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Authors: Brian Keene
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better known to the world as Meteornotes) called this DEATH STORM 2009. I think that’s a good name for it. I think it’s fine and proper and has a beautiful ring to it.
But then again, I’m on a death trip.
My neighbor and I have been taking turns plowing the driveway with his snow-blower. On my last trip up to the top of the driveway, I noticed that the cross was no longer there. I know it was there yesterday, because I see it every time I go up for the mail. But some time early this morning, a snowplow hit it, along with the guardrail. There are a few little pieces of wood scattered amongst the snow drifts on the side of the road, but the rest of the cross is gone. I wonder if, when the snow melts and winter passes, will the victim’s family return and put up a new memorial to remember her by? Or do they remember her in other ways? Or is her memory beginning to fade?
Yesterday, after poking around online again and coming up empty (Google can tell me the average annual rainfall for Botswana, but it can’t tell me who died at the top of my driveway), I decided that it was time to get serious about this whole thing. One of the benefits of having freelanced for the York Dispatch in the past is that I still have access to their clippings library and archives. I once featured that archival room in a novel, Ghost Walk . In real life, it’s pretty much like I described it in the book. There is row upon row of massive filing cabinets, filled with clippings from the paper. They are arranged by alphabetical category and span decades of history-going back all the way to the paper’s inception. The really old stuff is on microfilm, rather than paper, and there’s some talk of digitizing the whole collection, but that costs money and newspapers are making about as much money as mid-list horror writers these days.
I drove to the newspaper’s office, which is located in downtown York City, told the girl at the door who I was, and then went downstairs to the archives. Things hadn’t changed since my previous visit (I’d last been there about a year and a half ago, doing research for an aborted non-fiction book on powwow magic). A few staffers recognized me, and I exchanged pleasantries and made small talk. Then I got to work.
It took me about twenty minutes to find what I was looking for. I pulled out a file, flipped through the clippings till I found the date, and there she was.
The girl on the glider.
Staring up at me from the past.
Her family had provided the newspaper with her senior photo. In it, she was smiling. I wondered what she was thinking about when it was taken. All of those possibilities that lay ahead on the road of life? The future must have seemed wide open. Little had she known, when the picture was snapped, that the road of life detoured into an embankment at the top of my driveway just a year later, and that none of those dreams or possibilities would ever come to pass.
We go through the days thinking we have our whole lives ahead of us. We put off things until tomorrow. We spend time consumed with work and obsessed with making enough money to provide for our loved ones, but in that pursuit, we sacrifice spending time with the very people we’re working to support. I spend all of my days writing. That’s all I fucking do. From eight in the morning until five or six at night. Write. Write. Write. Hope someone sends a check on time. Write. Write. Write some more. And at what cost? Sure, my family has a roof over their heads, but if I found out tomorrow that these tumors are no longer benign, and I only had a week to live, would it have been worth it? Would I then contact Mike and Nate and tell them that, instead of finishing whatever stupid novel is left on my computer, they spend time playing with my son instead, because I didn’t have time to finish doing that either? Would I ask them to pay more attention to my wife for me,
But then again, I’m on a death trip.
My neighbor and I have been taking turns plowing the driveway with his snow-blower. On my last trip up to the top of the driveway, I noticed that the cross was no longer there. I know it was there yesterday, because I see it every time I go up for the mail. But some time early this morning, a snowplow hit it, along with the guardrail. There are a few little pieces of wood scattered amongst the snow drifts on the side of the road, but the rest of the cross is gone. I wonder if, when the snow melts and winter passes, will the victim’s family return and put up a new memorial to remember her by? Or do they remember her in other ways? Or is her memory beginning to fade?
Yesterday, after poking around online again and coming up empty (Google can tell me the average annual rainfall for Botswana, but it can’t tell me who died at the top of my driveway), I decided that it was time to get serious about this whole thing. One of the benefits of having freelanced for the York Dispatch in the past is that I still have access to their clippings library and archives. I once featured that archival room in a novel, Ghost Walk . In real life, it’s pretty much like I described it in the book. There is row upon row of massive filing cabinets, filled with clippings from the paper. They are arranged by alphabetical category and span decades of history-going back all the way to the paper’s inception. The really old stuff is on microfilm, rather than paper, and there’s some talk of digitizing the whole collection, but that costs money and newspapers are making about as much money as mid-list horror writers these days.
I drove to the newspaper’s office, which is located in downtown York City, told the girl at the door who I was, and then went downstairs to the archives. Things hadn’t changed since my previous visit (I’d last been there about a year and a half ago, doing research for an aborted non-fiction book on powwow magic). A few staffers recognized me, and I exchanged pleasantries and made small talk. Then I got to work.
It took me about twenty minutes to find what I was looking for. I pulled out a file, flipped through the clippings till I found the date, and there she was.
The girl on the glider.
Staring up at me from the past.
Her family had provided the newspaper with her senior photo. In it, she was smiling. I wondered what she was thinking about when it was taken. All of those possibilities that lay ahead on the road of life? The future must have seemed wide open. Little had she known, when the picture was snapped, that the road of life detoured into an embankment at the top of my driveway just a year later, and that none of those dreams or possibilities would ever come to pass.
We go through the days thinking we have our whole lives ahead of us. We put off things until tomorrow. We spend time consumed with work and obsessed with making enough money to provide for our loved ones, but in that pursuit, we sacrifice spending time with the very people we’re working to support. I spend all of my days writing. That’s all I fucking do. From eight in the morning until five or six at night. Write. Write. Write. Hope someone sends a check on time. Write. Write. Write some more. And at what cost? Sure, my family has a roof over their heads, but if I found out tomorrow that these tumors are no longer benign, and I only had a week to live, would it have been worth it? Would I then contact Mike and Nate and tell them that, instead of finishing whatever stupid novel is left on my computer, they spend time playing with my son instead, because I didn’t have time to finish doing that either? Would I ask them to pay more attention to my wife for me,
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