did know a vampire that could come in and convince the guy that I was on the level, but that was a pretty big favor to call in, and I'd be paying for it for awhile. Still, even if it meant tying myself to her, it was better than having to visit the shrink.
"Doc, I would just like to say that you're a class A jerk."
"I have been called worse things, Mr. Allen. I have seen people with stories more preposterous than yours, too, and been able to help them."
"Ye should've told th' story better, Matt'ew," a new, but familiar, voice said.
The doc gasped and I turned to see a short man, not a little person, just a short man, wearing green with pouches around his waist. I hadn't seen him in awhile, but he had an annoying habit of popping up at odd times.
"What are you doing here, Michaleen."
"A favor, Matt'ew. Ye don't really want to be calling that siren to help you out, do ye?"
"Now that's funny. I know you can't read thoughts, leprechaun."
"No, 'course not, Matt'ew, but what else would ye be considerin'?"
"What, what is that. Where did it come from?" The doc said, more than a little freaked out as he tried to back into his chair."
"I'm not a what!" Michaleen said indignantly, "I'm a leprechaun, as Matt'ew has pointed out to ye. This one's not to swift, eh Matt'ew?"
"Yeah, I noticed that. Okay, Doc, here's your proof. One genuine magical creature right before your eyes. What do you think now?"
"I think—I think that I'm imagining things. I'm tired, and your story has put thoughts into my mind, and I'm just imagining things."
Michaleen didn't seem to like that, so he got out of the chair, walked over, and kicked the shrink in the shin. "Can yer imagination do that?"
"Michaleen,"
"Matt'ew, I be tellin' ye that's not my name before."
"Yeah, but you're not going to tell me your name, so I have to call you something."
"A fair point, lad."
"Not real, not real, not real, not real," the doc chanted.
"For Pete's sake, Doc. Not five minutes ago you tried to get me to see the truth, and now you're acting like a kid. Snap out of it! This is real and you've got to deal with it. Believe me, Doc, you should be glad it's Michaleen instead of someone else. If you insist on treating me, it's going to get ugly as I pull out an ace. Leprechauns are generally just mild tricksters—"
"Aye, t'is true," Michaleen interjected.
"Believe me when I say you don't want to have an encounter with a vampire or a mystic with a perverse sense of humor."
"Tony's a rare one, that be sure," Michaleen added.
"So you can sign off on my counseling, telling the judge I'm sane, and you won't have to see me or Michaleen again."
Michaleen smiled, and held up his hand with a gold coin. "Fer your trouble."
With a shaking hand, the shrink took the coin and looked at it. "Does this mean there's a pot of gold?"
"Of course there's a pot of gold! but only at the end of the rainbow."
"Let it go, Doc. Just be glad of what you've got."
The psychiatrist nodded and reached for his notebook and took out the court forms, but just before setting pen to paper, he stopped.
"No, this doesn't make sense. You're just a person dressed as a leprechaun," he addressed Michaleen. "You came in here to convince me he doesn't need counseling."
"Aye, I did."
"Well, it won't work. So you snuck in here without my seeing, that's hardly proof of the supernatural."
Michaleen held up his hands and a suddenly a rainbow arced from one to the other. One his right hand sat the image of a pot of gold, all the coins gleaming brightly.
The doctor's breath caught, and then he started writing quickly on the form. "I–I'll send this to the court right away."
"I appreciate it, Doc. Now, you might be tempted to start talking about this with others, but then you might end up on someone else's couch seeing your own practice in jeopardy. When you see Michigan J. Frog, keep it to yourself." I grabbed my hat and coat, and headed out. "See you in the funny papers, Doc."
"Good day to you, Doctor," Michaleen said with a tip of his hat, then followed me out.
The receptionist goggled at Michaleen, but didn't say anything, and it wasn't until the elevator door closed that I said something to the leprechaun.
"You know that he'll think he can use that coin as proof."
"Aye, lad. That be the best part. Be seeing you, Matt'ew," and the leprechaun was gone as neatly as Houdini.
There I sat in the waiting room, not even bothering to page through the issues of Psychology Today and Highlights—I think there's a metaphor there, or at least something witty—while waiting for the guy to show up. I had a theory that anyone who holds appointments will never actually be on time for them. Doctors, lawyers, cable TV guys, and psychologists all seemed to have their own personal time zones where they existed outside of the clock. Mine was currently twenty-two minutes late.
The waiting room was, well, a waiting room. It had warm colors and semi-comfortable chairs—I think another rule was to have furniture that wasn't too comfortable. Abstract art hung on the wall in this one like some kind of preliminary Rorschach test. I was bored. Psychology wasn't my thing, and had nothing to do with what I did, so I was bored. Unfortunately, I didn't have a choice about being here, and it wasn't the first time.
The door opened to the inner office, and there was the guy, not looking at all like Sigmund Freud. He was young, for one thing, maybe younger than me. He had short brown hair with matching eyes and a warm smile as he showed his other patient out, a young woman in her twenties whose mascara ran a little bit at her blue eyes. Her long black hair was done in a pony tail, which bobbed as she nodded at his whispered instructions. In her hands was clutched a facial tissue with dark marks on it, no doubt from the mascara. I also noticed her ring finger. There was a patch on it that wasn't tanned, left from where a wedding band had been.
He escorted her out, asking if she was all right to drive, to which she nodded, and then she was gone.
"Thank you for coming Mr. . . . ?" he said to me, hand extended. I rose up from the chair and shook his hand.
"Allen. Matt Allen. Just like the last two times I was here."
"Of course. I apologize. It's been a busy week. Please give me a few minutes to get organized, and then we can begin."
"Sure thing, Doc. Take your time. Are things on the rocks for her or what?"
"Excuse me?" he said, perplexed.
"The girl. She headed for divorce court or some other marital trouble?"
"Recently divorced. How do you know that?"
"Ring finger looks like it had a ring, but now it's gone. That's a shame. Well, I'll just wait here for you, Doc."
He gave me some kind of look, then went back into his office to do his thing, so I sat back down in the chair.
I was bored. My jaw cracked as I yawned. I'd rather be working a case, even if it was a snowjob. In my pocket, my phone went off. I pulled the vibrating thing out and answered it.
"Allen."
"Matt, it's Jen. I know you're at the thing, but I wanted to tell you that Mrs. Rombova called and says she has your payment ready. I told her she could just send it in or drop it off, but she said she couldn't, so I called you." Jen was my assistant. In the old days of detectives I would have said she was my girl Friday, but somehow a lot of women thought that was sexist.
"Yeah, angel, it's all right." Mrs. Rombova didn't have much money, but she cooked a lot and well, so I let her pay me with food. I had jars of preserves as well. I didn't keep track of just how much she owed, just let her cook for me whenever she was able. With five kids she still managed to cook for all of them and run her small shop of, what else, home made foods. She could have dropped it off, but she lived all the way into Shadow Valley and didn't have a car. The bus system wasn't that great, either, so I'd go up there to see her.
"All right, Matt. I just wanted to check in with you. I hope this session goes better than the last."
"Me too, kitten, but somehow I doubt it. At least this is the last one."
"Well, good luck, Matt. I've gotten a couple of calls that might be cases for you, but I didn't want to bother you with them right now."
"That's good work, Jen. Just put 'em on my desk and I'll take care of them. Give me something to look forward to after this. I gotta go, the Doc is coming back out."
"Okay, Matt. Bye."
"Am I interrupting?" The Doc asked a bit snidely. Several responses came to mind that I could shoot back, mostly about why psychologists charged hourly, but I held off. I needed this guy right now. There was no way around it.
"No, Doc, I'm just finishing up."
"Very well, let's go in," he gestured towards the door, and I somehow felt like I was on a game show.
I went in, and this room was also very unlike the classical image. There was no couch or chaise lounge. There was a whiteboard on an easel with markers stuck to velcro on one side of it. There were some comfortable stuffed chairs, and the lighting was indirect. The room was overlarge, too. The guy's desk sat at one end, where his degree hung above it like some kind of halo, while the chairs were on the other. Psychology books dotted end and coffee tables around, all leather-bound and imposing.
I sat down in the chair, and just waited. He sat down almost opposite me, as if expecting me to start, so I didn't. Finally, it became too much for him.
"Why do you come here, Mr. Allen?"
"That a joke, Doc? I'm not exactly here by choice."
"Yes, that's true, and in order to expedite your required counseling, you need to at least participate in the process."
"Don't see much point to it, Doc. You wouldn't believe me. In fact you'd probably write me up for a bigger evaluation, if you didn't send for the guys with the straight jacket."
"Now, Mr. Allen, the field of psychology has made great strides. We recognize hundreds of different conditions, and have treatments for all of them."
"Yeah, the thing is, I'm not crazy. You'll just think I am."
"Well, why don't you tell me about it, and let me judge for myself."
"Because once I do, you'll feel obligated to try and 'help' me with my problem, even if it doesn't exist."
"Then we are coming to an impasse, Mr. Allen, and I won't be able to sign off on your evaluation."
"All right, doc, let me see if I can put it to you another way. You psychologists really are scientists."
"Yes, we are. We have struggled for decades to be recognized, but I don't see what that has to do with anything."
"Simple. You guys need proof. You won't believe something until it has been replicated in front of you. But there's one big problem with that, kinda like the tree in the forest making sound thing: Michigan J. Frog."
"I don't understand."
"That frog in the Looney Tunes cartoon. A guy finds him and the frog sings and dances, but only for that one guy. The frog never does it around anyone else."
"I think I remember that. Go on."
"Here it is. Everyone thinks the guy is crazy because they never see the frog singing despite what the guy is saying. I think in one cartoon he actually does end up in the looney bin because of this. My question to you, though, is he crazy? Just because others don't see the frog singing doesn't mean the frog can't actually sing."
"Well, I would have to say then, that he is not crazy."
"Remember, though, you can't break the wall."
"The wall?"
"The drama thing. You're not part of the audience, so you've never seen the frog sing or dance. You're just like the other guys who see the guy talk about a singing frog, but the frog just croaks for you. Is the guy crazy or not?"
"Well, based on that, I'd have to say that I believe he should have counseling."
"Come on, Doc, don't go waffling on the fence. You're not going to offend me by saying crazy or insane. The guy is obviously nuts, wacko, a few cards short of a deck, right?"
"Well, in my profession, we don't—"
"Hey, you want me to open up, then you have to do the same. I'm trying to make a point here, and you're running interference."
"Very well. For the purposes of this hypothetical, then yes, I'd say he is crazy."
"Based on your outside observations."
"Yes, of course."
"But as the audience, do you think he's crazy?"
"Well, no. I have observation that the man really does see and hear the frog. It's fact."
"See, that's where the problem is, though. The facts change. Before you're thinking the guy is crazy, just because you can't see or hear the frog singing. Now, if I start doing the same thing, you're going to think I'm crazy because what I'm talking about is so preposterous that I have to be off my rocker. With your science and your fancy degree, you can't think that I might be telling the truth and there might be something more out there."
"I see your point, Mr. Allen, but the court recommended that you either get some counseling or you serve some time in jail. The court already determined that you need some sort of counseling, so you see you're already at something of a disadvantage when it comes to me believing things that can't be seen or heard from you."
"Now, I didn't say they couldn't be seen or heard, Doc. That was just an example. The thing is, I can't make them appear for you. I'm your average joe, but I've seen and worked around stuff that's, well, pretty unbelievable."
"So, why don't you tell me what happened, and I promise to at least consider that the unbelievable is true. Will that suffice?"
"No, but I'm not going to get a better deal than that, am I?"
He shook his head no. Well, it was time to get to it, then.
"All right, so here's the skinny. This kid, well, this girl, maybe nineteen, comes into my office one day, and asks me to help her sister, who's becoming mixed up in some cult or with a witch or something. The details were all fuzzy."
"That seems little outside the normal work for a private investigator."
"Not for me. Well, it might be a little tame for a legit case, but I've handled weirder. Anyway, so I say sure, and she gives me a deposit of a couple hundred, and I'm on the case. I get some info from her, and then I'm off. Turns out that both things were right, only not in the way I thought. The witch and the cult are real, but it turns out that the sister is in charge of the cult and is the witch. Little details like that irritate me. Now, I'm not saying the girl that hired me knew because her sister was going by another name, and it wasn't Glinda."
"Glinda?"
"Geez, doc. Wizard of Oz? Good witch of the North? Ring any bells?"
"Oh yes, now I get the reference. I don't watch many movies or television."
"That explains something. You need to get your head out of those psych books, and into what people are doing. Anyway, she's the head of this cult, although it's not really a cult, more like a coven. She's training other girls to be witches."
"Like a sort of school?"
"Yeah, something like that, if you consider a group of women who routinely cavort about in their skins under the moon a school."
"I wouldn't normally consider that a school."
"Yeah, good for you, Doc, mind if I get back to this?"
"Please, go ahead."
"Right. So, I'm guessing you don't know much about witches or Wicca or whatever they're calling it these days. Most of them are pretty much harmless. They believe in nature and that they can cast spells that allow them to channel nature, but, and here's the thing that always cracks me up, they always insist that they only cast spells that are beneficial to people because they're some sort of karma or something that reflects selfish magic back at them three times over."
"That sounds like a rule to enforce moral behavior. I see nothing wrong with that at all, even though the idea of spells or incantations is ridiculous."
"Sure, Doc. Now, that's the party line, really. Or at least one of them. See, just like politics, there are splinter groups who believe something a little different. Maybe religion is a better example, but anyway. See, what I described is the everyday popular Wicca, but there's more than that. There are people who really get into it, who dig through tomes and find real incantations of spells to cast, but for the most part they toe the party line and are into goodness and nature and all that. But, like anything, there's always the extremists. This girl was one of those. And she was teaching others to be like her."
"And just what was involved in all of that."
"What do you want to hear, Doc? Black rituals where they fornicate with demons, make pacts with the devil, and engage in murdering men ritualistically to perform their rites?"
"No, that would be ridiculous. I don't think any rational person would do something like that."
"There ya go again, Doc, looking for the rational. What they do doesn't have to make sense to you, just to them. And, as it so happens, they didn't murder guys, just made them subservient to them and used them. There's a line of thought that says sex releases tremendous spiritual energy, especially under the full moon, so they go out and have fun at night a lot of the time. I've even heard some of the guys are even abducted for this, but I don't think the girls have that much trouble convincing a guy to go out and have a good time if you know what I'm saying."
"If the consumption of drugs and alcohol are part of this, I can readily believe something happening in the woods."
"I don't have any info on that one, Doc, but it wouldn't surprise me. That doesn't have anything to do with the story, though."
"How can the influence of drugs and alcohol not have a bearing on the story. It explains their irrational behavior."
"See, that's what I'm talking about. You think it's irrational. The thing is, though, you're looking at it only from your perspective. Naked people cavorting about in the woods because they want spiritual and natural energy is automatically crazy for you. Now, I'll grant you it's eccentric, but if they believe in it, then it's not crazy."
"I think I understand your point, Mr. Allen, but from an objective point of view, they are irrational."
"Yeah, but who decides on what's objective? You?"
"No. Many professionals have determined what constitutes normal rational behavior."
"Yeah, but that doesn't mean they aren't crazy. Just because the majority of people decide something doesn't necessarily mean they're on an even keel, but you're interrupting the story again."
"Very well, Mr. Allen, I think you do have an interesting point that can be explored somewhat. Please continue."
"Right, so I go down to talk to this girl, only I don't know what all she's involved in exactly. I start asking for the girl by name, but no one knows her by that name. It doesn't take me long to start asking for her by description, and bingo! I got her. They identify her as the one leading the coven, which automatically sets me on edge. See, I don't like dealing with witches. I had a bad experience with one a while back, and almost didn't make it out."
"Mr. Allen, I find it hard to believe that there is anything beyond a normal experience here. Perhaps there are some imaginings or some illusions, but nothing actually dangerous."
"Yeah, so much for the open mind. Anyway, I go talk to the girl, all of twenty-three, who's wearing these ceremonial robes of some sort. I don't know why. People like to show off for some reason. Okay, I should amend this, though. I didn't go talk to her so much as when I described her they took me to her. In fact, they wouldn't let me not see her. See, like I was saying, there's those who are involved in the not nice stuff trying to garner power for themselves. They're usually the ones who have gotten a hold of some kind of real magic. A tome, amulet, scroll or something which tells them the real deal on things. So, they take me in front of her, and she asks what I'm doing there, and I figure my only way out really is to play the sister card, so I play it. I tell her how much her sister is worried about her and that I'm just here to find her, I got no beef with anything she's doing. Really, I don't. There's so many screwed up kids out there doing these sorts of things I'm not responsible for them. I was hired to find the sister, and that's it. I'm not on a personal quest to fix everything that's wrong with the world, especially if I'm not getting paid. I don't like the idea of dying too much, either, so that's another reason not to stick my neck out."
"I can see that, now, what happend?"
"Right. Well, like I said, I had to play the sister card, and she gets this look on her face that's sort of sad and a little angry. She looks at me and says that those around her are her sisters, and that she didn't leave, her sister left her. Then she begins to tell me that, at first, they were both into this stuff, but when it got interesting—my words, not hers—her sister gets cold feet and backs off, saying they shouldn't be into that stuff. See, this is what I'm talking about when it comes to the details."
"Yes, I can see where that would be problematic. Go on."
"Well, I nod and do all the understanding stuff, but I tell her that she should at least talk to her sister, what with being family and all, since she did go through all the trouble to hire me, so that should count for something. I thought there was something pretty big going on here, but I wasn't hired to take this coven down. Not that I would take such a case. I just wanted to get the sisters talking to each other, then I felt I would have earned my day's pay. Of course, it ain't that simple. She goes on about how she has shunned the whole world and will not set foot out there again. She goes on like this for a few minutes, about how impure it is, and that behind their enchantments here they are safe. Now, I can see a wind-up well enough, and so I start to back away telling her that I'll tell that to the sister, and thanks for her time. In a perfect world, that would be it. Well, I should say that in a perfect world she would have been reasonable and gone to see her sister, but I would have settled for getting out of there. See, I've noticed that when people start talking about the impure, it can only lead to trouble.
"Sure enough, she says that I must be purified, which I take to mean offed, and there are women coming up all around me. Now, I could have made a break for it in the middle of this remote compound in the wilderness, but I knew that I wouldn't make it to my car before they nabbed me, so I went quietly, hoping to find a good opportunity to get out of there. I didn't think they would be used to taking people prisoner, and I was right. I was kept in a room, and they didn't even bother to pat me down. They shut me in there telling me that the magic will prevent me from leaving. I try the window, and there's something keeping me from going out it. Not like a force or a barrier, but rather whenever I got close to the window, I felt like I should go back into the middle of the room. Pretty disappointing, I know. There should be a blue sparkly field like in Star Trek or something."
"Well, it would make your story somewhat more interesting, if not any more plausible. What did you do?"
"Well, see, I know something that they didn't: faith works both ways. They had belief in their scrolls and enchantments, but I have belief in God, and I know that nothing can bar the way of God's power."
"You are clergy?"
"Me? No. Clergy don't have to do this for a living. No, I'm just a guy, but I know a few tidbits. I couldn't preach my way out or nothing, but I carry holy water in my flasks, and I figure that pouring some over me, maybe like a kind of baptism, will do the trick. The water has been blessed, and can go anywhere, so I figure it should help me overcome the thing that keeps me going back into the middle of the room."
"That sounds . . . incredible, really." The Doc frowned and pushed his glasses up on his face.
"Yeah, the logic really isn't there, but I believed it, anyway."
"I expected you to say that you engaged in a battle of wills until you overcame it."
"Nope. See, that doesn't work. I know my will isn't enough. The Man Upstairs, though, he's got it. So, I douse myself with a vial, say a prayer, and then try it. There's a little bit of a pull to try and get me to stay in the room, but I can ignore it now, and I'm out."
"That's it? I'm sure there must be more, Mr. Allen since the court sent you here."
"Yeah, there's more. See, I slip away easy enough, drive off in my car and back into the city with no problem. The next day I meet with my client and tell her what went down. Of course she gets emotional and teary because she's lost her sister. When it's over, she tells me she wants to go see her. I recommend against it seeing as I was already a captive, and I think I manage to talk her down, but really I know she's going to go out there and she's just humoring me, so I followed her out there."
"Why did you do that?"
"What do you want to hear, Doc, that it was the right thing to do? That even though I claim I won't stick my neck out I will because I'm a warm and fuzzy kind of guy? It's simple; she's my client. No one else is going to stick up for her, so I do."
"I see. What happened next?"
"So I followed her out there, discreetly, and yeah, it's hard to be discreet in the boonies. Well, I guess it's not that bad. It's the outskirts of Shadow Valley, near Mt. Kelly. Lots of the folks in Shadow Valley seem to think that Mt. Kelly has some sort of power to it. They go back and forth on it. Some say it's good, some say it's bad. I just say it's there, and it happened to be where my client was going."
"What did you intend to do?"
"There are no plans, Doc. There's no telling what I would run into, so I just wing it. The only sure thing is that I know it's not going to be anything good."
"In the movies I'm sure you're used to seeing the guy sneak in through the heavily guarded perimeter using stealthy training and such, well, this place wasn't exactly a military fortress. These were just people doing their thing, even as messed up as it was in the head."
"I think you are hardly qualified to make that assertion, Mr. Allen."
"Sure, Doc; you're the expert. Anyway, I just circled around to the side, hoping to get close to them so I could spy out my client. That's the easy part. I manage to get up higher than them by going up on this little ridge, which gives me a good view of their place with my spyglass. So I'm looking down there—"
"Excuse me a moment. Did you say spyglass?"
"Yeah."
"Wouldn't binoculars work better?"
"Nope. Binoculars are right out."
"And why is that?"
"Simple. Binoculars have mirrors. A spyglass just has a straight shot of lenses."
"Mirrors. Are you referring to vampires, Mr. Allen?"
"Among other things, but yeah. I don't figure any of the people in these camps is a vampire, but I don't see any reason to carry two different things that do the same job, so I stick with my spyglass."
"You are aware how all of this sounds, aren't you?"
"Yeah, like I'm a few cards shy of a full deck, but I told you that's what it would be like, Doc. So, I'm looking about, and I think I can sneak in there without causing a fuss, and I was sure that they'd have my client in the main building. That was where they took me, anyway. Only, before I can move down there, I see a line of them start to move out, the sister as high mucky-muck leader in front with her purple hood on. My client is a few back from the front, surrounded like they want to keep her from running. They all look like they're headed somewhere special, fourteen in all. I don't know what it is exactly, but there's a fascination with a coven having to be thirteen women. Now I figure my odds just went up."
"Why is that?"
"Well, like I said, there's thirteen. There's more than that in the compound, maybe another thirty."
"If there are supposed to be thirteen in a coven then why—"
"I don't' know, Doc. I'm guessing that others get promoted up so they can handle their own coven, and there's recruitment going on so they don't have all their numbers."
"Yes, I suppose that makes sense."
"So, I'm figuring that luck is turning my way and I've got a chance to grab the girl before they do something to her. I follow them from my position, moving alongside from my ridge until they come up to a clearing where there's a circle of white stones. I figure that this is the place, so I start getting closer. I lose sight of them for a bit, but when I get them back in view, my client is tied to a spike driven into the ground. She can't go more than a couple of feet from the spike because of the rope. One of the girls begins to use chalk dust to make a geogram on the ground."
"I'm sorry. A what?"
"A geometric pattern. The people who use magic think that certain shapes and substances produce certain results. More than a few of them are used for summonings of some sort. I got no idea what shape they're making exactly, but the curves make me think Celtic. Maybe that was just because they were witches. Just from that I start to get real nervous. I don 't like the idea of things popping in from other places to ruin my day, so I want to grab my client and get out of there on the double."
"A reasonable desire, given your state of mind."
"Yeah. So I get as close as I dare while they're preparing their thing for whatever, and I just wait patiently. When they're done drawing and pulling out herbs and arranging other rocks inside the geogram, they join hands and begin to chant. This ain't no girl scout campfire circle, either. I don't know what language it is, but it isn't English, and it ain't Latin; make sure you remember that, Doc. Magic spells don't use Latin! I don't know why every major book and movie out there seems to think Latin is used for magic. If that was the case, then high school and college students everywhere would shooting out fireballs and turning people into frogs or whatever."
"Duly noted. Continue."
"So, while they're wrapped up in that, I make my move. I head down there and up to my client. By this point she realizes I was right about her sister being off her rocker, and she wants out. So I pull out my knife and start cutting her free. Of course, one of the group sees, but it's not like they can stop their chanting."
"Why is that?"
"Well, bad things can happen if it's not completed like it's supposed to be. Things just kind of short circuit and there's no telling what can happen. A friend of mine told me that one time she tried to stop a spell mid-way through, and instead of what she was going for, a cloud of gas materialized in the room stinking up the place. It also worked on her like helium, making her voice high-pitched for about an hour."
"You have a friend who is a witch?"
Damn. I shouldn't have gone mentioning that. Well, I wasn't about to bring Janissia into this. "Yeah. Well, former witch. She's kind of hung up her hat and broomstick since the whole thing didn't pan out. So, anyway, I'm sawing away. In the movies knives can snap through rope pretty quick, but if there's no serrated edge, it can take awhile to saw through a good, thick rope like these women were using.
"You know that while I'm doing this the women aren't exactly doing nothing. They finish their chant just before I cut through the rope, and I hear my client gasp. That was my big clue something bad was about to happen. It was too late to do anything, so I sawed and yanked on the rope, and the rest of it broke, and I told her to run. I turn around in time to catch a kick to my hip instead of a knee to the face. It wasn't the sister, just one of the others. She was just a slip of a girl so I tossed her aside. I wasn't interested in fighting them, I just needed to know if all of them were about to drop on top of me.
"I was lucky, and they weren't, but that was just because there was light pulsing from the circle. You know, most magic doesn't have any kind of effect, but this one did, and it through me for a minute. Instead of doing the smart thing and running, I stared as a shape came into being. It was hard to tell if it came out of the light or the air. But the next thing I knew, it was there. I wasn't sure what I was looking at. It was big, had a greenish color to it and no real face that I could tell. No eyes, ears, mouth, or anything. It had a head, and it made noises from someplace. The women drop down to their knees and bow down in worship. The sister begins talking, but I'm too dumbfounded to do anything."
"What was it?"
"Hell if I know. I'd guess some sort of nature spirit or demon, but I didn't exactly ask the thing for ID."
"As I recall, you said something similar to the judge."
"Yeah, well, sometimes I've got a problem with doing stuff like that. Anyway, I didn't know what the hell it was, but I generally don't have a problem with things like this as long as they leave me alone. Some of them are pretty harmless, or at least will leave me alone, and that's all I ask. Not everything is about the end of the world. These things take place all the time, and as far as I know, the world hasn't ended. That doesn't mean these critters are nice, either. This one saw all the kneeling women, and at random it backhanded one with a paw the size of your head out of the circle. That's when hell broke loose. The women scattered except for the sister, who kept trying to talk to the thing. It turned, and I knew the thing was going to smack her next; I knew she deserved it, but I just couldn't let my client's sister get killed by this thing, and people who get hit hard enough that they fly fifteen feet through the air don't shrug it off like in the latest action flick.
"As I understand the accepted rules of these things from literature and movies, those circles are supposed to prevent things like this from happening."
"Well, yes and no. Most circles have it built into them, but not all. This one didn't. I have no idea why, but there it is. I'll have to ask someone about that. So, I get my gun out and I take a couple of shots at the thing, aiming high so I don't hit any fleeing women. I'm not a marksman, but the thing is the size of a barn door, so I plugged it. It roared from somewhere, which is when it noticed me, and it started racing at me. Evidently I didn't slow it down with my bullets, so I needed a new plan. The sister stared in horror at the thing, as if rooted. She wasn't going to be any help to me.
"I had about five steps before this thing would be on top of me, so I looked for something else. In the circle, I saw that the light actually came from the objects at each of the convergence points."
"Convergence points? What are those?"
"Nothing special, Doc. It's just where the chalk lines meet. Fancy words for them, I guess. So I see a rock and a, and a couple of other things too small for me to make out. The old oil lamp seemed like my best shot, so I lined up and took it. I squeezed off about four rounds before I knew to stop. I don't know which of my shots hit, but it did, and the lamp went flying out of the circle with flaming oil around it. Now the thing howled and disappeared like it had come. That's pretty much it."
"I think that there would have to be something more or my services would not be necessary, Mr. Allen."
"Yeah, well, the cops showed up right as I took my shots. Turns out that my client had called the cops just before leaving her car as a precaution. Now I know a couple of the uniforms saw the thing, but some lieutenant wasn't having any of it, so me and the whole coven were under arrest. My client vouched for me that I wasn't part of the cult, but I still got stuck with an illegal discharge of a firearm for shooting while people were around. Not exactly great for me, but it could have been worse, I guess."
"And the judge gave you a suspended sentence if you attended some counseling."
"Yep, that's the size of it. So, that's pretty much the end of the story, Doc. Guess you're free to not believe me, now." I reclined back, ready to hear the inevitable.
"I believe you saw these things, Mr. Allen." He closed his notebook and I sat up, looking at him.
"You're kidding me."
"I'm not. I believe you saw and heard everything you described. I believe you are suffering hallucinations and delusions. You are completely convinced about these things."
"So much for an open mind."
"I have listened quite openly, Mr. Allen, but there is nothing to substantiate what you say."
"Michigan J. Frog," I mumbled.
"Yes, your point is quite clear, yet there must be a standard of proof, or else all of the people in very serious need of help would never receive it. I can help you, Mr. Allen. Once we make a breakthrough in counseling, you'll be able to see that all of this was in your mind."
"No thanks, Doc. I appreciate it, but I'm not going to be telling you about my mother or Randy Stevenson who beat me up in fifth grade. Just sign off that I completed that required counseling, and we'll be square."
"I'm afraid it's not that simple, Mr. Allen. You see, as part of the required counseling, I must give my honest assessment of you, and I'm afraid that while mostly rational, you are quite deluded, and would constitute a danger to society. I'm certain that the judge would have no problem assigning your jail sentence. You may even find your gun license withdrawn. I think with help you can become a productive member of society. There are certain medications we can try to cut down on the hallucinations."
"I don't do meds, Doc. I can't afford anything that will play with my head. I need my head."
"Only because you believe, in paranoia, that there are people and creatures with magic that will come after you."
"So it's a stalemate. You're convinced I'm nuts, but I know I'm right in the head. You need your Michigan J. Frog in order to realize I'm not going crazy."
"But as you said, the frog is only visible to the audience, not those within the story, and the rules of society mandate that I act for the greater good. And this is not a stalemate since I will report to the judge. Please, Mr. Allen, let me help you. I don't want to see you have to give up your livelihood. You can still be a private investigator, probably more effective than you already are." The guy had me over a barrel. I didn't have any real choice, here. Well, maybe I did, but it meant calling in a favor, and I didn't want to do that. I did know a vampire that could come in and convince the guy that I was on the level, but that was a pretty big favor to call in, and I'd be paying for it for awhile. Still, even if it meant tying myself to her, it was better than having to visit the shrink.
"Doc, I would just like to say that you're a class A jerk."
"I have been called worse things, Mr. Allen. I have seen people with stories more preposterous than yours, too, and been able to help them."
"Ye should've told th' story better, Matt'ew," a new, but familiar, voice said.
The doc gasped and I turned to see a short man, not a little person, just a short man, wearing green with pouches around his waist. I hadn't seen him in awhile, but he had an annoying habit of popping up at odd times.
"What are you doing here, Michaleen."
"A favor, Matt'ew. Ye don't really want to be calling that siren to help you out, do ye?"
"Now that's funny. I know you can't read thoughts, leprechaun."
"No, 'course not, Matt'ew, but what else would ye be considerin'?"
"What, what is that. Where did it come from?" The doc said, more than a little freaked out as he tried to back into his chair."
"I'm not a what!" Michaleen said indignantly, "I'm a leprechaun, as Matt'ew has pointed out to ye. This one's not to swift, eh Matt'ew?"
"Yeah, I noticed that. Okay, Doc, here's your proof. One genuine magical creature right before your eyes. What do you think now?"
"I think—I think that I'm imagining things. I'm tired, and your story has put thoughts into my mind, and I'm just imagining things."
Michaleen didn't seem to like that, so he got out of the chair, walked over, and kicked the shrink in the shin. "Can yer imagination do that?"
"Michaleen,"
"Matt'ew, I be tellin' ye that's not my name before."
"Yeah, but you're not going to tell me your name, so I have to call you something."
"A fair point, lad."
"Not real, not real, not real, not real," the doc chanted.
"For Pete's sake, Doc. Not five minutes ago you tried to get me to see the truth, and now you're acting like a kid. Snap out of it! This is real and you've got to deal with it. Believe me, Doc, you should be glad it's Michaleen instead of someone else. If you insist on treating me, it's going to get ugly as I pull out an ace. Leprechauns are generally just mild tricksters—"
"Aye, t'is true," Michaleen interjected.
"Believe me when I say you don't want to have an encounter with a vampire or a mystic with a perverse sense of humor."
"Tony's a rare one, that be sure," Michaleen added.
"So you can sign off on my counseling, telling the judge I'm sane, and you won't have to see me or Michaleen again."
Michaleen smiled, and held up his hand with a gold coin. "Fer your trouble."
With a shaking hand, the shrink took the coin and looked at it. "Does this mean there's a pot of gold?"
"Of course there's a pot of gold! but only at the end of the rainbow."
"Let it go, Doc. Just be glad of what you've got."
The psychiatrist nodded and reached for his notebook and took out the court forms, but just before setting pen to paper, he stopped.
"No, this doesn't make sense. You're just a person dressed as a leprechaun," he addressed Michaleen. "You came in here to convince me he doesn't need counseling."
"Aye, I did."
"Well, it won't work. So you snuck in here without my seeing, that's hardly proof of the supernatural."
Michaleen held up his hands and a suddenly a rainbow arced from one to the other. One his right hand sat the image of a pot of gold, all the coins gleaming brightly.
The doctor's breath caught, and then he started writing quickly on the form. "I–I'll send this to the court right away."
"I appreciate it, Doc. Now, you might be tempted to start talking about this with others, but then you might end up on someone else's couch seeing your own practice in jeopardy. When you see Michigan J. Frog, keep it to yourself." I grabbed my hat and coat, and headed out. "See you in the funny papers, Doc."
"Good day to you, Doctor," Michaleen said with a tip of his hat, then followed me out.
The receptionist goggled at Michaleen, but didn't say anything, and it wasn't until the elevator door closed that I said something to the leprechaun.
"You know that he'll think he can use that coin as proof."
"Aye, lad. That be the best part. Be seeing you, Matt'ew," and the leprechaun was gone as neatly as Houdini.
Monday, February 2, 2009
January Wrap-up
Well, another month come and gone. The good news: it looks like I've finished a draft of Vampire Shadows and I'm nearly finished with the design of my PI's city. The bad: I still need to go back and revise Blood and Stones and need to come up with a name for my city.
Along those lines, I've decided that revising a story still counts as writing, and though I may not do any actual creating, revision still gets the work closer to a finished piece. I'm going to create a category in my daily word count that will allow me to track my progress of revision through Blood and Stones to help get my butt in gear. I've also been busy with my other life, getting accustomed to teaching and its own rigors, but still managing to stay on top of things. I'd like to get in a place where I'm at least a week ahead on my class and create a kind of buffer to keep myself from feeling as frantic as I have been the last two weeks.
And here are the totals, in a new and improved graph from last year's model! Shiny.
Along those lines, I've decided that revising a story still counts as writing, and though I may not do any actual creating, revision still gets the work closer to a finished piece. I'm going to create a category in my daily word count that will allow me to track my progress of revision through Blood and Stones to help get my butt in gear. I've also been busy with my other life, getting accustomed to teaching and its own rigors, but still managing to stay on top of things. I'd like to get in a place where I'm at least a week ahead on my class and create a kind of buffer to keep myself from feeling as frantic as I have been the last two weeks.
And here are the totals, in a new and improved graph from last year's model! Shiny.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Success and Respite
On this day, I have completed the first draft of Vampire Shadows. It clocked in quite a bit longer than my other one, which was ~70k. This one logs in at about 105k. Now, I probably would have finished it earlier, like in the first week of January, but I found I needed a short break and had to write "A Cold Night in the Grind" first, but more than that, as the end loomed, I realized I was trying to rush to get there, and that I wanted to skip over certain details just to get there. When I considered this in retrospect, I realized that to do so would be to short the readers and story. I needed those details. I needed to go back and fill in logically with what an investigator would do, not just get to the end. I had to take my time and carefully present the suspects, eliminate each of them in turn logically. Initially I simply had the final suspect confirmed simply by evidence alone with police making an arrest and discovering their own evidence to corroborate his, and my PI didn't even have a face-to-face conversation with the culprit. I thought this would be an interesting twist, but at the same time I realized that a dedicated PI wouldn't rest and wait for the cops to pick up the person, and that he would at least face down the culprit and trust to his gut more than rely on scientific evidence, so I hope the extra time and space spent on the novel which I had initially anticipated going to 85k max has been worthwhile.
To celebrate, I gave myself the day off from writing. Tomorrow, though, I'll be back up and running, though what project will take my fancy now I'm not entirely sure. I will definitely be going back to revising my first novel, and may even put up the first chapter of it as a kind of teaser as well. Until then, though, I'm going to indulge in my glass of chocolate milk, and enjoy my well earned rest.
To celebrate, I gave myself the day off from writing. Tomorrow, though, I'll be back up and running, though what project will take my fancy now I'm not entirely sure. I will definitely be going back to revising my first novel, and may even put up the first chapter of it as a kind of teaser as well. Until then, though, I'm going to indulge in my glass of chocolate milk, and enjoy my well earned rest.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Why Vampires?
I've been asked this question by those who have read the stories, and I suppose that it should be addressed at some point. I've always been fascinated with mythology, and the folk tale surrounding vampires are particularly interesting. There are many components to what a vampire is from their strengths to their weaknesses, yet they are still wholly mysterious. I think I have to borrow from Bill here and say this: "What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!/ how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how/ express and admirable! in action how like an angel!/ in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the/ world! the paragon of animals!" Bill speaks truly, and I have to imagine that for this noble man there is a counterpart, a darker side, if you will. Not only does this darker side have the same faculties of man, but is also, in many ways, stronger, more powerful, and even more like a god. So here is an interesting dichotomy to see this world of darkness, with all of its various denizens, coexist with the world people live in. Vampires epitomize this darkness so well, yet without a hideousness that we attribute to evil monsters. Quite the contrary, they are seen as attractive and sensual in their incarnations.
Of course, this brings me to one of the reasons I decided to seat my intrepid detective in the paranormal. Vampires have become very popular of late, which I don't think is a bad thing, and every one of them has had their own take on vampires, from Blade to Buffy. Now, I certainly respect all of these writers and these works for establishing their own traditions with their own interpretations on the vampire myths, but I've also felt, in some instances, that the core of vampire mythos was being warped, and each new incarnation of vampire story would build upon the last, and take the story further from this core. So, I wanted to do two things with this mythos. First, I wanted to start back from the core, and address the ideas at the heart of vampire myth. Second, I wanted to my own spin on them, and hopefully move them in a different direction than has been done before.
The next big reason for focusing on vampires and the supernatural is my detective. I wanted a Spade and Marlowe type of PI. However, such a PI who goes solely on his guts and wits doesn't fit very well into the modern world with its CSIs, NCIS, Bones, and several other different highly scientific crime investigation squads. This left me with two choices:
1) I could do a period detective story where I eliminate the highly scientific processes, and put my detective into the same world as Spade and Marlowe. On some level this appealed to me, but I thought I would be doing Hammett and Chandler a disservice by trying to put my PI into that world. I didn't know that world, and while I could do extensive research to accurately portray it, I didn't think I had anything to add to it.
2) I could deal with a subject matter that science couldn't explain. The world of the supernatural would very easily defy explanation, rendering the scientific a moot point. A scientist would have no way to explain a person with no body heat, exceptional strength, and a strong aversion to garlic. My PI, though, looks at those things and immediately knows the person is a vampire. A rock that glows with no power source, wires, or anything else is magic.
I realize that my PI also has to be a bit paradoxical. Hammett's and Chandler's PIs were universally skeptical, taking nothing at face value; however, belief in the supernatural requires a setting aside of that skepticism to a point. A supernatural PI who looks at the glowing rock and dismisses it really will not stay in business long. Other than that one discrepancy, I wanted him to be like Spade and Marlowe, and to look at them as heroes, as what he wants to be. I also wanted a blending of Spade and Marlowe. Spade wasn't afraid of anyone or anything. A gun in his face from Joel Cairo made him laugh. I wanted that type of calm in one respect, but also I realized that no one could remain that cool all the time. Marlowe was more human in that regard, and knew when something was over his head and he had a perfect right to freak out, such as when a tommy gun was pulled on him. So for my PI, I have him be calm when dealing with real people, the ordinary and every day, even when it's a gun in his face or a guy punching him in the gut. That cool, though, doesn't stand up against the supernatural, though. The calm facade is gone in the face of a vampire, witch, or even practical joker mystic. Compared to the supernatural, the prospect of facing down a gun is easier for him to deal with, so the vampires and supernatural allow me to blend the contrasts into one PI.
Now, all this sounds very analytical, and that I have had the entire thing planned from the start, but the truth is I began writing before I began analyzing these ideas, which is frequently the case for me. the ideas come forth in the writing, and then I realize why I wrote a particular section in that way. Well, I've written quite a bit about this, so I think I'll stop now, but hopefully this will be the first of many such questions I tackle on this blog.
Of course, this brings me to one of the reasons I decided to seat my intrepid detective in the paranormal. Vampires have become very popular of late, which I don't think is a bad thing, and every one of them has had their own take on vampires, from Blade to Buffy. Now, I certainly respect all of these writers and these works for establishing their own traditions with their own interpretations on the vampire myths, but I've also felt, in some instances, that the core of vampire mythos was being warped, and each new incarnation of vampire story would build upon the last, and take the story further from this core. So, I wanted to do two things with this mythos. First, I wanted to start back from the core, and address the ideas at the heart of vampire myth. Second, I wanted to my own spin on them, and hopefully move them in a different direction than has been done before.
The next big reason for focusing on vampires and the supernatural is my detective. I wanted a Spade and Marlowe type of PI. However, such a PI who goes solely on his guts and wits doesn't fit very well into the modern world with its CSIs, NCIS, Bones, and several other different highly scientific crime investigation squads. This left me with two choices:
1) I could do a period detective story where I eliminate the highly scientific processes, and put my detective into the same world as Spade and Marlowe. On some level this appealed to me, but I thought I would be doing Hammett and Chandler a disservice by trying to put my PI into that world. I didn't know that world, and while I could do extensive research to accurately portray it, I didn't think I had anything to add to it.
2) I could deal with a subject matter that science couldn't explain. The world of the supernatural would very easily defy explanation, rendering the scientific a moot point. A scientist would have no way to explain a person with no body heat, exceptional strength, and a strong aversion to garlic. My PI, though, looks at those things and immediately knows the person is a vampire. A rock that glows with no power source, wires, or anything else is magic.
I realize that my PI also has to be a bit paradoxical. Hammett's and Chandler's PIs were universally skeptical, taking nothing at face value; however, belief in the supernatural requires a setting aside of that skepticism to a point. A supernatural PI who looks at the glowing rock and dismisses it really will not stay in business long. Other than that one discrepancy, I wanted him to be like Spade and Marlowe, and to look at them as heroes, as what he wants to be. I also wanted a blending of Spade and Marlowe. Spade wasn't afraid of anyone or anything. A gun in his face from Joel Cairo made him laugh. I wanted that type of calm in one respect, but also I realized that no one could remain that cool all the time. Marlowe was more human in that regard, and knew when something was over his head and he had a perfect right to freak out, such as when a tommy gun was pulled on him. So for my PI, I have him be calm when dealing with real people, the ordinary and every day, even when it's a gun in his face or a guy punching him in the gut. That cool, though, doesn't stand up against the supernatural, though. The calm facade is gone in the face of a vampire, witch, or even practical joker mystic. Compared to the supernatural, the prospect of facing down a gun is easier for him to deal with, so the vampires and supernatural allow me to blend the contrasts into one PI.
Now, all this sounds very analytical, and that I have had the entire thing planned from the start, but the truth is I began writing before I began analyzing these ideas, which is frequently the case for me. the ideas come forth in the writing, and then I realize why I wrote a particular section in that way. Well, I've written quite a bit about this, so I think I'll stop now, but hopefully this will be the first of many such questions I tackle on this blog.
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