May 9, 2010

Under the gables (3/10)

    I had walked several miles and the path had insidiously narrowed until I came to the sudden realization that it had become little more than an indistinct track. I wondered if the barber had led me astray? I discarded those thoughts as counter productive, irrational even. I doggedly stuck to the path, making haste trying to beat the swiftly deepening gloom around me to my destination. It was a race I was doomed to loose: the trees that bordered the path seemed to block the diminishing rays of the setting sun. Soon enough, I found that I had lost the path. I gritted my teeth to keep from as I stumbled in the pitch black forest worrying about falling into the lake that had to be somewhere nearby. I knew for a fact that there should have been stars and a sliver of moon above the trees to guide me on my way, but the leaves let no light in and locked me in oppressive blindness. Figuring I could only worsen my situation by wandering blind, I decided that the best course of action was for me to find a relatively comfortable tree to sleep against. I tripped a few times but quickly groped my way to an appropriate tree. Sitting against its trunk with my arms tucked into my jacket to fight off the chill, I let weariness overtake me.

    I slept thus for a few hours. I’m not sure what woke me, the crick in my neck, the pine needles pricking me through my pants, or something else altogether. I realized that the darkness I had experienced earlier must have been due to clouds because I could make out vague outlines of trees in the darkness. Everything was eerily quiet. Then, the death scream of some animal I couldn’t identify cut through the silence. I thought to myself that surely there were no predators in this forest large enough to threaten me, surely that was but the sound of a fox or a badger catching some small unfortunate furry mammal; but for all my reasoning, the sound had awakened a primal apprehension within me, or perhaps it was some sort of intuition. The scream seemed to have come from some ways off, and though I figured I was in no danger, I felt that I would not be able to fall asleep again.

   I was debating whether I should try to take advantage of the semi-darkness to find the path when I first heard it, the strange far off sound of piping notes… probably from some manner of flute-like instrument. The music was played in a scale I did not recognize, and though weird it was certainly, in its own peculiar way, beautiful. Where there’s music, there’s a musician, I thought to myself. I ran in the direction I judged the music to be coming from but soon discovered that it made no difference in which direction I ran: the music seemed to be coming from all around me. A trick of acoustics, the sounds echoing off of the trees, I told myself. I briefly considered calling out, but again some primal sense made me think better of it. Then the music stopped… There was utter silence for a few minutes and I imagined that the gloom deepened. I heard faint rustling in the trees above… More than the wind could account for surely, besides I felt no wind cooling the nervous sweat upon my face. Suddenly I was surrounded by the shrill sound of demented laughter. The shadows were filled with it, and it seemed to me that the laughter brimmed with inhuman malice. Gripped with fear I ran, ran blindly from the sounds that pursued me.

14 comments:

  1. "I wondered if the barber had led me astray?"

    Bet he did. Totally.

    Great addition to what we've seen of the story so far. The only thing I might point out, if you don't mind my saying so, is that in this piece the voice of the character seems to have lapsed into a more formal tone, rather than the more casual tone of the previous installments.

    Love what you do with suspense!

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  2. Actually, never mind what I just said about the tone; having just gone back and reread the previous pieces, I can see the tone's quite consistent. It's just a couple of phrases here and there give it a more casual feel. :)

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  3. Please, feel free to point anything out.
    In turn I'll free free to react on it or not. But regardless of whether or not I act on it, I appreciate and give every one's comments and criticism due consideration.

    I went back and checked as well... I don't really see it. But maybe as the character moves away from the "modern" world he moves towards a world where people use more stuffy sentence structures? Maybe by the end I'll have to stop because the text will require old English courtly discourse and I wouldn't know how to write in that manner, so I'd have to disappear for a few weeks to get the minimum needed to finish the story. Or maybe the inspiration for this story is stronger as the action finally starts to mount. Or maybe I'm just getting sloppy as I hurriedly put the words down. : j That's also quite possible.

    Yeah, thanks. I feel the suspense is needed for a serial... But I'm trying not to over do it.
    I'm looking forward to going back to my regular programming.

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  4. I was reading the comments from the previous posts about how you write for yourself. I must say that whatever your motivation I enjoy reading your offerings. Pieces of a story make me want more.

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  5. Well, firstly for myself... But this serial is pulling out the entertainer in me, and to my surprise, I find myself writing this more for the readers than for myself.

    It's a fun challenge... It's a bit of work.

    I was originally going to try to get voice down for all the pieces (as I did for the first piece), but that isn't going to be possible for practical reasons. I'm barely getting these done in time, and the person who does the voice though willing enough to do the reading, also has a life. ; j

    If this were a website instead of blog, I'd add them in retroactively, but most people don't go back in a blog so there wouldn't be much point to it... Besides, the story will have already been read.

    Sorry for the tangent, glad to hear you're enjoying the story... If you like the style, you should know that it is but a poor tribute to a master... That was the original idea. But for one thing, I've already dramatically changed the pacing.
    Heheh.
    Because of the super short episodic format, the story telling behaves differently... I don't think the normal story pacing would have come across worked very well in this context... Hmm...

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  6. I will now have to watch an episode of I Love Lucy in order to be able to sleep tonight.

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  7. Hahah... Sorry Eryl.
    And it only gets worse from here on in. : j

    But really, if it's not a style you fancy, don't force yourself.

    That said, thanks for reading. As I said earlier, it's a pleasure to hear from you. : j

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  8. Again, what a great picture to go with passage. That is one creepy forest. I read the comments and I think the different feel in this part is more use of the word "was". That's the only thing that pulled me out of the story a bit.

    Loved a couple of of the phrases: "demented laughter", "oppressive blindness".

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  9. Theresa! You're right! I'm changing it now and will keep my eye out for it in the next piece that I haven't finished yet! Thanks for that excellent comment!

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  10. Hmm... Although I see exactly what you mean, after having opened the text I only found one place where I could change that (which I did)...

    So I went back to the style model and realized that the flaw is present in the original as well.

    It may just be more blatant in my piece because my grasp on the style isn't good enough to cover it. I'll think about it.
    As I said, thanks for the comment.

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  11. ooh I love it :o))) and I loved the audio. Brilliant voice, made it even more exciting.

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  12. Kia ora Niki! Glad you liked the audio: it took some doing. When I finally thought we had a good take, the software crashed... So we started again. Heheh, good thing everyone involved was used to dealing with computers.

    Sorry I couldn't get organized enough to get audio for the whole thing.

    To give you some idea of the time frame I'm working with, it's 2AM and I just finished today's post... Which I'll put up in a second.

    Glad you're enjoying it. : j

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  13. I should have read this last night, before going to sleep, then I would have had a reason for not sleeping at least.;)
    Taking a nap under a tree; now that is what I call courageous.;))
    Now I am off to read part 4.;)
    xo

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  14. Hey there Zuzana.
    Courageous? Is that the way the main character seems?
    I get the impression that he's just steadfastly rational.
    I think it would take more guts and probably a measure of folly to blindly walk around in the wilds. Hmm... Am I stretching believability there? I don't think so... Hmmm.

    Thanks for being such a regular reader.
    -------
    @everyone: In fact, in case I haven't said it enough, I'd like to thank all you readers.
    A storyteller alone is just talking themselves.
    Cheers. : j

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