Letters

I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to fully comprehend, to fully piece together what happened to my friend, Parabola Finch, on that awful Fall night. I was woken up by a call from the Nassau County police, an oddity in and of itself because I generally keep my cell phone on silent when it’s in the bedroom. It was about 3 in the morning; the voice on the other end apologized for waking me, but wanted some information concerning my friend, Finch. I didn’t understand why I was being called, and I said as much but the officer on the other end only repeated that mine was the only contact number they had. Finch was dead. I didn’t know how to understand that just then. Information like that—the death of a young man—a friend, there’s just no way to prepare for that. Minutes of silence passed before the officer suggested that I come down to view his personal effects myself, and to see if I could find contact information for anyone else they would need to call.

Was there anyone else? What did I really know about Finch? How did he die? At the time I assumed suicide, but when I intimated that to the officer he negated my assumption. I didn’t even want to suggest murder, and before I could the cop said that they weren’t quite sure how he died. Some kind of freak electrocution it seemed like.

Finch was going through some rough times. He’d just split from his wife—not divorce, just estrangement. They’d grown apart, he said. He’d moved out of the apartment they shared out on Long Island and had taken a garret room in an old boarding house near Lloyd Harbor. He had taken on an obsessive need to write, and blamed the demise of his personal relationships on this. He seemed almost to care more about filling up notebooks—which he did readily and with speed—than about people as of late. The people in his life, his family (what little he had left) and friends became sources of synthesis for him. Objects he could release into his stories, always able to control the outcome of any conversation or encounter. After I got off the phone with the police, I couldn’t get to sleep, so I started sifting through some letters and emails Finch and I had sent to one another. We had communicated in some fashion at least every day, and we’d developed almost a shorthand language between the two of us. Most of it silly wordplay, nonsense; but it kept us creative. I empathized with Finch and his desire to write, and we would often talk about taking a road trip and renting a cabin up in the woods to just write in solitude. I guess Finch did his own version of this, moved out of his co-op and into that garret room. He stopped sending me emails then, and only sent handwritten letters. A scrawl of black ink on lined paper. Harsh slashes and curves. He was writing again.

“Tim! I know that no one understands why I had to leave. Why I needed to get away from everything. Why I needed to dedicate myself to writing and writing alone. For now at least. I think that you understand, and I know that you’re not going to judge me. At least I hope you won’t. The pull was just too strong. I didn’t bring much with me. Pens, paper, my books, my notebooks, a portable typewriter. As soon as I moved in, and put my stuff down I had the urge to write. The instantaneousness of it, the creative urge blasted out from solitude. This can’t last forever.”

I wasn’t quite sure what he thought wouldn’t last forever. His estrangement from life? His urge to write? I just don’t know, and not wanting to make him feel bad about himself I never asked. I wrote him back, told him that I was excited that he was making the move to write full time, but expressed how wary I was about how his personal relationships would suffer. I also asked him to describe his new place to me.

“It’s off. It’s clean and neat, of course, but it’s an attic. There’s a separate entrance on the East side of the house; a rickety zig-zag of stairs that were added to the outside a while back (so the owners told me). The room is basically a large rectangle. The ceiling is a sloped peak—so much so that you can only really stand at full height when walking down the center of the room, and a couple of feet to each side of the center. It’s really pretty nice and roomy. There’s a tiny bathroom to the East; just a toilet, sink and shower (the bathroom ceiling slopes too!), and a small kitchen area just opposite the bathroom. There’s a little nook that doesn’t slope, an open area on the North side, this is where I’ve put my writing desk. There’s a window on that wall, but it’s been boarded up. I’ll have to check that out soon.”

We went back and forth a few more times. Short letters, story ideas and plot summaries mostly. We had wanted to collaborate on something, but our collaborations very rarely made it past the outline stage. It wasn’t long after he moved that he had his first short story published in the Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy. It was a strange and terrible story about a man who commits a crime in the present, but is sentenced for his transgressions in the future—an alternate future. The man’s punishment is to live imprisoned within the mind of the man he intended to murder. It was brutal, and screamed of loneliness and uncertainty. Throughout the course of the story, the main character, the murderer, decides to kill an innocent man based on a cascade of paranoid and almost wholly made-up list of perceived wrongs. There’s one scene where it seems as if the main character is being guided by some unknown force, as if he’s being controlled. I wrote to him as soon as I‘d read it, to congratulate him on his success.

“Thanks, TIM! I didn’t mention submitting to F&SF because I knew you subscribed and that you’d see the story if it got published. I just found out which issue it was going to be in a week ago! What a surprise. People seem to really like it. It’s weird because, and this will sound strange, but I don’t really remember writing it. Not all of it anyway. I definitely outlined it, and I found some of my older drafts, but I must have gone into one of those writing trances—like we used to talk about, that place of pure creation…in the “zone.” Ha ha ha. I’m still giddy at seeing my name in print. Have a great idea for the next one.”

His next letter didn’t come for another three weeks. I’d tried sending him a few emails but they all bounced back. His next few letters were alarming, and strange. I was shocked upon reading them again after receiving that phone call from the police. I didn’t really remember reading them previously, bits and pieces stood out in my memory, flashing to life as a re-read the words, but on the whole it was as if I were reading them for the first time.

‘TIM! I submitted another story to F&SF. I probably won’t hear back from them for a while, I just wanted to let you know beforehand this time. This one is about a writer who is able to transform his world through his writing. First just in little ways, then in profound reality warping ways. After a while he becomes unsure about which world he’s living in; the real world, or the world of his own fictions. He even begins to doubt that he’s the actual author of either world. I have a good feeling about this one too. Oh! Also, I pulled those boards away from the wall—there’s a window behind it! The glass is filthy and covered with tar, or black paint. I’m going to scrape it clean one day this week. Since it faces North I might have a good view of the park from here. I’ll let you know if the story gets accepted.”

Attached to this letter was another, dated the same day, but sent separately—I must have paper clipped the two together when I received them.

“Tim! It’s weird, I just re-read the story I was just writing to you about, and it’s really good—but there were whole passages that are unfamiliar! I think we’ve both probably been in the “zone” while we were writing. Where it feels as if something else, our higher consciousness or whatever is guiding our writing. This feels different, though. I mean, most of it is clearly me, but the parts where Austin Zenn (the protagonist) is writing his book-in-a-book are just weird. Odd staccato sentences. I don’t know, it’s good though. I’ll send it to you!”

I put the letter aside and sifted through the box of Finch stuff I’d collected, which was mostly handwritten letter, but included a few email print outs. I put the bulk of his letters aside and lifted the stained and dog-eared manuscript he’d sent me. I read most of it, mainly because I wanted to wait to read it in print, but he was right, there were parts that were unlike anything he’d ever written before. I’d simply chalked it up to the progression of his artistic talents. I picked up his next letter.

“I finally got around to cleaning off that window. It’s pretty amazing what I’ve found; a great view of Caumsett state park—which I didn’t even think I’d be able to see from here; A broad expanse of tree-tops spreading out into the distance, and rising up above the trees something that shouldn’t have been there. At first I thought it was a church steeple, or some kind of weird water tower but it was much too thick, much too tall. You’ll never believe this, but it was an obelisk. A large stone, brown and pitted as if it’d sat amongst those trees for more ages than mankind has walked upright. I just sat there on the floor in front of the window looking at it. Watching as the trees undulated like an ocean below it. Like an ocean or a great grey-green organism with strained breath, wounded by that thick stone spike sticking out of it. I’d never heard of anything like this existing on Long Island. I’ll need to do some research, maybe even walk to the park and see if I can find it.”

Truth be told, I didn’t really believe him. He was very interested in themes of false realities and loved to explore what was it that made us human—often he would send me stories that mixed fantasy and reality, so I’d thought that this was just another one of those. I was intrigued however, and sent him a letter asking him more about the oddity in the park. His next letter came a few days later.

“Got my acceptance letter from F&SF for the newest story today. Feels really good. I had a strange dream last night. Dreamt that I was here in my room, but it was all blue shadows and black ink. I was sat at my desk, looking out the window at that monument. It rose above the tree line—which was purple, and still—and the sky was yellow and grey. The clouds were arrayed around the obelisk in disturbing striations, as if the sky were a giant muscle, relaxed now but ready to flex at any time. Or maybe it looked like scar tissue up against the vault of heaven, left there as a reminder of some long-forgotten transgression. A flock of monstrous birds wheeled their way out of the west and began circling the tip of the obelisk, lazy and sickly. As I watched they began to drop, silently and one by one, into the purple forest beneath them. I looked down at my paper, I guess I was writing, and it was dotted with blobs of black ink, black shapes scattered across a white page. The ink continued to spatter onto the page, and then I realized that it was coming from my face. Ink was running out of my eyes and nose, and as it dropped onto the page it formed words. I couldn’t read them though. But I tried. I stared and searched my mind trying to find the key to unlock this new language. The ink dropped faster onto the page and suddenly…SHOUTING…PROPHET…

I found it, and I breathed out sharply and a great gout of black liquid belched out of my mouth. I could see sinew and bone and, I think, my glasses vomiting forth in that black torrent.

SO weird! I wonder if I can work that into a story.”

I didn’t know what to think about this. I was getting worried about Finch, but I was also going through a few personal struggles, so I lapsed in my correspondence. But Finch didn’t…

TO BE CONTINUED