"Man, it's witchcraft! Where in the name of all that is wonderful did you get those names?"
In the opening of The Valley of Fear, Sherlock Holmes surprises Inspector MacDonald with the list of words pertaining to MacDonald's as yet unstated case. We know, of course, that Holmes has the names because of his informant within Moriarty's camp. Before MacDonald's arrival, Holmes had the information but didn't know yet how he would use it or why he would need it but he knew it could somehow prove to be important or of use in some way. Holmes's ways of gathering information and docketing seemingly random bits that often proved to be useful later were not perhaps "witchcraft" but they certainly were part of his investigative craft.
Since I started studying the craft of fiction writing I've learned from Holmes: reading everything even remotely of interest and docketing seemingly random bits that might matter later have become part of my routine. I've always read a wide variety of writing and saved things that interested me but it was not until I started writing fiction that I began putting my odd saved bits into a system that makes retrieval fairly easy. [Oddly, the saved things are better on paper rather than digital although I always use a computer to write. Brains are weird.]
I recently had cause to think about the system and how it affects the writing as a friend (after reading two short pieces of my writing) told me my writing has "many layers." She then asked "how do you do that?" I'm not sure if she really wanted an answer to the question.
If she did, I might could demonstrate with one of the pieces she read, a brief Gothic bit written for a Flash Fiction prompt. "Come to Me" has several layers although it runs only 1,300 words:
1--The opening of Chapter 6, Mina Murray's Journal, from Bram Stoker's Dracula, as annotated by Leslie Klinger;
2--The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the memoir by journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby about living with locked-in syndrome;
3-- "Echo", a poem by Christina Rossetti from 1854;
4-- "Harmony in the Boudoir", a poem by Mark Strand from 2012;
5--The "Witte Wieven" of Dutch mythology, as described by author Signe Maene. [I'm a bit obsessed with these women; they have had a role in three of my recent fictions.]
6--A quote from Arthur Conan Doyle's The Stark Munro Letters, "I thought I knew something of women. ... But now I can see that I really knew nothing. My knowledge was external. I did not not know the woman soul, that crowning gift of Providence to man, which, if we do not ourselves degrade it, will set an edge to all that is good in us."
Would she understand why these things rose to the surface of the writing brain at the same time? I don't know. I think the pocket-Petrarch-toting Holmes might understand even if he later told me "No ghosts need apply."
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I've posted "Come to Me" below, should there be any interest in how the pieces came together.
Come to Me
By Margie Deck
The small cell window allows the merest hint of the dawn but
after these many days I recognize the hour. How many days, I cannot say. The
mist before my eyes clouds my memories; I don’t remember coming here or who championed
my imprisonment. If I hold my breath, with my eyes closed against the mist, I
can faintly recall lingering in the forenoon light in the Abbey, waiting for the
imprint of what once was.
Light
passes across the window in varying shades and shadows. I hear the wind
breathing with me, rhythmic and cold. In the early morning of the past few days
I’ve seen a red flag waving there. It is not always there. The red reminds me
of the red-tiled roofs of the Whitby houses piled on one another. As I sat in
the ruins of that great repository of the past, I often looked down on the old
town, wondering if someone there stood looking up—searching, like me, for a
glimpse of the rumored White Lady, searching for proof the dead may return.
My wife,
angry, defeated, did not understand why I waited, week after week, hoping to
encounter a dead woman while she sat alone, waiting for me. She did not hear
the words behind my words, all the words I could not utter, my true words of
fear and failure. Sometimes I think I hear her calling to me here, her voice
riding on the cold air. She is not at the window although the flag is the color
of her favorite dress. I do not see her. I thought I heard her in the Abbey,
too.
My limbs
are heavy. If I could move I would try to open the window, try to return to my
watch. Time is passing. The historian assures the White Lady is only seen in
the summer months, in one of the highest windows; he names her as St. Hilda, if
indeed she comes at all. Does he not know of the many other white women of lore—many
far from saintly. The poet told us of the woman Constance walled alive within
St. Hilda’s convent; she might well be keeping the watch now. The women die,
they return, some wise, some sly, some luring foolish men like me to their deaths
in the water. But if they return so may I have another chance. Perhaps tomorrow
she might give me what I need.
I am so
cold. Perhaps the summer has passed already. If my wife were here I would quote
Rossetti to her although it would make her angry. Once she loved me when I fed
her poetry; now she hungers for something more from me. If I could speak—
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again tho’ cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.
###
“Madam,” the doctor said in a low firm voice, “please move
away. He does not know you are here. He cannot hear you calling his name. I’m
afraid there is no hope.”
The woman
stepped back from the bed, pulled her red shawl tightly around her body, shook
her head at the doctor’s words. “But his eye! I see his right eye moving when I
put my hand to his face, when I talk to him. I am sure he understands.”
“No, madam,
this is 1901, the new century. Modern medicine tells us he is paralyzed from
his fall, almost completely. The eye movement is simply a nervous reaction of
the body. Your husband is dying; it is unusual he survived the night in his
condition. Perhaps you can find comfort in knowing he feels nothing. He is
aware of nothing. He has no pain.”
She placed
her hand against the cheek of the dying man, then drew her hand across his
eyes.
“My
husband is always aware of everything—life is always painful to him in many
ways.”
The
doctor turned at a tap at the door, spoke to someone in the corridor, nodded. “Madam,”
he said in the same firm tone, “perhaps you can step into the next room for a
moment. The gentlemen from the constabulary wish to speak to you.” He opened
the door and gestured to her to follow him.
The two
constables and the woman stood for several minutes in uncomfortable silence in
the doctor’s small ante room after he left them with a murmur about pressing
business. The taller man finally took out a small notebook and pencil.
“Please
tell us what happened to your husband yesterday.”
“My
husband went to the Abbey as he often does to...think. My husband is a
sensitive and intelligent man,” she said with an air of resignation. “I
followed him a short while later as I often do. I waited for him in the St.
Mary’s yard. After an hour, he crossed from the Abbey to the churchyard,
passing me where I sat on one of the benches set there among the graves. He did
not stop although I called to him. He eventually slowed near the end of the
stonework, at that point where the stonework stretches out over the pathway far
below. To my horror he suddenly went over the side.”
Both
constables nodded. “Was there anyone else in the churchyard who saw what
happened?” the shorter man asked, his pencil poised above his own small, lined
paper.
“What?
Yes, of course. The three old fishermen who sit on a bench there every day,
doing nothing but talking. They were quite kind to me; they feared I would
faint from the shock but I never faint. I knew I needed to get to my husband.
It took me a long time to reach him as I had to transverse the endless steps
down. We were all shocked by the horrible
accident.”
“Your
husband did not have an accident,” the shorter constable said.
“He was
pushed,” the other said. “Did you push him?”
The woman
made a dismissive wave of her hand. “You’re wrong. My husband stood there with
no other humans. The four of us saw him
against the open view out to sea. Why would you say such a thing?”
“The
handprints, madam,” the tall man said. “Someone gripped your husband hard
enough to leave bruising marks on his back. Ten perfect finger marks, two
hands, smallish but strong. Quite fresh. The doctor is certain. Your husband
may not be dead yet but he was murdered.”
The
woman’s face settled into a hard look. “She pushed him, then. He was determined
to leave the demands of this world. She could do what I could not. She could
set him free.”
“But you
said he was alone!” the tall man protested, snapping his notebook closed.
“I said, we
did not see another human. The White Lady. He surely courted her with Rosetti.
No woman could resist.”
Tall man
shook his head. “You expect us to believe a ghost, the supposed lady
spirit of the Abbey pushed your husband?”
“Frankly,
gentlemen, I do not care what you believe. My husband believed it and that,
apparently, was enough. Now you must excuse me. I must arrange my husband’s
funeral services.”
“He is
not dead yet,” the two men said in unplanned unison.
“He is to
me.”
###
The wife pulled the blankets tight around her husband’s cold
body. She placed her head on his heart, listening to his raspy breath. “Goodbye, husband,” she whispered. “Is it my
turn to quote Rosetti to you? Perhaps you thought I did not listen.”
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the
speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight
on a stream;
Come
back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
She did
not see the rapidly blinking right eye as she left the room.
