Nevermore by David Niall Wilson

Author:David Niall Wilson [Wilson, David Niall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2013-01-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Despite his warnings to Tom to not come around too early, Edgar woke with the dawn. He had slept long and well, and felt refreshed, despite the adventures of the day before. He'd expected to toss and turn, ending up writing late into the night, but he hadn't even glanced at his quills, or his ink. He'd poured himself two fingers from his flask, readied himself for bed, and brought out his worn copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales. He didn't know what had possessed him to do it, but he'd finished his drink and worked his way through several of the old stories.

They were dark. Every one of them. He knew they'd been written for children, but he couldn't imagine sending a young soul to bed with the images they provided. Others who felt the same had already begun revising the tales, retelling them in watered down versions that hamstrung the storytellers' bite, but allowed the children who heard them to sleep at night without bright lights or screams. He wondered briefly if that was how it always was with magic. It started out vital and potent, and then, over time, as men and women fought to possess it, hide it, steal it, and decipher it, it grew more and more obscure.

The fairy tales were like his own stories, he realized, but his made no pretense of being fairy tales for the naïve, they were a way of exorcising the heavy loneliness of his existence, the frustration of being unable to help his wife, and the dimly glowing, low-burning lamp that was his career. The problems that his protagonists faced, the agony he put them through, served to boost his own spirits, at least to the level of mild melancholy. He knew he should be grateful. He made his living doing what he enjoyed, more or less. He had gifts that others did not share, or even suspect. He had Grimm, and Virginia loved him. Those two things alone should have tipped the balance in his favor and lifted his spirits.

Nothing seemed able to do it. Nothing fully broke through the shadows – only the words gave him even partial respite. When he wrote – and sometimes, if the story was good enough – when he read the words of others, the perpetual weight on his heart lessened. The fairy tales he'd read had lightened his spirits in the same way the dismal, hopeless fates of his protagonists did. In a certain perspective, it improved his state. Things – as they said – could always be worse.

As he waited for Tom, he organized his papers, and found himself agonizing over what to take, and what to leave behind. He couldn’t rid himself of the idea that he was embarking on more than a simple walk in the woods, and that – if not impossible – returning to this place, this room, and whatever he left behind would require more of him than any task he'd ever faced. He would not be able to solve this by writing it into a story.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.