A twitch, a small splash, rippling the surface of the water. A few bubbles, nothing more. Threads of brown algae float back into place just below the surface, and all is still again.
In the darkness overhead, a mourning warbler calls once, twice, chirr chirr chirr CHOI CHOI, chirr chirr chirr CHOI CHOI, then goes quiet.
* * *
Rae leans back in her chair and lets her hands move from the keyboard to her lap. She rereads what she has just written about Whitacre Hay: His sentences, haunted by ghosts of writers and stories past, contain within them the rubble and ruins they will someday become.
She winces slightly, raises her hands to the keyboard, and deletes rubble and, then reads it again. Her headache is back, and she decides to take another pill, even though she can’t recall when she last took one.
* * *
Whitacre Hay was unique among pre-Victorian Gothic writers for his singular obsession with nature as a source of fear, ill fortune, and death. Though he was born, lived, and died in London, rarely traveling outside the city, all his stories related in some way to the countryside or rural life, with a particular focus on bogs, swamps, and fens.
His pursuit of what he called “the dark primaeval” in his writing was inspired by an obscure 18th-century poet named Caroundelet, whose works were entirely lost to history. He brought Caroundelet’s idea that “nature moves on paths older than man” into a 19th-century Gothic milieu, crafting an uncannily modern style, as seen in the final sentences of “The Worm That Smiled”:
It slid silently from the water, glistening darkly, and though it moved by feel only, soon it would see eyelessly, turn corners on its own, seek out the speaker whose words had given it life. In the close darkness, a mourning warbler sang its wistful song, then grew silent among the greater chorus of insects that filled the humid night.
In his brief and strange body of work, “The Worm That Smiled” is by far the most curious piece, with opening lines sufficiently striking for Rae to make Hay her focus for the past two years:
At times we speak and know not what we say, or even that we are speaking. It was in such a state that the young clerk, Mr. Winchester, one night found himself at the window, mouthing words he did not understand and yet had always known: ‘Wake and wander to me, for I long to see your smile.’
* * *
She snaps awake at the computer. Was I sleeping? She sees an empty glass next to the monitor, tastes a bitter tang on her tongue: whiskey. She doesn’t remember drinking anything, and chalks it up to exhaustion.
She forces herself to focus. Fingers hovering over the keyboard like a pianist ready to play, she begins to type: It is not just Hay’s subjects or themes, then pauses, thinking.
The bedroom door opens and Jeff comes out in a t-shirt and boxers, rubbing his eyes.
“Did I wake you up?” she says.
“Don’t think so,” he says groggily. “Maybe the heat.”
He rubs her shoulders briefly, kisses the top of her head, and walks to the window, looking out into the darkness.
* * *
Two facts about Whitacre Hay and his work have always troubled Rae: first, that no original manuscripts of any of his works have surfaced thus far, which has made her increasingly worried her entire subject could be called into question. And second, that mourning warblers, from everything she has read, are endemic to eastern North America and have never been spotted anywhere in Europe, let alone southern England.
* * *
She feels a surge of energy come over her and quickly types out the rest of the sentence: It is not just Hay’s subjects or themes, but his words themselves, that take on the contours of the Gothic. She closes her eyes and smiles, enjoying the feeling of having brought a previously obscured thought into the light.
Jeff squints and leans forward, until his forehead nearly touches the window. “Something moving in the grass. Probably a rat.”
She leans back in her chair, eyes still closed, and feels sleep approaching.
After a moment Jeff walks over to her. “What did you say?”
“What?”
“You were saying something. ‘Wake and.’ ‘Wake up,’ something-something.”
Again, there is a flutter at the edge of her consciousness, like a moth bumping against a window, accompanied by a rising sense of panic, an urge to flee. She sits with it, attributes it to her fear of writing, of exposing herself to the world, and it soon passes. She feels herself nodding off, and Jeff steadies her. “Let’s get you to bed,” he says, helping her out of the chair and to the bedroom.
In the now-empty living room, the glow of the screen casts a dim light, her final line in dark serif over white:
It is not just Hay’s subjects or themes, but his wake and wander follow the light show me your smile
The cursor blinks on and off at the end of the final word. Outside the window, in the close darkness, a mourning warbler sings its wistful song, then grows silent among the greater chorus of insects that fill the humid night.
The motion-sensor light on the corner of the house turns on, flooding the long grass of the front yard with light for a few moments before switching off again.
* * *
Ⓒ John K. Peck
