The Last Homely House
General => Council of Cobra => Topic started by: menace64 on December 07, 2008, 12:05:26 AM
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I've got the first chapter of my trilogy written. It took me five years of pre-writing, research, and even location scouting to get to this point of actually writing. Since I've started writing the story, my life has felt more complete than it ever has before - I'm in the process of doing what God put me here to do, putting to great use his gift to me.
I'd like to share all of what I've written so far. It's unpolished, rough, and wont be exactly what I want for a few more drafts. I'll be blunt... posting this is to get some positive "feel good" feedback. Tell me what stinks for sure, but hearing nice things from all you folk will only spur me forward.
Lots to read... don't feel rushed here...
Prologue/Opening Thing
My first memory was of the countless refugees at the end of the War. And in months following, the stench of them was stifling – a reek of filthy rider and haggard beast. I cannot now look upon a horse without that deathly odor returning to me, making me sick as the day they first came into my home.
At some time during the next year they voted to erect the Wall yo keep out the others. It was taller than anything I’d ever seen, yet it seemed to go up with the passion and swiftness of those who build something to protect their lives and the lives of families.
Only one entrance was set into it. All I remember was that it was built shut and it was never opened.
Chapter 1
“The time has come at last to draw up our bridge and to allow the World about us to die as earnestly as it was born. I have seen what has become of our Great Nation. What lay beyond to the East is fallen into ruin, delivered into the bosom of hellish futility by the War no nation could sustain. What lay beyond to the West may well be known ‘fore long as God’s Greatest Jest: a quilt of unimaginable beauty and scope left to burn in the house of its making.”
- George Hershey, 1888
Britt sat out in the yard – as she did most mornings – and watched the sun rise. It was a colder dawn than she’d expected; the dew seeping through her pants made it even worse. There was a chilly wind pushing on from the east. The smell of an early winter was thick. Not even the sun, now breaking high over the Wall, carried any warmth into the world.
Regardless, she sat out longer today than she probably should have: while the sun marched into early morning she maintained her vigil. Then, without putting much thought into it, she decided that she would wait for her brother to get up, and perhaps they would sit lazily in the yard for the rest of the day.
“Well that’s the dumbest thought you’ll have today,” she said to herself. “And it’s not even breakfast yet.” There was just too much to do. “And Victor hates sitting.”
But Victor got up early. Just as Britt decided it was time to get to work, he stumbled out through the back door of their wooden cottage. His arms immediately crossed his chest. His teeth began to clit-clatter in the cold. He looked at his sister – sitting frozen in the patchy field – and walked out to meet her. Victor and Britt exchanged glances but neither said a word.
Yet, there was something obviously different about him. Britt could feel the change. Her brother was less her brother today and more somebody else. She couldn’t explain how she knew or put into words what she knew; it was just plain that a change had occurred. “What happened to you last night?” Britt asked.
Victor seemed not to hear her words at first, his senses locked into some distant thought. He murmured incoherently. After a few moments, he caught up with the question. “What was that?” he said as he shoved his cold hands into his pockets.
“Last night,” Britt repeated, slipping fluster into her voice. “What happened?”
Victor didn’t smile, but Britt knew that he was smiling in his mind. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Of course I can keep a secret.” She paused. “I guess that means you did something stupid, doesn’t it?”
Victor nodded slowly. “Yes, I did something stupid. But you’ll be happy I did it.” He didn’t say anything else. Britt stared at him, plainly annoyed with her brother. “I quit,” she exclaimed, throwing up her hands in defeat. “If I’ve got to ask this many questions to get you to say anything, then I don’t care enough to hear what you’ve got to say.”
She got up and walked away from him towards the cottage, pushing him and his annoyances out of her mind. She got to the back door when Victor finally answered her.
“I’m going to kill Dekan.”
Britt stopped, swung about, opened her mouth to speak. No words came.
“I’m going to kill him,” he said tonelessly. “And then we can leave Winterset.”
Britt would have laughed, mistaking her brother’s statement for another of his tasteless jokes, but the way he now looked on her illustrated the seriousness of his words. It was a rushing stare of desperation, the maddest yet most committed expression he’d ever worn. Whatever happened last night is what’s turned my brother into a lunatic.
Britt’s legs quivered as an image flashed before her mind: her brother with a tight rope around his neck. Terrified, she dipped back, putting herself against the door, and slid down to the ground. She looked to her brother once again, but a ray of chilling sunlight arched from the sky and blinded her, making him seem to her more a shadow and somehow less a man.
“If you tell me you’re kidding,” Britt said as she buried her head in her tucked-up knees, “I promise I won’t say anything to dad.” Victor smirked. “Go ahead and tell him. He’d probably agree with me.”
This brought the tears from Britt. “How could you even think that? Dad’s no murderer, and he sure won’t let you turn into one.” Britt could hear Victor approach her as she spoke. She kept her eyes shut, preferring the blindness over any sight of her transformed brother.
He sat down next to her. “Look, sis. We’re hated here; it’s a miracle I haven’t got the rope yet, and the only reason you haven’t is because you’re too pretty for a noose. Dad knows that. And if the governor gets himself killed, then maybe they’ll open the gate and we can leave.”
Victor sighed. “This is no life. We’ve never had a real life here. We might find a better one if we can get out of here.”
There was another pause. Britt broke it, asking her question again. “What happened to you last night? You need to tell me.”
When no answer came, Britt opened her eyes and turned to her brother. He appeared shrunken, less resolute now that the question had come to face him for a third time. “Tell me.”
Victor spoke.
“His name is Oriel. He’s going to help us find better lives, but only if you and me kill Dekan first.”
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Victor shivered under the midnight moon, which waned into the empty west, low and pallid. His back was turned to the north: he knew with some certainty that even in darkness he could see the northern round of the Wall if he but looked in that direction. Within sight to the south was the low-staked fence which encircled the great crop fields.
In all directions Victor felt oppressed by the emptiness. The letter, now stuffed into his jacket pocket, had brought him to this very spot. Hugging the Wall, the northern road saw no travelers, day or night. It was the place furthest from all watchful eyes.
“It’s also the best place for a lynching,” Victor admitted to the dark.
There came a sound. It was a sound not wholly unexpected, but a sound which sent Victor’s heart trembling. The rhythmic clattering of horseshoe on frozen dirt broke the silence to the east; turning towards it, Victor saw a shrouded light swaying through the fog that, he felt, had seemed to spring up from the clammy soil.
As the horse drew near Victor moved carefully off to the side of the road and cowered. His heart begged fearfully to run but his mind’s curiosity kept his legs planted firmly in the ground. Reason returned to him. “Whoever is out there is the same one who wrote the letter.”
A tense minute passed. The outline of a carriage, silhouetted against the lantern hanging before it, drew up towards him. Led by a single horse, a figure sat in the carriage. Even with the poor light in the powerful darkness, Victor saw the figure’s head sweeping back and forth, plainly looking for something or someone.
The carriage stopped. “My boy,” the figure – a man – called, “my boy, come on out now. Nothing will come of this meet if I never get to talking with you.”
Victor stood. The carriage was sitting not ten feet from where he had been sitting. Victor approached it warily. “Who are you?” he asked as he came up beside the carriage. The man jolted at Victor’s sudden appearance. “Now you shouldn’t go around giving frights to old men like that!”
“And you shouldn’t be inviting younger men to the Wall after dark.”
The man in the carriage grunted. “There’s no such thing as a ‘younger man.’ Not in this day.” Then he paused. “Get in.”
Victor shook his head, hoping the man would see it in the faint light. “The letter you wrote me sounded urgent. Tell me what’s so important right now or I’m leaving.”
“If you leave me now, you’ll never get out of Winterset and neither will your sister. Get in.” Victor found himself sitting inside the carriage before he gathered the words to object. Without warning the man set the horse to a slow march, leading them down into the darkening night.
The road they now followed was called the Roundway, the broad dirt path which encircled the whole of Winterset, and which itself was fenced in by the Wall. The Roundway saw a great deal of traffic at its southern bend where the hub of the city eked; to the north there stood only fields of vegetables and much wheat. The descending winter season left folk little reason to travel so far away from the city.
For a time the man seemed content to remain silent: before long scattered lights from Winterset appeared on the horizon, their beams reflecting dimly off the Wall to Victor’s right. The Wall itself loomed frighteningly high – towering above his vision – and in the sporadic light it seemed to quiver in its deep foundations.
In that light, as the two men slowly made their way towards Winterset, Victor caught his first good look at the other man. Snaking along the width of the man’s face was a frayed and twisted moustache; Victor couldn’t tell if it had been grown of thousands of ghost-white hairs or if its bulk was such that it caught the moon’s glow. The man was undersized – possibly due to his advanced age, though Victor sensed that he was much younger than he seemed or wanted others to believe.
“You look every bit the strong young fellow,” the man said, interrupting Victor’s observations. “I suppose I could take a guess for your age, but how old are you?”
“I’m twenty-four,” Victor offered.
“Well,” the man chuckled. “You don’t look a day past nineteen, even in this dark night.”
“Sir, what’s my age have to do with your letter?”
“Nothing at all. Must an old man be rushed to his point, then cast aside? Might I have a conversation before the younger man discards me?”
“Certainly not,” Victor said. “But you aren’t that old.”
The man shifted in his seat. “I am going to ask you later how you came to that one.” He leaned forward and all at once his demeanor shifted. His shoulders drew up and his jaw struck out from beneath his grand moustache. His wide, peering eyes caught the nearing lights, silhouetting his face against them. For a moment, Victor felt trapped in the gaze of a predator.
“My name is Oriel Greenfield. I am many things to many people, but what concerns you tonight and until the day of your death is that I am a close friend – the close friend – of Dekan Everett.”
Victor had so many questions surface at once that he couldn’t speak at all. Oriel’s unwavering gaze tore at him. “I’ve… I’ve heard of you,” he whispered.
“Well of course you have. In a place this small no one stays hidden for long. But while my name is known to you, I don’t suppose you could tell me how you know me, or from where you know me?”
Victor had no answer. He racked himself for one but nothing came.
Oriel continued, turning his head to his right and watching the Wall as it slowly passed. “You see, that’s the funny thing about a rumor. It has no beginning, it has no end. I would lose my shoes if I bet that somebody in Winterset hadn’t heard of me, yet not a one of you knows a thing about me. I am a rumor, a phantom here, and you may find in the months to come that I, not Dekan, am the most powerful man in our fallen country.”
Victor felt adrift in Oriel’s words. There was something missing that he couldn’t identify. Something about Oriel gnawed away at his mind. There was a presence to the man that exuded real power. Not the power of strength or the power of men: the power of words. Suddenly Victor feared Oriel – he saw himself being wrapped up in the web of Oriel’s cunning wordplay. He was afraid, certainly, but already he felt compelled to listen to and trust this man.
I am being manipulated. Why? Why me?
“Why me?” he asked aloud.
Oriel turned back to Victor. “What do you mean?”
“Why send me the letter? Why tell me all of this? Just… why?”
“Do you remember being brought to Winterset?”
Victor’s eyes turned to slits at the awkward question. “No,” he stammered. “I don’t. I was pretty young.”
“Do you remember your parents?”
“No, but...”
“And why is that? What happened to them?”
Victor knew that Oriel’s interrogation should have upset him. He felt a place within him for anger, for anything, yet he was left cold and barren by questions that would have enraged him at any other time. “They died,” he answered. “They were murdered.”
“Exactly. Along with all of the outsiders.” Oriel paused, his lips tightening from underneath his shimmering moustache. “That is, all of them except for you.”
“There’s Britt, too. My sister.”
“Well, yes. Yes. We can’t forget about her.” Oriel nodded. “Have you ever wondered why the two of you were the only outsiders left alive? Why is it that, after all these years, neither you nor your sister have been hanged?”
Victor lied. “I haven’t really thought about it. They hate us, though.”
“You’re right – they do. Terribly so, in fact. I would imagine half the city would be inclined to hang you, given the chance. But they can’t, and they won’t.”
Oriel waited for Victor to ask the question but Victor said nothing. Victor’s eyes were glazed by the light of the setting moon, and he knew then, just as Oriel told him, why he was still alive.
“For all the hatred – and fear – lingering in this beleaguered city there is still a shred of decency. Those same people who want you and your sister dead know as well how innocent the two of you are. As much as they hate admitting it, neither of you are to blame for what happened to our world. After all, you were only babies when the war ended, and most of the folk here have watched you grow up. They still see you as infants.”
“But I’m not an… infant,” Victor said. “I’m not.”
“And only a fool would say that you are. However, those people out there,” Oriel gestured to the lights of Winterset in the distance, “those people don’t see it yet. They don’t realize how strong you have become.”
Victor exhaled. “I’m not strong.”
Oriel’s hand shot forward, clasping Victor by his shoulder. Victor startled, tried to move away from the man but found himself pinned against the carriage door. “You are strong,” Oriel stated. “You are the embodiment of the quiet fear in Winterset. You are the one against the many, the only one of us who can bring about real change.”
“I think you’ve got the wrong person,” Victor said as a gloom he’d never felt before came over him. “I’m not strong at all.”
Oriel sighed, and it seemed to Victor that a shade of annoyance slipped into his tone. “Every man is strong.” The older man leaned in closer. “But consider this: If you are not strong, who will watch over Britt?”
“I will. Or my dad – well, he isn’t really my dad. He’s getting old but he still takes care of the both of us.”
“And what happens when he dies?”
“Then I’ll watch over her,” Victor fired. “I’d be a lousy brother if I didn’t.”
Oriel blinked and moved back, gesturing with his left hand to the looming city. “There are a lot of dangers in this place for a girl of such youth and beauty – especially for a girl who is not accepted by the community. I have no doubt that you will try your hardest to protect her, but you must realize that, eventually, she will find herself alone.”
Oriel flashed a sorrowful face towards Victor. “She will be violated. Raped, Victor. You can’t prevent it.”
“I can and I will,” Victor said. The words he spoke sounded valiant, but the betrayal of fear within his heart brought doubt to the belief that he could do anything to prevent something so grotesque. “It hasn’t happened yet.”
“Not that you know of. Everything will change once the others forget that you had nothing to do with the war: when you lose your innocence here you lose their protection. Just like every other outsider who found his miserable road ending at the Gate of Winterset, both you and your sister will be hanged.”
Victor shook in disbelief, yet Oriel’s words rang true with the darkest fantasy he’d always imagined. He always knew but disregarded the fact that his role in Winterset was to be the last execution of a war long-fought and lost. Hesitantly, he spoke of the only option he had left.
“I will take Britt away from here.”
Oriel chuckled but his voice was grave. “And how, Victor? How? Will you break down the gate, or will you scale the Wall?”
“I’ll do whatever it takes.”
Oriel stopped the carriage. Due east beyond the wide, empty fields squatted the city of Winterset, silent in the darkest hour of night. Not a sound was to be heard save only the gentle panting of the tired horse which drew the carriage.
Oriel opened his door and stepped out onto the ground. He turned back to within the carriage. Victor sat motionless. “The only way out of Winterset is to put an end to the fear, the hatred. To do that you must kill the man who sustains it, who pollutes this land with bigotry and lies.
“You must kill Dekan Everett, our governor – and the only man keeping you and Britt from freedom.”
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wow...I already want to here more
"when you lose your innocence her you lose their protection."
this sentence doesn't make sense to me though...
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Argh. That should be "here", not "her."
Good catch.
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You've got me stunned at your eloquence.
"I had so many questions surface at once that I couldn't speak at all..."
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It took me weeks to figure out how to start the second chapter. I tried many different things; I wouldn't call any of them failures but they didn't move the story along like I wanted. Yesterday I had a breakthrough (while in the shower, of all places) and what I'm showing now is the direct result. I haven't proofread it since I refuse to reread anything I've done until a few days have gone by.
So this is the start of chapter two. Let me know what you think. :mrgreen:
Chapter 2
“I tell you now that in no other time in my crusade did I feel more defeated and aggrieved than as I stood alone atop the hill at Stones River. I had come to the place where the war had been lost for both the East and the West: the place of our damnation. I stood alone atop the hill and I heard the death of thousands as a whisper on the breeze. I stood alone atop the hill and around me in all directions the blood of boys stained black the grass and the earth. There was nothing left in that hollow place that would attest to the lives that had been lost during the darkest days of our new world, and yet as I stood upon the hill I felt the gaze of the dead and I mourned for them as they mourned for us.”
- George Hershey, 1888
From his post atop the Wall, Lawrence Magill couldn’t decide in which direction his attention was most demanded. For the last thirteen months he had watched with vigilance the long green flats separating Winterset from whatever else lay beyond. The great expanse had become something of routine for him – a strange admission since in the beginning he had been utterly afraid of so much emptiness – and he had for many months felt comfortable enough with the lands under his watch that he would detect the slightest change.
And detect a change he had.
The night before was a bitter-cold night. From that high up on the Wall the wind was always strong, but on this night it was especially fierce. He’d wrapped himself within his issued trench coat and on his head sat a thick woolen cap. But every gust of wind snaked its way deep into his bones and left him shaking and numb. But he did not turn away. He watched for any movement.
When the single torch of flame appeared over the horizon, Lawrence Magill tried to ignore it. Between heaving breaths he reasoned the torch away. “No one would risk to travel in this cold” or “No one would think to come here” or “My eyes are tricking me” were chief on his mind. He looked away from it for minutes at a time, searching for anything else to occupy his attention.
Every time his gaze drifted back to the torch in the distance, it seemed brighter, closer, more devilish. He let an hour slip by before he fully believed in what he saw. Someone was approaching Winterset.
No, he perceived. There’s more than one.
Before his eyes the single flame split apart into several: a whole company of travelers in the night walking straight for his city. At that moment he knew he had several tasks to be done. He was to inform his superiors. He was to raise the alarms. He was to find another Wall Guard to maintain the watch.
All at once his mind failed him. His body twisted round, facing him towards the sleeping city far below. The cold night held no sway over his lips or his lungs, and he let out such a yell of terrible excitement that the whole of Winterset stirred at his call. “NOLINKThey are coming!” he commanded. “NOLINKThey are coming!”
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didn't see any errors...I like the first quote ;)
I'm kinda confused about whats going on, but thats understandable.