Whether you’ve been with us since that first trip into the cellar or if you’ve only just found your way to Fenwick, I’m glad you’re here.

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This story is meant to be read in order, so new readers—or anyone who might need a refresher can catch the previous episodes by clicking on the links below:

Do Not Clean Glass

The Sock Monkey

One Week

How to Give Orders to a Dead Man

For everyone who’s following along, I hope you’ll share your theories or ideas about what’s going on here. Thank you for being part of this little community. Now, let’s get back to the story.

“Well, that’s a bust,” I said as I leaned back in one of the ladderback chairs Bessie always kept by the pot-bellied stove. Always hated these chairs. They had no give. Great if you wanted to sit up straight, but you just couldn’t relax in them at all.

“What’s that?” Nate asked. He didn’t even look up from his laptop.

Before I could respond, Grandma snapped, “Stop leanin’ back in that chair like a fool! You’re gonna fall back and crack your head open.” She shook her head. “Last thing we need now is havin’ to take you to the hospital.”

I set the chair down on all four legs and said, “Allison, the daughter of the original guy who handled the auctions, is out of town until tomorrow. They wouldn’t give me her cell phone number. So I’ll have to call back tomorrow morning.”

“I don’t blame them.” Nate had been examining the notice that Vallow had left, but he set it down on the counter next to his laptop and said, “You probably sound like a creeper. Some random guy calls up and asks for a woman’s number.”

“How old is this Allison? You could use a lady friend, Hank.” Minnie said it with a straight face, but I could see the laughter she was holding back. Nate didn’t even try. He burst out laughing.

“What are you laughing at, Nate? That computer isn’t going to give me any great-grandkids. Hank, see if Allison likes computer guys.”

“You mean nerds, Grandma. I’ll see if she likes nerds.”

“Laugh all you want, but this nerd just found some information about our conductor friend.” He looked up from the computer to give me a haughty look. “Apparently Mr. E. M. Vallow was a member of the Moose Lodge in Richwood. I found some Facebook groups devoted to Richwood. In one of those groups, they were talking about a big flood that happened in 1954.”

“What did it say?” Grandma asked.

“Someone posted pictures of an old copy of the Richwood Newsleader devoted to the flood. One of the side articles was all about Vallow and the work he did with the Moose Lodge. The article praised him for how ‘punctilious’—they really used that word—he was about making sure that every single dollar raised was spent to help victims of that flood.”

“So, you didn’t really find anything useful, then? Just a fluff piece about how he’s a good guy. Is that about it?” I asked. Nate didn’t respond and that kinda took the fun out of it. He looked distracted. He was staring in my direction, but he was looking at the stove… or maybe through the stove. Thousand-yard stare. That’s what my dad had called it. That’s how he looked right at that moment.

“Nate? Earth to Nate?” I asked. “Are you there, man? You okay?”

His eyes came into focus again and he sat up a little straighter. “I’m sorry… what were you…” He looked at Grandma and then at me. “Did you guys hear that whistle?”

Minnie froze. “Whistle?” I could hear the terror in her voice.

Nate didn’t answer right away. He had that far-off look again. I snapped my fingers right in front of his face. “Nate, did you hear another whistle?”

“Yeah, you can’t hear it?” He looked at me and then to Grandma. “It’s louder now. Sounds closer. It’s so loud I thought maybe you guys could hear it too.” He picked up Vallow’s notice from where it sat on the counter. “This is just like he did with Bessie’s daughter, isn’t it?”

“We don’t know that, Nate,” I said. If we were going to save him, he needed to keep his head on straight.

“But, we do know,” Grandma said quietly. “I know, Hank. I was there.”

“Maybe it’s different…” She cut me off before I could finish the thought.

“This is your fault, Hank Shaw! If you had listened to me…”

Her words stopped in a sob. I went to comfort her. Hug her. Hold her. Give her whatever strength I had to offer, but she pushed me away. She was right. If I’d stayed out of the cellar Nate wouldn’t be in danger, but that cellar was full of danger and somehow we had to figure it out. We couldn’t just let whatever evils were down there fester unseen, unknown, and not understood. Not knowing what else to do, I just rubbed her back.

I felt her stiffen, but then her shoulders relaxed. For years, I’d seen her do the same for grandkids who’d scraped their knees or suffered some other childhood injury.

“That’s not fair, Grand—“ Nate began.

Her shoulders stiffened again and she stepped away from me to face Nate. “Don’t you dare start on me, young man! The only one more to blame for this mess than Hank is you.” She gathered her things. “I can’t be here right now. Just seeing the two of you hurts too much. Bessie’s daughter. Then, Bessie. And now Nate. I can’t take it anymore, Hank. How much does a body have to give? I’ve paid enough.” She started to say more, but her voice broke and she stopped. She gave me one last look and I could see the emotions she was fighting to keep in check.

After she left, Nate and I sat in silence for a while and then finally I said, “Tell me about the whistle.”

“I didn’t want to tell Grandma, but it’s happening more often. Not just whistles either. I’m also hearing the rumble of a train rolling down the tracks. It’s getting harder and harder to focus on anything else.”

I walked over to where Grandma had been working close to Nate. She’d left her ledger and the box of receipts. The ledger was open to the page that documented when Bessie had purchased the lantern from Owen Cottrill’s estate sale. There weren’t many details, but why would there be? Just the price paid, the name of the auction house, and date. I had so many other questions. Exactly how had Cottrill died? Had the lantern been involved in some way?

I looked at my watch. It was getting late. “Nate, why don’t you head on up. That guest room upstairs is yours for as long as you want it. Get some rest. There’s not much left we can do today.”

“You’re the one who should be resting. That Allison girl isn’t available today. Go on upstairs and get to sleep. You can call her in the morning.”

“You think I can sleep?” I laughed. “After seeing Grandma storm out of here. Can you sleep?”

“No,” he admitted. “But, I also have a bit more motivation to figure this stuff out than you guys.”

I chuckled. “Why is it that our family always resorts to gallows humor? Everyone I know is like that.”

“Defense mechanism?” Nate shrugged. “Sometimes you’re just hurting so bad that the only thing you can do is make a joke.”

“Sounds right. I still remember the first thing you said to me after your mom died.”

Nate leaned forward, his interest obvious. “Huh? I don’t remember this. What’d I say?”

I pointed to the stairs that led up to what was now my apartment, but back then had been Bessie’s home. “You came down those stairs and said, ‘Why are you looking at me like someone just died?’”

Nate’s laughter was like an explosion. Sudden, spontaneous, and surprisingly loud.

“Even Bessie didn’t know what to say to that. No one did.” I opened the box of receipts and started to pull out the strips of paper.

“I was fourteen and it was the saddest day of my life. I came downstairs and everyone was staring at me. I didn’t know what to say.”

“It’s okay, man. We all make jokes like that. Must be genetic or something.” I looked at yet another hand-written receipt. I think Bessie had written this one. It was for a fork. Not a set. Just a single fork. She’d paid $87.32 in 1974 for it. How much was that in today’s money? Doesn’t matter. It was a ridiculous amount. I wondered what the story was there and realized I’d probably never know. Like so much of what Bessie knew, the information was just gone.

We lingered for a few more hours. I went through receipts and he continued to research Vallow. He was able to verify that the number on the notice was his employee number, but that just seemed like useless trivia. We needed something more. Finally I decided that I’d done all that could be done with the receipts and headed up to bed. Nate said he was going to keep working for a bit longer. He had thought of a new research angle he wanted to look into before calling it a day.

The next morning I found him asleep. At some point during the night, he’d moved over to Bessie’s old rocker where he was stretched out as much as the rocking chair would allow with his head canted in a way that I knew was going to give him nothing but pain when he woke up.

I set the percolator to going and stepped out onto the porch to feel the morning air.

I pulled out my cellphone and realized I needed to walk over to the side of the porch closest to the river. It was just across the road from the Post Office here in Fenwick. More importantly, it’s where I had coverage.

I leaned against the railing and had started to pull up Allison’s contact information when my phone rang. It was Allison.

“This is Hank Shaw.”

“Hank, they told me you were tryin’ to get a hold of me yesterday. What’d you need?”

“Yes.” Straight to the point. I could work with that. “Yes, I did. I’m not sure if you know him or not, but Mr. Doddrill told me your father handled an estate sale where my great-aunt bought a lantern years ago.”

“How many years are you talking?”

“Um, it’s been a while. Decades.”

“And your great-aunt is wanting what? A return? Sorry. Been too long.”

I laughed. “No. Nothing like that. She died recently and I’m trying to find some information about different items she has in the store.”

“In the store,” she said. “I’m sorry. Who did you say you were again? Who was your aunt?”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I should have introduced myself. My name is Hank Shaw. My great-aunt was Bessie Stafford. She used to run a small shop in Nicholas County named What Remains. When she died, she left it to me and my cousin. This is all new to us and I’m just trying to understand what she left to us. I’d really appreciate any help you might have to give.”

“Bessie Stafford? I know her. I used to trade at her store years ago. Been there many times. Hadn’t heard she’d passed.”

“Not a day goes by when I don’t find myself wishing she were here. Especially when it comes to all the things involved in running this store.”

“I bet. Now tell me about this lantern you were askin’ about.”

“She bought it from an estate sale your dad ran up in Clay County in about ’58. It was Owen Cottrill’s estate, if that helps you at all.”

“The Cottrill Lantern!” She laughed. “We grew up hearin’ stories about that. It’s a legend in our family. Ghost stories around a campfire kind of thing.”

“You don’t say? Do you remember any of them?”

“I do,” she said. Her voice had a calculating edge to it that I didn’t like.

“Well, could you share them with me?”

“I can, but it seems like maybe I should get some type of consideration for the effort. That seems only fair, doesn’t it?”

I didn’t like where this was going. “What’d you have in mind?”

“You said that you and your cousin inherited What Remains, right? Are the two of you about the same age?”

“Six months apart. Why?”

“And what age would that be? Younger than, say, forty? You sound young.”

“We’re both twenty-nine. No… that’s not right. Nate is still twenty-eight for a few weeks.”

“Fine. That’s fine. I’ll be happy to answer any question you have about the lantern, but I need a day of your time.”

“And what would we be doing during that day?”

“The reason I couldn’t answer the phone yesterday was because I had just purchased an old farm. County put it up for auction after the owner died without anyone to leave it to. I think there are some nice pieces in there, but there’s an awful lot of junk too. I’m in my sixties now and I need a couple of strong backs to help sort through it all and haul stuff off to the dump for me.”

“That’s a big ask just for some information. I mean a day’s worth of back-breaking labor just for a few minutes of your time?”

“Seems like a fair deal to me. I’m pretty sure I’m the only person alive who still has the answers you want.”

“Are any of Cottrill’s people still living?”

“Yes. He has a great-grandson. Probably a few years younger than you, I’m guessing. Marcus Cottrill. He might know something, but how much do you know about your great-grandparents? I’m sure I can find his number, if you like. But I’m going to have to hold on to that until you finish helping me with that farm. I’ll give it to you then.”

“Jimmy Doddrill said you’d pull something like this.”

“I know.” She laughed in a way that made me hate her. “He’s the one who told me to expect your call.”

“I guess we don’t have a choice, then.”

“It’s settled. That lantern belonged to a conductor named Vallow. He worked for the B&O on the line that used to run right past your store. His death was in all the papers back then.

“He was getting ready for the stop in Fenwick when he collapsed. I think they were going through Dane at the time. They figured he’d had a heart attack, but the brakeman didn’t find him until after the train stopped. They called for a doctor, but by the time one arrived, there was nothing to be done.

“He’d picked up the lantern before he fell. Even after he died, he was still holding it so tightly that they had to pry his fingers loose to get it out of his hand.”

“That’s a little morbid,” I said.

“I’m not quite sure how Mr. Cottrill got the lantern, but I imagine that no one wanted to use it after Vallow died. It was either sold or thrown out. Somehow it ended up in Cottrill’s hands and that’s when the story starts to get creepy.”

“How so?”

“Well, Cottrill gets this lantern and the glass is all covered in soot. So he does what anyone would do. He cleans it. Except when he wipes away the grime he notices that there’s this red light coming from inside the glass. Not an ordinary flame like you’d expect. Just this eerie red glow.”

I saw that same light when Nate cleaned the glass.

“Shortly afterward, he started hearing train sounds. A whistle at first and then the rumble of tracks.”

My mouth went dry and I swallowed several times.

“Then this train conductor shows up. My dad always said it was the ghost of Mr. Vallow. Anyway, that ghost tells Mr. Cottrill that he’ll be back to pick up his freight in seven days. And by freight, he meant Mr. Cottrill himself.”

I felt myself gripping the phone more tightly. “Your dad said freight? He used that word?”

“Yes. Freight. My dad always played that part up because when we were little kids we didn’t understand why the ghost referred to Mr. Cottrill as freight. So my dad would always make this spooky voice and say that the conductor was going to claim his soul. Ooooooooh!”

She chuckled and it felt like she was waiting for me to join her, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not even a fake laugh.

After a moment, she continued, “Then, that ghostly conductor left a little slip of paper that had the time and date of when he would return.

“After that, Mr. Cottrill started acting strange. He was hearing those train sounds more and more often. And every passing day just made him more anxious. We loved hearing this spooky ghost story as kids, but as an adult I see it for what it really was: a man who was struggling with some type of mental breakdown. It’s sad when you really think about it.”

I wanted to speak up. Object. Let her know that Cottrill wasn’t crazy, but then she’d want to know how I knew and that was more than I wanted to give her. Instead, I asked, “So what happened? How did he die?”

“The way my dad told it, Cottrill was working in the hayloft when he heard a whistle blow. He got so startled that he fell backwards and landed on his head. Died instantly.”

“Did he die on the seventh day?”

“Right down to the very minute.”

Down to the minute. Not much left to say after that. Not anything I wanted to say at any rate. I thanked her for her time, promised to be available when she was ready to clear out that farm, and hung up.

I took a step back from the railing and turned to look into the store. I looked past the Indian motorcycle displayed in the large window to where Nate sat. He was just waking up and I had to look away from him before he could read the feelings I knew were showing on my face.

Nate was already back at his laptop when I stepped back into the store. He looked up and lifted a paper from the counter. “Printed this out last night after you abandoned me.”

“I didn’t…” It was too early for this fight. I shook my head and said, “What’s that?”

“It’s a story about Vallow. A lot of newspapers covered his death. This particular article is from the Charleston Gazette. Heart attack. Did you know he was clutching a lantern—I think it was our lantern—so hard that they had to literally break his fingers to get it out of his hand? Grisly.”

That was different than what Allison had told me. I wondered if she’d left that part out or if the newspaper exaggerated what happened to juice sales. “That has to be an exaggeration. They printed that in the newspaper?”

“The fifties were a different time, man. Oh, and I also found his obituary. It’s just more of the same. Talking about how reliable he was, his sense of devotion to his job, and how he always made sure that every parcel made it to its final destination. Did you know the train used to deliver mail to the Post Office right here? That was a big part of his job and the postmaster at the time talks about how seriously he took his responsibilities.”

Reliable. Devoted. A man who finished what he started. Yesterday I’d called that useless information, but when I looked down at the notice next to Nate’s laptop I wondered if I’d been too dismissive. The notice had Nate’s name. The date. The exact time.

Our plan was to show Vallow that the railroad had closed. His orders had changed. We were going to show him the paperwork and trust that he would do his duty, but which obligation would he honor?

The forms we showed him or the promise he’d written himself and hand-delivered to my cousin? What if doing his duty meant taking Nate?

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Next in Written Ward

Written Ward follows a four-week rhythm during each season. We are in Week One.

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I wanted to use this opportunity to introduce you to one of my favorite authors. If you decide to give him a shot (either this book or one of his many others), I hope you’ll speak up and let me know how you liked it.

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Paradox Bound by Peter Clines

I first discovered Peter Clines’s writing about a year ago. He’s writing appeals to me because he frequently has an interesting premise based on some type of mystery that involves a science fictional premise and enough action to be a low-key thriller.

The Fold was the first of his books that I’ve read. Turns out that book is actually the second one in a loosely-connected series that Clines refers to as The Threshold Universe. If you are a fan of cosmic horror, you have to read these books. The first book in that series is 14. There is a chronological order to them, but you can read them in any order. The only risk you run reading them out of order is that you might encounter some of the characters meeting one another after you’ve already finished a book where they had an established relationship… and that leads me to the book that I want to talk about today.

That book is Paradox Bound. It’s a story about the American Roadtrip with a twist. The roadtrips in this book aren’t the type that have been immortalized in songs about getting your kicks on Route 66 because these roads wind through American history itself, passing through different eras and occasionally crossing paths with figures who have become part of the country’s folklore and cultural mythology. These journeys don’t represent traveling through the American history taught in schools. Rather the characters in this novel are traveling through the history Americans imagine. It’s a story built around the mythology that has grown up around our roads, cars, folk heroes, secret societies, and frontier optimism. Most of all its about the American Dream. Clines manages to mix all of these elements together into a time-travel adventure that kept me turning pages until I reached the end.

Normally I’m not a fan of time-travel stories because there are so few people who can do them well. Too often they become preoccupied with temporal paradoxes or elaborate rules designed to keep travelers from accidentally changing the past. Clines largely sidesteps that problem by making things simpler: you can’t change history. If you travel into the past, whatever you do there was always part of the history that already happened. The book builds on what, for lack of a better term, I’ll call predestination loops.

The story begins when an eight year old Eli Teague meets a captivating woman whose car, a 1929 Model A Ford, has broken down by the side of the road. She’s dressed in clothing from the Revolutionary War era, carries old-fashioned weapons, and drives a car filled with technology that shouldn’t exist in 1929 or even in our own time. The encounter is brief, but it comes to be one of the defining moments of his life.

He sees her again five years later, and then once more when he is on the cusp of turning thirty. Eli has grown older. She hasn’t.

Eventually, he persuades her to tell him what she has been searching for all these years, and in doing so finds himself drawn into the hunt for the American Dream. Not the nebulous concept or fuzzily defined collection of ideals we usually mean by that term. In Clines’s world, the American Dream is a real artifact. It was once protected by a group of secretive guardians, but now it’s gone missing. And so Eli joins the Searchers who have spent years traveling through American history trying to find it… and that’s when the fun begins.

The premise may sound a little over-the-top—maybe even a little sappy—and, maybe it is. But that’s part of the fun. Paradox Bound takes an absurdly ambitious premise and plays it straight, turning it into a wonderfully uplifting and hopeful adventure that I think you’ll enjoy.

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Next in Written Ward

Written Ward follows a four-week rhythm during each season. We are in Week Four.

Next week, we’ll be back with another installment of my serial featuring Hank Shaw and Nate Parsons as they try to unravel the secrets of the antique stores they’ve inherited and the mysterious objects locked away in its cellar.

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Whether you’ve been with us since that first trip into the cellar or if you’ve only just found your way to Fenwick, I’m glad you’re here.

Subscribe now

This story is meant to be read in order, so new readers—or anyone who might need a refresher can catch the previous episodes by clicking on the links below:

Do Not Clean Glass

The Sock Monkey

One Week

For everyone who’s following along, I hope you’ll share your theories or ideas about what’s going on here. Thank you for being part of this little community. Now, let’s get back to the story.

I came downstairs before daylight and found the cards where I’d pinned them the night before. The few facts I’d documented—SOOT, WHISTLE, RUMBLING, THE MAN, and ONE WEEK—had to mean something.

I spent the next few hours going back through everything we knew. By the time I stopped writing, I’d covered the table with maybe two dozen sheets of paper. Half-formed thoughts. Questions I couldn’t answer. The same facts arranged and rearranged in the hope that putting them in a different order might reveal the connection I’d been missing.

I picked up my cup from the edge of the table and took a sip. The coffee had gone cold already.

I looked out the window and was surprised to see that the sun had risen above the ridge. I couldn’t believe I’d been working that long. The morning light fell across the table and caught the yellow notice the conductor had left there the night before. Nate’s name stood out in crisp black type against the aged paper.

Before Nate went home, he’d complained that my list of cards wasn’t complete. He said I needed to add one more. A card that would read DEATH. I’d refused—only to have the conductor hand-deliver a notice that said as much.

The conductor had to be the key to all of this. But was he tied to the lantern or to the rail line that had once run through Fenwick? Why had exposing the light brought him here? Why did the soot constitute acceptance? And why did he insist that Nate was freight?

I took a fresh card from the stack and wrote FREIGHT. On another, I added the words TENDER CONFIRMED. Then I filled others with the words CONSIGNEE UNASSIGNED, ORDERS REMAIN UNCHANGED, and the time 9:14 P.M. I pinned the new cards beneath the others and stepped back. The cards still didn’t give me an answer, but at least I was beginning to understand some of the questions.

A big question was the lantern’s history. The only thing I knew was that Bessie had bought it from an estate sale in Clay County, but who did she buy it from? Why had she bought it? I doubted that I’d ever learn the why, but I knew enough about their bookkeeping to be reasonably sure I could find out the who. The answer would be in one of Minnie’s notes. That woman documented everything. I went over to her desk and started going through the various drawers, flipping through notebooks, and just digging for some type of record from that year.

The bell above the front door jingled. I jumped and dropped the notebook I was holding. When I turned, Nate was edging sideways through the doorway with a cardboard box in his arms. Minnie followed with one of the old leather-bound ledgers.

“You can get out of my chair right now,” Minnie said. “You’re lookin’ in the wrong place.”

I froze in place like I’d been caught with my hand in the cookie jar. “How do you know what—”

“Because in the two decades you’ve been walking this earth you’ve never shown a single moment’s interest in my records. Now, you’re trying to figure out this lantern. Only makes sense that you’d go looking for the man who owned it before Bessie. Well you can stop looking.” She dropped her ledger on the desk. “The answer’s in here.” Without another word, she flipped the book open to a page that she’d bookmarked and ran her finger across the page until it stopped at a name: Owen Cottrill.

“That’s great. Do you know anything else about him?”

“I do not, but I do have the name of the man who ran the estate sale. Maybe he’ll have more information for you.” Her finger slid to a different column on the same page where I saw the name of the auctioneer: Clyde Monahan.

“Clyde Monahan. I can work with that,” I said. I knew just who to call too.

Nate came over with his box and set it on the table next to Minnie’s ledger. “If you knew the answer was in your ledger, why’d you have me carrying this long box all this way?”

“Two reasons,” Minnie said. “First, there might be something useful in that box. It’s better to have all the information on hand just in case we need it.”

“And the second reason?” Nate asked.

“Because I wanted you to feel useful.”

That caught me off guard and I let out a quick bark of laughter. Nate gave me a cross look and I tried to make it up to him. “Don’t worry, Nate. I have just the job for you. Practically tailor-made.”

“What’s that?”

“I want you to go online and find out everything you can about the train and the railroad that used to be right outside of this place.”

“Yeah,” Nate said with a smirk, “I’m sure somebody digitized forty-year-old train schedules, indexed them, and put them online for the tens of people who might someday care. Probably even gave it an API. You realize the internet isn’t a database of everything that ever happened, right?”

“We don’t need to know everything that ever happened. We just need to find out about the train that used to run past this place—and more specifically the lantern you couldn’t resist touching.”

“Boys!” Minnie said. “Can we get less fighting and more focus?”

After all this time, he still knew how to get under my skin. “You’re right, Grandma. I’m sorry.” I turned away from Nate and rested a hand on the edge of the counter. “Just find what you can, okay?”

Nate didn’t answer, but he pulled a chair over beside the counter and opened his laptop. The glass case full of objects Bessie had said were tainted by sorrow sat at his elbow. I took that as a win.

“Grandma, can you look through all of the receipts and things you brought to try to find any other bits of information you might have about that lantern? I’m going to get on the phone and see what I can find out about Owen Cottrill and that Monahan guy.”

She gave me a brief smile and took her seat at the little worktable beside the register. In a matter of moments she was buried behind a stack of papers and small receipts. Nate was only a few feet away, already staring into his laptop.

I left the two of them working and headed for the front door, passing the coal stove on my way. I paused at the door to look back at them. Between the two of them, it looked like we’d opened some sort of makeshift detective agency. I chuckled and stepped through the open door and stopped beside it. I was still close enough that I could hear Grandma shuffling papers and be there if she called out to me. From there I could enjoy the breeze coming off of the Cherry River. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed.

There were a lot of ways to go about finding the information I needed, but most of them would require too much of the thing that was getting harder to come by: time.

As best I knew, Owen Cottrill was a private citizen. No particular reason anyone in the collectibles business would know his name. I could work the social angle. I did have a couple of cousins up in Clay County. One of them might have known him or someone close to him. That might be a good angle for this, but I figured I’d have better luck going after Clyde Monahan. He ran the estate sale for the Cottrills and Minnie had said he was an auctioneer as well. That put him in a small class of people who were easier to find. More than that, it put him right in my neck of the woods. I knew all the people who would know him.

The phone rang twice and then a loud voice from the other end said, “Hank! How’re you, son? I was so sorrowful to hear about Bessie’s passin’. Believe me when I say the world ain’t had a nicer woman walk its soil than Bessie Parsons. I did a lot of business with her over the years and she was truly a saint of a woman. Now, what can I do for ya?”

All the words came out in one long stream. The man barely stopped to catch a breath, but that was just how Jimmy Doddrill was.

“I appreciate that, Mr. Doddrill. She always spoke highly of you and how knowledgeable you were. ‘Hank,’ she’d say, ‘if you ever need help figurin’ out how much somethin’s worth, you call old man Doddrill. He’ll tell it to you plainly and you can trust his word.’ That’s what she’d tell me.”

“Well, Bessie knew her antiques.”

“She knew people, too.” I smiled. “And I meant to tell you, Lori came to the funeral. Brought us a pie and everything. That was awful kind of her.”

“She’s a single young woman, too. I could put in a good word for ya, Hank.”

“Well, I might just take you up on that someday.” I laughed. “Actually, I was wonderin’ if you could help me find a fella.”

“I sure can try. Who are ya lookin’ for?”

“Name’s Clyde Monahan. Might be out of the business by now and I know it’s a long shot even askin’ you. Minnie told me I was just wastin’ your time even bringing it up. Said I should just go straight to the newspapers and obituaries, but I don’t think she knows how connected you are. Years ago this fella was an auctioneer. He ran estate sales. I don’t know how wide-traveled he was, but I do know he handled a few in Clay County. You ever have any dealings with him?”

“Monahan, you say? Naw, can’t say that name rings a bell with… oh wait. How long ago did you say he was workin’? I think my daddy did trade with a Monahan, but that was back in the seventies. Way before your time, but not before Minnie’s. She should know better.” He paused long enough to laugh and then continued, “Why’re you askin’ about somethin’ as old as all that?”

“Antiques, Mr. Doddrill. Why else would I be askin’?”

“Fair enough,” Jimmy Doddrill said. “Fair enough. Well, I can tell ya right now that Clyde Monahan is dead. He passed goin’ on about three years ago now, I reckon. He left the business to his daughter. Her name’s Allison. I’m happy to give you her number but, Hank, you’ll want to watch out for her. She’s shrewd. If whatever you’re lookin’ for has any kind of money attached to it, she’ll want a piece.”

“That’s good to know, Mr. Doddrill. Not gonna be a problem though. I’m just lookin’ for some information.”

Doddrill laughed. “Boy, don’t you know that’s the most costly thing you can buy?”

“I do know that, Mr. Doddrill. I was hopin’ that she didn’t.”

He laughed again. “Well, you get back to me when you’re deal’s done and tell me how that hope played out. Are you ready for her number?”

He gave me the number, I thanked him, disconnected, and stepped back inside. Grandma had stopped sorting receipts at her table and was staring at me over the stack.

“Couldn’t help hearin’ my name come up. When did I say anything to you about that old coot?”

“You never said a thing, but don’t tell me you don’t believe it.”

She harrumphed. “Still, woulda been nice if you’d asked first.”

“You’re right. And I’m sorry, but it worked. He gave me the number of the person who might know about Clyde Monahan and might still have records about Owen Cottrill. I’m gonna call her…”

“Eh,” Nate said from the counter. “I was wrong.”

I looked over at him. “Wrong? What were you wrong about?”

He turned the laptop toward us. “About how there probably wouldn’t be a lot of information about old trains online. Turns out the people who love trains, really, really love trains. I’ve found at least half a dozen websites devoted to the old B&O Railroad and a couple of Facebook communities for the line that ran right past our door. They called it the Number 4. It ran from Cowen up to Richwood, turned around, and went back to Cowen. Also, I found a mistake on Bessie’s inventory card. She wrote that the trains stopped running in 1987. That’s wrong. The trains didn’t stop running until 1990. A full three years later.”

Grandma pushed the receipts aside. “Now just you hold on. I’m the one who wrote No Line Running on that card and I don’t know what you’re going on about 1990. The trains stopped goin’ through Fenwick in 1987. Anyone who lives here knows that. Just ask any old timer. They’ll tell ya.”

“That’s not what the records I found online say. They all say 1990.”

“I think…” I looked up. “I might know why.” I walked past the stove and turned toward the rows of shelves along the front wall. Behind a row of Mason jars and a bundle of yarrow was an old framed notice.

I shifted the jars aside and pulled the frame free. The paper was sun-faded and frayed at the edges, but the print was still legible behind the glass. It read: INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION NOTICE OF APPLICATION FOR ABANDONMENT.

“I bought this off a guy up in Webster County three or four years ago. Came out of an old depot. I couldn’t figure out why anybody needed federal permission to stop running a train, so I looked it up.” I carried the sign over to Grandma and Nate so they could see it more clearly. “The railroad could quit running trains through Fenwick before the line itself was officially abandoned, but they couldn’t officially close until Uncle Sam gave them the okay. There’s a whole process to this stuff.”

Nate turned his laptop back around. “Maybe,” he said.

“Maybe?” I repeated and looked toward Grandma to see if she understood him.

“Maybe these people scanned more than schedules.” He clicked through several tabs on his browser looking for the right page. “I know it’s in one of these. I just saw it.” He slapped the table. “There it is!” He angled the screen so we could see.

“Nate, what am I looking at? Is that a train schedule?” I asked.

“This isn’t a passenger timetable. It’s an employee timetable.”

“What’s the difference?” Grandma asked.

“Passengers use one to figure out when their train leaves. Railroad employees use this one to figure out what they’re allowed to do.” He scrolled further down the page. “It explains it all right here. When a new timetable went into effect, it replaced the old one.”

I looked at Grandma again.

Nate noticed my expression. “What?”

“Vallow.” I said the word quietly. Almost like I was afraid saying his name would make the conductor come back. Maybe I was.

“What about him?” Nate asked.

“My orders remain unchanged.”

Nate looked back at his screen, searching the timetable. “Hold on.” He pulled the laptop closer and read the paragraph again.

“What?” I asked.

“This.” He pointed at the screen. “It says when the new timetable takes effect, any train operating under the old one loses its ‘right and schedule.’ That’s what he means by orders. If Vallow died while the old timetable was still in effect, then as far as he’s concerned, nobody ever gave him anything that superseded it.”

“He’s dead, Nate,” Grandma said. “I don’t think the Interstate Commerce Commission is much concerned with whether ghosts have their paperwork in order.”

I edged closer to the counter. “Don’t you see though? What if it doesn’t matter whether the rules actually bind him. What if the thing that matters is that Vallow believes they do.”

“Okay,” Nate said. “So we know why he’s still following the old orders.”

“That don’t tell us how to change ‘em,” Grandma said.

My eyes went to the yellow notice on the table and I felt my gut drop. “The good news,” I said with an enthusiasm I didn’t feel, “is that we still have six days to figure out how to tell a dead man his orders have changed.”

This is something different. I enjoy comics and like making them. So from time to time, I may include short little horror-related (but never extreme) comics like the one above. Do you like things like this? If so, let me know.

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Written Ward follows a four-week rhythm during each season. We are in Week Three.

This week’s newsletter was delayed, but I still plan on releasing my regular edition on Friday. I’ll be back in your inbox in a couple of days with this month’s edition of Found Treasures.

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John

Life got busy and the show fell by the wayside for a bit, but I’ve always wanted to return to it. My main reason for wanting to return to this form is that I genuinely enjoy talking to people. I’m curious about what they do and how they think. Watch any of those old episodes and I think that curiosity will come through.

Those earlier episodes were guided entirely by my curiosity. Who interests me? Why are they or what they’re doing intriguing? I’ll still follow those questions from time to time, but I want this new version of the show to place a greater emphasis on the fiction community. I want to bring writers onto the show to talk about their stories, the choices they’ve made, and the things their work has done particularly well.

Fiction doesn’t grow as quickly on Substack as other types of writing. There are probably several reasons for that, but I think one of them—maybe the main one—is trust. Here’s what I mean by that, if you come across an article that says it’ll teach you three things about some subject, you can quickly it and decide whether it has something to say. The commitment is small.

Stories aren’t like that. They ask for something more. If you open a story and see that it has a forty-minute reading time, you have no guarantee that those forty minutes will be well spent. Reading a new writer is an act of faith. Earning that trust is one of the challenges that writers face with each new piece. I’m hoping that Spoken Ward can help bridge that gap. I would love to introduce readers to stories and writers that they wouldn’t otherwise encounter.

Everyone’s tastes are different. I can’t guarantee that you’ll love every story I enjoy. What I can do is tell you the thing that caught my attention, explore what the story has done well, and, then, let you decide for yourself whether it’s worthy of your time.

More than anything, I’m hoping that this show will help you find something new to read, and maybe, your next favorite author.

This week, I’m talking to about what I believe is one of his best stories. It’s a fun discussion and I think you’ll enjoy it. If you haven’t read his story, you can click on the link below, read it, and then pop back over here to hear our discussion.

Gibberish

Father and Sun

Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, before the time of affliction come, and the years draw nigh of which thou shalt say, “They please me not”: Before the s…

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3 years ago · 91 likes · 49 comments · Scoot

Here’s the story that Scoot recommended by . I hope you enjoy it!

Age of Aquarius

Gods of the Grove

Welcome to Season Three of Beach Reads for Goth Kids, the original Substack summer horror extravaganza. All season long, I’m delivering zesty stories with summery themes. Accept No Substitutes…

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2 months ago · 43 likes · 16 comments · EJ Trask

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Whether you’ve been with us since that first trip into the cellar or if you’ve only just found your way to Fenwick, I’m glad you’re here.

This story is meant to be read in order, so new readers—or anyone who might need a refresher can catch the previous episode by clicking on the link below.

For everyone who’s following along, I hope you’ll share your theories or ideas about what’s going on here. Thank you for being part of this little community. Now, let’s get back to the story.

The cellar felt colder than usual. No matter. I wasn’t going to be there long. Not like before.

The lantern was where I’d left it, lying on its side. The flour sack that had served as its cowl lay in rumpled folds beneath it.

I gathered the cloth and wrapped it around the lantern the way I’d seen Bessie do it: the left side first, then the right, with the loose end tucked up under the base. The flour sack felt coarse against my hands. As I drew it tighter around the globe, the red flame flickered through the weave. For a second, it lit the words Richwood Wholesale Company before disappearing beneath the next fold.

Minnie had told me how people used to cut old flour sacks into dresses. I wondered if Bessie had once meant to make something for her little girl from this very one. I didn’t let myself finish the thought.

I wound the baling wire around the bundle. It scraped and bit into the cloth, making a soft metallic groan as I pulled it tighter. Three turns should have been enough. I gave it five. Then I tugged at the cloth, checked the bottom, and bent down to make sure no light escaped from the far side.

It looked the way Bessie had left it. I told myself that mattered. I had to believe that it was enough.

Before leaving, I counted the other objects in the cellar. All forty-three were still where they belonged. I counted them again, as if the numbers might change. Nothing else appeared to be disturbed.

I made my way up the stairs and locked the heavy door behind me. It was good to be out of there.

The sock monkey was still lying on the counter where Minnie had left it before Nate took her home. I grabbed it and carried it into the back room where I set it beside the inventory card I’d started. The table back there was larger, and I needed room to think.

There had to be a way out of this. I only needed to see things clearly enough.

I looked down at the monkey. Was it harmless, or did it belong in the cellar beside the lantern? I added the word Handling to the card and wrote: Unknown. Do Not Move. It wasn’t much of an instruction, but for now it would have to do.

I cleared the table and unrolled an old map Bessie had tucked behind a copper fish mold. Why she’d kept it there was one of the lesser mysteries she’d left for me. One edge curled toward the middle, so I weighted it down with one of the Foxfire books. A WPA collection of West Virginia folklore held another corner, and a history of the B&O Railroad lay open beside it.

The map showed the old line running from the railyard in Cowen and heading south through Camden-on-Gauley, Allingdale, Fenwick, and eventually Richwood where it would turn around and head back towards Cowen. I found the place where the Fenwick station had stood and marked it with a red X. What Remains stood across the road from where the station had been and where the Post Office was now.

On index cards, I wrote down the progression that Minnie had described.

SOOT.

WHISTLE.

RUMBLING.

THE MAN.

ONE WEEK.

I pinned the cards in a row across the corkboard that hung next to the back door. Then I began with the indexes, searching the books for any references to Fenwick, lanterns, conductors, accidents, and every variation of ghost train I could think of.

Nothing.

By the time Nate returned, I’d covered the table and half the corkboard without finding a single thing that could save him.

The back door opened before I could put the pen down. Nate stood framed in the entrance with rain on his coat.

“How is she?”

“Asleep, I think,” Nate said. “Tildie came over and sat with her. She didn’t say much.”

That helped, I think. It didn’t make my guilt go away, but knowing she was resting was something. I wanted to ask whether Grandma had mentioned me, but I noticed that Nate was looking at the table. The sock monkey lay beside its inventory card. I noticed that one of its button eyes was loose. Nate’s attention moved past the monkey to take in the map and all of the books that were holding it down. He paused for just a moment when he saw the red X. The cards on the corkboard brought a smile to his face. “Murderboard much? Looks like you’ve been busy.”

It wasn’t quite approval, but I accepted it anyway. I stepped between him and the table and picked up the red marker. If I was going to explain this, might as well look like I knew what I was doing. “I’ve got it all figured out. Three parts. Simple, elegant, almost impossible to misunderstand.”

“That last part feels directed at me.”

Good. He was keeping up. “Part one: keep you alive. Part two: figure out what the lantern did to you. Part three: reverse it. Just have to do it all before the deadline… eh, before next Tuesday.”

“Nice save,” Nate deadpanned. “Can I just point out that ‘keeping me alive’ isn’t really a plan?”

“Keeping you alive is the standard by which every other part of the plan will be judged.”

Nate stepped up to the corkboard and read the cards. “Soot. Whistle. Rumbling. The man. One week.” His fingers trailed over each of the cards until he got to the last one. “And after this?” His finger tapped the ONE WEEK. “Seems like you left out the card after this. You know. The one that would say DEATH.”

“I didn’t forget it. I rejected it.”

“You rejected it?”

I nodded. “That’s right. Rejected. Didn’t fit my plans. I revised outcome.”

Nate looked at me long enough to make me wish I’d chosen a different answer, but I was committed. “Not gonna be an issue. We’ll have it all fixed up before we need another card. Besides, have you priced index cards lately? I’m not going to waste one on an outcome we’ve already canceled.”

Something tugged at the corner of Nate’s mouth. For a moment, he looked like the cousin I remembered, the kid I’d chased through this place. Then moment passed, and he tapped the ONE WEEK card. “No starting date.”

“I know. We assume the worst of the possibilities.” I put my hand on the map where the old railroad bridge crossed the Cherry River just outside. We’d played on that bridge as kids.

“I’ve got a few rules that you’ll need to follow till we get all this stuff sorted. Rule one: you don’t go anywhere alone.”

“I just got back from taking Grandma home.”

“That occurred before the policy took effect.” I tapped the map. “We’re not applying it retroactively.”

“How convenient.”

“Rule two: no driving, climbing ladders, going onto rooftops, and don’t you dare go near the river!” I set the marker down on the table and ticked off the remaining rules on my fingers as I said them, “no handling open flames, and you don’t operate machinery. Don’t even cross the railroad bridge.”

“The railroad bridge? I haven’t crossed that thing since we were kids. What do you think I’m going to do—walk to the gas station for two hot dogs for a dollar?”

“They’re good hotdogs.”

He let out an exasperated sigh. “Fine. Is there anything I am allowed to do?”

“Sit, breathe… maybe eat a slice of that pie Lori gave you.”

“You know people choke on food, right?”

“Look, I can’t do everything for you. Cut it up into really small bites. Come to think of it, we should probably get Lori to come sit with you. That way, she’ll be here if you need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”

“That’s not how you treat choking.”

“Then don’t choke. Great. We’re back to the original plan. Thank you for cooperating.” I pinned a new card beneath the other ones. This care read: NO CELLAR. “You’re not going back into the cellar.”

“I own half of this store. Seems like that would include the cellar.”

“Then consider this a temporary injunction filed by the owner of the other half.”

He took the card down. I put it back.

“The cellar didn’t cause this. I’m the one who touched the lantern.” Nate moved the ONE WEEK card farther away from the one that said THE MAN.

“And I’m the one who left the lantern uncovered. Between the two of us, we’ve done a pretty good job at showing why the cellar needs stricter admission standards.” I put the ONE WEEK card back into the right position. “What we know is that Bessie’s daughter wiped the lantern. Her fingers became stained. She heard sounds no one else could hear. A man showed up and told Bessie to get her ready. She drowned a week later.”

“That’s all we know,” he gestured in a way that took in the five cards. “Everything else is just guesswork.”

“Yes. But what we know should be enough to keep you away from the water.”

“None of this proves the lantern caused that child’s death. It doesn’t prove the man arranged it. Doesn’t prove that monkey is anything more than a stuffed animal.”

“Technically, you’re right,” I said.

“Then stop talking like you’ve solved it all.”

I put the marker down. For once, I didn’t have an answer ready. “Look, the fact that we don’t know everything makes these precautions more necessary, not less.”

“My point is that you can’t eliminate every possible accident. Not for a week.”

My voice came out lower than I intended. “Somewhere in all those possible accidents is the one that kills you. I’ve got to figure out a way to stop that one from happening.”

“Let’s stick to what we’re good at,” I said, tracing the vanished railroad with my fingertip. “I’ll take people. You take records.”

“I’ll track down the Clay County collector, call around Fenwick and Richwood, and find out whether any of the old railroad people are still alive. You find out when passenger service ended, when freight stopped running, and who worked that route. Employment records, accident reports, maintenance reports—anything the railroad left behind.”

Nate looked from the corkboard to the stack of books. “You’re giving me all the tedious work.”

“I’m giving you work that let’s you lean into all those computer smarts you learned in California. You do that part and I’ll deal with the people.”

I pushed the sock monkey’s inventory card to the side, revealing the one that had started all of this. I tapped the drawing I’d done of the lantern. “Nate, we’ve all got gifts, and I need yours. If that lantern belonged to the railroad, it should have some kind of number or a mark that identifies it in some way. If it has a number, there’s a record. And if it’s got a record, I know you can find it.”

Nate took the notebook where I’d started to record information I thought might be important. I kept going on and trying to fill him in on everything I thought was important. I was still talking about freight manifests when I noticed that he’d stopped listening. He was facing the wall. The one that was on the same side as where the Post Office was and where the old train station had stood. His head was cocked to the side the way a dog does when it’s listening.

“Nate!”

He looked at me like he was waking up from a dream. “When did Minnie say the trains stopped coming through Fenwick?”

“Nineteen eighty-seven. Why?”

He kept listening.

“Because I can hear a whistle.”

I stopped talking.

At first I heard only the rain smacking against the back window. Outside, I hear a passing car on its way to Richwood. The tires hissed over the asphalt. “Where?” I asked. “Can you tell how far away?”

Nate shook his head. “Sounds like it’s somewhere over where the station used to be. I don’t know. It’s... close enough to hear, but still kinda muffled.”

He pressed his thumb to his finger, rubbing at the soot. “I heard it on my way back from Minnie’s too. It went quiet for a while, but now it’s started again.”

I couldn’t hear anything.

Nate tilted his head to the side. “I think I can make out something other than the whistle now. It’s like clattering sound. Wheels crossing over timbers and scraping against metal.”

I glanced at the cards: WHISTLE. RUMBLING. THE MAN. I heard three sharp knocks at the back door. Without thinking, I opened it before asking who was there.

There was a man I’d never seen before. He stood on the back steps in the rain. He wore a dark wool coat and a conductor’s cap that he’d pulled low over his eyes. The coat’s buttons were made of brass that had gone dull with age. In one hand he carried a battered leather folio. Before we could say anything, he pulled a watch, that hung from a chain, out of a pocket to check the time.

The most striking thing about his presence was the overwhelming smell of creosote and machine oil. Nate’s coat had been dripping wet when he’d come in from the rain, but somehow this man’s uniform was completely dry.

He entered the room without asking.

“Hey buddy, you can’t just walk in here,” I said. “We’re not buying anything you’re sellin’.”

The man didn’t smile. Instead, he opened his folio and consulted a form. “Which of you is responsible for outgoing freight?”

“We don’t have any outgoing freight,” I said. “We’re not shipping anything.”

The conductor consulted his form. “Nathaniel Parsons?”

Nate started to answer. “No.” I glared at Nate. “He’s not available.”

The man looked past me and stared directly at Nate. His gaze dropped to the hand hanging at Nate’s side and settled on the soot staining his finger.

“Tender confirmed,” the conductor said.

It felt like the room was getting smaller. “Who confirmed it?”

“That mark,” he gestured to Nate’s hand with a nod of his head, “constitutes acceptance.”

Nate looked at me. “What consignment?”

The conductor gestured toward the soot-stained finger. “Nathaniel Parsons.”

My cousin’s name hung in the air, and the joke I wanted to make… well, it wasn’t time for jokes.

I put my hand on Nate’s arm. “He isn’t freight. He’s a person.”

The conductor made a note on his form. “Our line only deals in freight. Passenger service at Fenwick has been discontinued.”

“Nate’s not going anywhere. He’s not traveling. We refuse shipment. The station has been gone for decades. They tore it down years ago! Even the tracks have been pulled up. There’s nothing here for you to collect.”

“Travel is not required. Collection has been scheduled.” He turned a page. “Tendered freight cannot be refused after entry. Fenwick remains a designated collection point.”

“The line closed in 1987,” I said.

The conductor was unfazed. “My orders remain unchanged,” he replied.

I said, “You can’t collect a person. You just can’t.”

His pen didn’t stop. “Classification is not my concern.”

Nate went still. He had that focused look. Same one he had when we were kids trying to solve some puzzle he couldn’t set down. That’s how Nate looked at the conductor.

“What railroad?” Nate asked. He was probing now. Looking for a solution.

The conductor kept his silence.

“Which route?” Nate continued.

The conductor’s pen moved, but he didn’t speak.

“Who authorized the collection?”

No answer.

“Who’s the receiver? Who are you shipping it to?”

The man checked the form. “Consignee unassigned.”

The conductor started to close the folio.

“Can we dispute it?” Nate asked.

“Objections are noted after presentation,” the conductor said, reaching into his leather folder and pulling out a form. The paper looked decades old, but the name across the top had been typed in fresh ink: Nathaniel Parsons.

He signed the form and tore the top sheet free. Then, he punched one corner with a metal instrument. The snap was loud. It was like a gunshot in the dark. You’re not expecting it and then boom. Nate hissed. He pressed his stained finger into his palm. I swear that for a second or two, that soot stain got even darker.

Then the conductor laid that notice right on the map. He put it down right on top of my red X. He examined it for a moment and then straightened it out a bit and said, “The consignment is to be presented at the Fenwick platform next Tuesday at 9:14 p.m.”

“He won’t be there,” I said.

“Failure to present the freight at the appropriate time will not cancel collection.”

“You’re not taking him.”

The conductor looked at me. It was the first time he bothered to make eye contact with me.

“You are not listed on the consignment.” He closed his little book and then checked his pocket watch one more time like he needed to know how long he’d spent talking to us. Then he turned toward the back door.

“Wait,” I said. “What is this?”

He didn’t answer. Just stepped back out into the rain. I followed a second later, but the steps were empty. The path around the back of What Remains that followed the river around the building was empty. There weren’t any footprints in the mud, no cars passing by and no sign of a man walking down the street. He was just gone.

When I stepped back inside, Nate was standing next to the map. He stood there just staring at the yellow notice.

I closed the back door and locked it. For a second, neither of us said a word. The rain continued to pound away roof overhead. The clock ticked. Nate shifted his weight and an old floorboard creaked.

“Don’t touch it,” I said. I don’t know why I said it, but it didn’t feel safe in that moment.

“But, you wanted me to examine the records.” He said it with a smile.

“Yeah, but I meant records that hadn’t been hand-delivered by a dead man.”

It wasn’t much of a joke, but it was enough to lighten the mood a bit. I got the old Kodak that Bessie had sometimes used for new arrivals and photographed the notice where it lay over the red X, then again from lower down. The flash reflected sharply off the paper, but I took two more in case the first one didn’t come out.

The paper was thin, softened at the folds. The preprinted ink was old and uneven. It had faded a bit. The name at the top, Nate’s name, looked like it had been typed this morning.

“Baltimore and Ohio Railroad,” he read. “Form 12-C. Route: Cowen to Richwood. Origin: Fenwick. Place of presentation: Fenwick platform. Consignment: Nathaniel Parsons.”

“Who’s it going to?” I asked.

He looked at the line beneath his name: “Consignee: unassigned.”

“Consignee is the person who’s gonna pick it up, right?”

“Yeah. It’s for whoever is receiving the shipment,” Nate replied. “What does it mean if you don’t have a receiver though?”

No one said anything for a moment, but I couldn’t take the silence anymore. I finally said, “I’m not sure, but it doesn’t sound good.”

I shouldn’t have said that. I could tell he was nervous, but it was good to see him fall back on trying to solve the problem. He copied it all down into his notebook and circled the part about the consignee. Like he was going to come to it later.

“So I’ve got seven days,” he said. “Just like Bessie’s daughter.”

I looked at the board. Suddenly that card that read ONE WEEK felt a lot more menacing. Before this moment, it had belonged to Minnie’s story. Now it was a coming deadline that meant something to us.

I took the card down and wrote the date seven days from now under the words ONE WEEK. Then, I added 9:14 PM under that. These newest words were written in letters that were more crooked than the ones I’d originally written. I pinned it back where it belonged.

Then, I noticed something at the bottom of the form. A signature in small, slanted letters.

E. M. Vallow. Below that name was a number: 417.

Nate copied that into his notebook as well. Now, we had an exact time, the conductor’s name, and what looked like an employee number. It wasn’t a solution, but it was a start… and at least that was something.

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Next in Written Ward

Written Ward follows a four-week rhythm during each season. We are in Week One.

Next week, I have an interview with where we discuss his story

Gibberish

Father and Sun

Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, before the time of affliction come, and the years draw nigh of which thou shalt say, “They please me not”: Before the s…

Read more

3 years ago · 90 likes · 48 comments · Scoot

Before you leave, Which detail from this episode do you think Hank should pay closest attention to… and why?

Leave a comment

Much of the story in What Remains takes place—or finds its origin—in an antique store. I love antique stores because they represent a selective attempt to save the past. They are places devoted to curation. They don’t accept just any piece. Not everything is worth saving. Someone has looked at each item and decided, yes, this belongs on the shelf! It’s worthy of preservation.

But preservation isn’t only about old objects. It can also be about stories, ideas, and people worth bringing into your life.

That is the idea behind Found Treasures, a monthly column where I’ll share things I’ve enjoyed and believe deserve your attention. Sometimes the treasure will be a book or a film. It might be someone else’s newsletter, another creator, or simply a person I discovered on Notes whose posts I really like.

Whatever—or whoever—I choose, this space will be devoted to drawing your attention to something I believe is worthy of your consideration.

Welcome to Found Treasures.

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Kent Peterson

Today, I would like to draw your attention to . Kent lives in Superior, Wisconsin, and I found him through Substack Notes. I enjoy his posts because he seems entirely comfortable being exactly who he is.

Sometimes you encounter people who seem compelled to keep talking or doing something simply to avoid silence. Kent doesn’t strike me that way. I’ve never met him. I don’t know him. I could probably walk past him on the street without recognizing him (his avatar is a cartoon sketch) but I would miss him if he stopped posting.

He begins each day by sharing a picture from his neighborhood and reporting the weather conditions. The man lives in Wisconsin, so weather is a legitimate concern. The subject might sound boring, but I actively look for these posts each day, especially as winter approaches. They remind me that weather can be a meaningful consideration rather than just a little icon on your phone.

Here’s an example of one of his weather reports.

Kent also collects old manual typewriters. Sometimes he simply adds them to his collection. Other times, he repairs them. When we’re lucky, he’ll explain how he fixed an old model or why he prefers one typewriter over another.

It’s not something I would expect to find interesting, but I enjoy reading his accounts. I think it’s because they tend to be short and provide just enough information to hold my attention. He knows when to shut up, and that’s a great quality. It’s also one I’m still trying to learn.

This post about a 1969 Adler Tippa S is a good example.

Kent’s Substack

1969 Adler Tippa-S

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2 months ago · 43 likes · 9 comments · Kent Peterson

One of the things I enjoy most about Kent’s posts is his photography. He’s an avid cyclist, and he frequently takes pictures during his daily rides. He captures beautiful scenery, remarkable weather, and wildlife that most people never stop to notice. You can find numerous examples in both his newsletter and on Notes.

His post about photographing fog is representative of the images he shares.

Kent’s Substack

Fog Photography

Once again it was foggy on my morning bike ride. I managed to take a few pictures that kind of capture the haze…

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2 months ago · 54 likes · 12 comments · Kent Peterson

What I appreciate most about Kent is that he seems comfortable in his own skin. Nothing feels optimized. His posts aren’t carefully planned or staged. He’s just a guy sharing the things he genuinely enjoys, and that’s what makes him worth following.

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Next in Written Ward

Written Ward follows a four-week rhythm during each season. We are in Week Four.

Next week, we’ll be back with another installment of my serial featuring Hank Shaw and Nate Parsons as they try to unravel the secrets of the antique stores they’ve inherited and the mysterious objects locked away in its cellar.

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Whether you’ve been with us since that first trip into the cellar or if you’ve only just found your way to Fenwick, I’m glad you’re here.

This story is meant to be read in order, so new readers—or anyone who might need a refresher can catch the previous episode by clicking on the link below (Do Not Clean Glass).

For everyone who’s following along, I hope you’ll share your theories or ideas about what’s going on here. Thank you for being part of this little community. Now, let’s get back to the story.

Nate was still waiting for an answer.

Part of the reason I’d spent so much time in the cellar was that Minnie objected to any study of the objects. At all. It wasn’t safe, she said. They were locked away for a reason. I didn’t have the training.

Maybe she was right about all of that. But none of it changed the fact that the cellar had fallen to me. Whether I liked it or not, I was the one expected to keep these things locked away. If I didn’t learn what they were and what they could do, sooner or later something bad was going to happen.

I looked at Nate’s finger and realized that the bad thing was already here and, once again, I didn’t have the answers I needed.

It was Tuesday. I hoped the store would be quiet enough for us to speak privately.

“Come on, Nate. We’re going to have to talk to Grandma.”

I felt four years old again. Off to confess some terrible sin.

We emerged from the cellar to find Minnie in the back room, surrounded by the men and women who stopped in frequently enough that you’d think they were part-time employees.

Regulars. That’s how I always thought of them, but they were something more. They were friends. People who had known Bessie and Minnie for years… some had known them for decades. Now, they’d come to express their sorrow, share fond memories, offer support, and, of course, bring the death food. Someone dies, you just have to bring a casserole. Might as well be a rule.

I closed the heavy door behind me and quickly stepped in front of Nate. Conversation came to an abrupt end as every eye turned to us.

Nate shifted to one side. I moved back in front of him. “Stop moving,” I muttered. “And keep that hand down.”

“Say his name and the Devil appears,” Minnie said to much laughter from her gaggle of friends. Jackie Monroe, from the Post Office across the street, laughed so hard that I thought she was going to pass out.

“We were just talking about you boys,” Minnie continued. “Carl Sizemore, here, hadn’t heard that Bessie had willed What Remains to you boys.”

I nodded to Carl. “Yes, that’s right. Bessie asked us to take care of the place.“

“I’ve lost my father’s watch.” The words came out matter-of-factly as if he expected them to have some kind of meaning to me. When he realized I wasn’t going to answer a question he didn’t ask Carl said, “Bessie would’ve known what to do to get it back. I can’t help but wonder if she passed any of that on to you, son?”

“I’m sorry, but—“

Then I saw Lori Mullenax. She was walking right toward me and wearing the most beautiful smile. I think she even had on a new dress. I’d never seen her wear yellow before.

“Hi Hank,” Lori stepped around me. “Nate, I brought a pie for your family. I know how terrible this loss is and I just had to do something to maybe make things a little easier. It’s cherry. Do you like cherry?”

She held out the pie and Nate reached for it with the wrong hand.

Minnie’s eyes widened. All of her attention fixed on the soot staining Nate’s finger. Before she could say anything, Dessie Collins worked her way over to us. Her cane tapping its way across the worn floorboards.

“Do you boys plan on sellin’ the place,” she asked, “or are you gonna give it a go and run it yourselves?”

I could feel Minnie watching me.

“I want to honor Bessie’s dying wish and keep the place,” I said.

At exactly the same moment, Nate said, “We’re going to get things stabilized and reassess our options.”

Nobody else seemed to notice our contradiction. Minnie was still staring at his finger.

Minnie cleared her throat.

“I’m sorry, everyone, but I’m feeling a little worn down. Would you mind if we continued this tomorrow? I think I need to lie down for a while.”

Tildie Bragg, who had to be in her late seventies, stepped forward and began shepherding everyone to the door.

“Come on, now. Let’s give this family some time to themselves. Minnie needs a nap.” She caught Lori looking back at Nate. “And you can stop mooning over that boy and get on outside. You’ll find out how weariness sneaks up on a person when you get to be my age.”

The room filled with goodbyes and promises to come back soon. Friends and neighbors left, but the covered dishes stayed behind.

Tildie was the last to leave. She paused with one hand on the doorframe and looked back to Minnie. “I don’t know what those boys have done, but don’t be too hard on ‘em.”

“Why do you think—“ I began. “How do you know we did anything?”

Tildie looked at me as if I’d just denied that the sky was blue. I could tell by the way she looked at me that she was getting ready to say something, but then she shook her head and stopped. I thought the matter was over but a mischievous smile crept across her face.

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” she said. “Just young. For all your faults, this town—and this store in particular—needs young people. That Mullenax girl certainly thinks so.” She turned back to Minnie. “Don’t run them off. I couldn’t bear the melancholy performance Lori would put on.”

The door closed behind her.

As soon as the bell stopped ringing, Minnie crossed the room and seized Nate by the wrist. She held his hand beneath one of the overhead lights, turning it until the stained finger was fully exposed. Then she looked at me.

“I told you not to go messin’ around in that cellar. That’s not a place where you work.”

“Grandma, I have to understand what those things—“

“I won’t hear it. You didn’t believe me, and now a big fat gobbler has come home to roost. I told you this would happen. I told you, Hank!” Her voice broke as she said my name.

She released Nate’s hand as if it had burned her.

“What did you do?” she demanded. “Start at the beginning, and don’t leave anything out.”

I helped Grandma over to the seats by the coal stove. She lowered herself into the old rocking chair. It was the one that Bessie had always favored. Seeing Minnie in it made Bessie’s absence hit home in a way that it hadn’t before. Felt permanent now, I guess.

Nate and I took the rigid ladder-backs across from her.

Once she was settled, I told her everything that had happened in the cellar. At first, she listened without interrupting. By the time I reached the lantern though, she had gone still.

“Let me make sure I understand,” she said, “You grew up here. You spent years watching how Bessie treated that cellar. I specifically told you not to spend any more time down there than you had to, and you still decided to ignore all of that.”

“Grandama—“

“But you didn’t stop there. You undid all of the precautions that Bessie herself had put in place. You untied the baling wire?”

“Yes.”

“You unwrapped the lantern?”

“I pulled back enough of the wrapping to see it. That’s all. I didn’t stand it up, and I didn’t light it.”

“You did enough.”

“I know I should have listened.” I leaned forward. “But you recognized the stain the second you saw it. I saw the look on your face when you saw it. There’s something you aren’t telling us.”

She shifted in Bessie’s chair but didn’t answer. She looked at me for a long time. For a moment, I thought she was going to say something but then her gaze returned to the soot on Nate’s finger.

“Won’t wash off, will it?” she asked him.

“No. Doesn’t matter how much I scrub. It’s still there.”

I covered one of Minnie’s hands with mine.

“What’s going on?”

She looked toward the back of the store. “Nate, do you know the storage closet beside the back door? The one just off from the cellar?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Open it and reach onto the top shelf. You’ll find a box there. Bring it to me.”

“Grandma, Nate might be in danger. We don’t have time to—“

“Hank.”

She said it the same way she had when I was a boy and had stepped on her last nerve.

“I need you and Nate to do exactly what I say,” she continued. “I know exactly how much time we have.”

I didn’t like that answer, but it was the first one she had given me. I nodded to Nate and he went for the box.

He carried it back and set it on the end table beside the rocking chair. The smell of mildew escaped as soon as Minnie opened the lid. Inside lay a homemade sock monkey, gray and white, with a fuzzy ball on top of its head.

“Whose was it?” I asked.

“It belonged to Bessie’s little girl.”

Nate and I looked at each other.

“You didn’t know,” Minnie said. “Of course you didn’t. Bessie never spoke about her, and it was never my story to tell.”

Her eyes moved once to Nate’s finger.

“Until now.”

“Then tell us,” I said. “But tell me what this has to do with Nate.”

“Hank, you’re a good boy, but I need you to let me speak.”

“I’m trying to keep him safe.”

“I know.” She tightened her arms around the sock monkey. “I am focused on Nate. But first you need to understand our family history with that lantern.”

Minnie ran her thumb along one of the sock monkey’s seams. “That lantern came into our lives when the baby was two years old. No—she would’ve been three by then. Bessie had heard about a collector up in Clay County who died under circumstances she didn’t like. I never did catch the particulars, but she’d traced that lantern’s history right back here.”

“Do you mean she traced it back to Fenwick?” I asked.

She nodded. “It had been used on the B&O line that ran through town. Ran right past this store. The train station used to be right across the road next to the Post Office. Passed through here every day back then.”

“If Bessie thought it was dangerous, why bring it home?”

“She didn’t know. Not then. Not for certain. She was suspicious, and she meant to find out.” Minnie looked down at the monkey. “I wish she’d left it in Clay County.”

The stove gave a soft metallic click as it cooled.

“One morning, Bessie left the lantern sitting on a table while she went into the back room. The baby found it. It was too heavy for her to carry, but she wanted to see what was inside that blackened globe. So she wiped at the glass.”

Her eyes moved back to Nate’s hand.

“When Bessie came back, the baby’s fingers were stained with soot. Just like yours are now.”

Nate rubbed his thumb against the blackened finger. “And it wouldn’t wash off?”

“No.”

I reached for the pencil on the end table and pulled a scrap of paper toward me. At the top, I wrote one word:

Soot.

“What happened next?” I asked.

“For a while, nothing. Then the baby started hearing a train whistle. She’d stop whatever she was doing and listen, even when no train passed. Sometimes she’d imitate it for us.” Minnie’s voice softened. “‘Woo-woo,’ she’d say.”

Underneath that first word, I wrote:

Whistle.

“After that came the rumbling. She said it sounded like a train passing over the joints in the rails. Well, she didn’t say those words, but that’s what she was describing.”

Rumble.

Nate leaned toward her. “Could you hear any of it?”

“Not a thing.”

Minnie shifted in the rocking chair. The monkey remained clasped against her chest.

“Then a man came into the store. We’d just opened the store and I remember I’d worn my red dress because I wanted to look good for our opening. We’d never seen that man before and thought he’d come from out of town for our opening. He was polite. Courteous, even. But he spoke only to Bessie.”

“What did he want?”

“He told her he would return in one week to collect the child. Said Bessie was to make her ready for departure.”

My pencil stopped above the paper.

“What did Bessie say?”

“What could she say? Neither of us understood him. We thought he was confused, or touched in the head. Before we could get any sense out of him, he was gone.”

I added another line.

The man. One week. Make the child ready.

“We were worried,” Minnie continued, “but we didn’t know what we were dealing with. We didn’t know how frightened we ought to be. So we kept the baby close and tried to get through the week.”

“And the seventh day?” I asked.

Minnie’s arms tightened around the monkey.

“The seventh day was wash day.”

Back then, she explained, wash day meant hauling two number-two galvanized tubs into the front yard. One held hot, soapy water and the washboard. The other held clean water for rinsing.

“We took the baby outside with us. There was no chance we were letting her out of our sight that day. She stayed right there in the yard, playing with this monkey. Tossing it into the air, catching it, running with it. She was happy.”

Minnie brushed a fleck of dust from the monkey’s head.

“I had an old bedspread from McClung Hospital. That was the original hospital there in Richwood. Used to be right there on Main Street. I’d brought it home when I was a candy striper because they were going to throw it away. It had one little moth hole, but otherwise it was good—and enormous. When we finished washing it, I needed Bessie’s help getting it up onto the line.”

She paused.

“We had it stretched between us, one of us at each end. Just as we started pinning it down, a wind come whistling off the mountain. I’ve never heard another wind like it. It caught that bedspread and tore it straight out of our hands.”

For an instant, something almost like a smile touched her face.

“We chased it across the yard. Both of us laughing, because we must have looked ridiculous and neither of us wanted to wash the fool thing again. We finally caught it and managed to keep most of it out of the mud.”

The smile disappeared.

“Then we turned around.”

I set the pencil down.

“The baby was gone. We dropped the bedspread and ran back to the tubs. We called for her. Then we started screaming.”

Minnie stared past us, into a yard that had not existed for nearly seventy years.

“I saw the monkey first. It was floating in the rinse water.” Her fingers closed around the doll. “The baby was at the bottom.”

No one spoke.

“We think the monkey fell into the tub and she went in after it.” Minnie said. “That’s all we ever knew.”

For a while, none of us spoke.

I sat there with my hands between my knees, searching for something to say. Something that wouldn’t sound small and useless.

Minnie wiped her eyes with the heel of one hand. When she spoke again, the grief in her voice had hardened into anger.

“What galls me is that neither of you paid attention to the instructions on that inventory card. After the baby died, I went back and underlined the warning about cleaning the glass. I thought if I called attention to that one thing, surely anyone who found the lantern would understand.”

“It’s my fault,” Nate said, “I never even saw the card.”

“No,” I said. “I unwrapped the lantern and left it where you could get to it.”

“And I’m the one who cleaned it,” Nate replied. “Honestly, I wanted to see what was inside that globe. Same as the baby.” He looked at his finger. “There was a little red light in there.”

His voice trailed off.

Minnie’s hand tightened around the arm of Bessie’s rocking chair.

“Wait,” I said. “You underlined the warning after the baby died. Did you add the other note too?”

“What other note?”

“‘No line still running—1987.’ I haven’t been able to figure out what it means.”

For a moment, Minnie looked confused. Then recognition settled over her face.

“That was the year the trains stopped going through Fenwick. I added the note because I thought it might matter to somebody someday.”

“You thought that if the line had closed, whatever came for the baby couldn’t come back.”

She looked down and then in a small voice said, “I hoped so.” When she looked up again her eyes moved to Nate’s finger. “I believed that for thirty-nine years.”

She looked exhausted. The anger had gone out of her, leaving her folded into Bessie’s chair.

“Nate, help Grandma get home,” I said. “I’m going to go through the files again and maybe check Foxfire or the WPA collections to see if I can learn anything about this conductor guy. It’s possible that date means something. I just can’t put my finger on what yet.”

I gave Minnie the most confident smile I could manage.

“We’ll figure this out,” I said. “I promise.”

She studied my face long enough for me to know that I hadn’t fooled her.

Nate rose and offered her his arm. Before leaving, Minnie placed the sock monkey on the table beside me.

“You don’t want to take it?” I asked.

She looked down at it.

“No.”

After the door closed behind them, I took a blank inventory card from the drawer and laid it beside the monkey. I stared at both for a long time. Was the monkey an artifact, or only a toy that had been present when something terrible happened? Had the lantern changed it? Did it need to be locked in the cellar, quarantined somehow, or left alone?

Bessie would have known. She would have known what protections to put around it and what warnings to leave for the next person, I couldn’t even decide if I needed to add instructions for handling.

I had unwrapped the lantern. I had left it exposed. Because of me, Nate had made the same mistake a three-year-old girl had made sixty-eight years earlier. Now Minnie had been forced to relive that morning while facing the possibility of losing her grandson too.

Not for the first time, I wondered whether Bessie had made a mistake in leaving What Remains to me.

The inventory card was still blank.

I couldn’t say what the monkey was. I couldn’t say whether it was dangerous. But leaving no record at all felt worse. I picked up my pencil and began to draw.

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Next in Written Ward

Written Ward follows a four-week rhythm during each season. We are in Week Three.

Next week I’ll introduce a feature I’m particularly excited about called Found Treasures.

Before you leave, Which detail from this episode do you think Hank should pay closest attention to… and why?

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In this introductory episode of Spoken Ward, I explore that question and explain why I believe thoughtful curation, attentive reading, and positive conversations with authors can help overlooked stories find the readers who will value them most.

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Each season will bring together original fiction, Spoken Ward, and Found Treasures, with an intermission before the next season begins.

Spoken Ward is devoted to discovering good short fiction and exploring what makes it work. In each episode, I’ll share a story worth discussing, talk about why it caught (and kept!) my attention, ask its author a few questions, and close by asking them to recommend a story by someone else.

Found Treasures is my more personal recommendation shelf. It’s where I share things I’ve found that I’m especially glad to know about. It might be a book, film, creative project… anything really. Even an interesting person on Substack Notes. Whatever it is, I’ll tell you why I enjoy it and point to something its creator does especially well.

This season also introduces What Remains, a new serial blending some of my favorite genres: supernatural suspense, Appalachian gothic, and quiet horror. It centers on an inherited antiques shop in Fenwick, West Virginia. In the weeks ahead, we’ll encounter some of the dangerous objects kept beneath it and follow two cousins who have inherited rules they must obey but don’t fully understand.

You’re at the beginning. No previous reading required.

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I’m starting to understand why Bessie didn’t write everything down. It’s not about laziness or being careless. Some things just get harder to put on paper while it’s all still happening. But I’ve made a promise. I’m going to leave behind a better record than the one she left me, if for no better reason than to help the next poor soul avoid the mistakes that have already been made.

I don’t want to write that my cousin, Nate Parsons, is going to die. Truth is, I don’t have to. The soot stain on his index finger says it for me.

The guy hadn’t been back to West Virginia in nearly ten years. Then he moved home to Fenwick, and within two weeks he’d managed to get himself marked for death. How do you even do that?

Mostly, the stain tells me what a fool he is, though there’s no use saying it now. What matters is finding a way to save him. And I don’t know how.

I keep telling myself Bessie would have left instructions if she’d known something like this could happen. At least, that’s what I would have believed before all this started. Now I’m starting to understand why she might not have.

Let me stop talking around all of this and just tell you what happened.

The cellar beneath What Remains was older than the shop above it. That morning, I went down the stairs the same way I had every day since Bessie died. I paused on the third step just like she’d taught me. She always said that the cellar would announce itself if I’d stop to listen. The cold earth, the smell of old pine, and the trace of lamp oil that had seeped into those beams decades before I was born—it was all exactly as Bessie had left it. Exactly the same as the first time she’d taken me into the cellar back when I was still a child.

Those were the things I paid attention to while I stood on that third step. If anything was ever different, it meant something was wrong. And given the stuff in the cellar, any wrong was bad wrong.

I stepped off the last stair and made my way over to the workbench. My grandmother Minnie still hates that I set it up down here. She insists her sister would never have allowed it. A workbench means you intend to stay awhile, focused on some task. Bessie would have agreed with her: the cellar wasn’t a place where you did your work. The cellar was the work.

I understand their thinking now. They have good reason to treat this place like it’s radioactive. But that morning, I didn’t believe I had the luxury of keeping my distance.

I switched on the green-shaded lamp and took a long drink from my coffee. I set the mug at the far edge of the workbench. It was the same spot I always used. Whenever I took out Bessie’s inventory cards, I liked to spread them across the bench, especially if I was comparing one object against another. I wasn’t about to risk staining one of them because I’d gotten careless.

The lantern waited on the nearest shelf, wrapped in flour-sack cloth and lying on its side. I crossed to it, untwisted the baling wire, and peeled back the cloth. A faint smell of lamp oil rose from the bundle. The brass frame was black with age, and soot coated the globe so thickly I could barely see through it.

While I was there, I let my eyes travel over the rest of the shelves. Everything looked as I’d left it the day before. Still, looking wasn’t the same as counting. Given what Bessie had stored in that cellar, I should have made certain all forty-three objects were accounted for before doing anything else. That’s what I’d been taught to do, but the count could wait today.

I left the lantern lying uncovered on the shelf and returned to the workbench. The locked cage stood immediately to its right. There wasn’t much inside, but what it held was among the most important things Bessie had left to me and Nate.

I unlocked the cage, pulled out the wooden card box, and set it on the bench. The cards inside were arranged by inventory number. I thumbed through them until I found the one I needed: WR-1948-017.

I laid the card beneath the light. Bessie had dictated the original entries to Minnie, who typed them onto cards nearly the size of a sheet of paper. I’d considered copying everything into a journal, but that would only create another record for someone to find—or overlook. So I’d started adding my observations directly to Bessie’s cards. There was plenty of room, and it kept everything we knew in one place.

Under Handling, Minnie had typed two instructions: Do Not Light and Do Not Clean Glass. Only the second had been underlined. In fact, it was the only underlined phrase on any of the forty-three cards.

Why that warning?

Farther down, Minnie had typed another note: Flame visible when no fuel present. Beneath it, Bessie had added something in ballpoint pen: No line still running ~1987.

I understood the typed note, or thought I did. “Line” almost certainly meant the railroad. But what did a dead rail line have to do with a flame that burned without fuel? And why had Bessie added the year?

I picked up my old number-two pencil and began sketching the lantern in the empty space beside her notes.

Truth be told, I was a little bitter. I’d spent my childhood working at What Remains, helping Bessie in whatever ways I could, but I’d never possessed her gift. Grandma Minnie kept the books and handled the ordinary work of keeping the shop open. I carried boxes, swept floors, and did whatever else Bessie asked of me. She taught me some of the stranger parts of her work. I was always the helper. A witness rather than a practitioner.

I resented that. I wanted the secret knowledge—the magic and wonder of it all—but it had never been mine.

I’d witnessed what Bessie could do time and again, whether she was mixing a poultice for a child with a winter cough or making a charm against the evil eye. Some people around Fenwick called her a granny witch, though never to her face. Mostly, they just came when they needed help.

People around here had depended on her. Now that I was running What Remains, some of them had begun looking to me. That scared me. I’d inherited her rules, but not her understanding. Back then, I was just trying to figure it all out before someone got hurt.

Then Nate came downstairs.

“Hank?” he called.

“I’m over here.”

Nate stepped around the corner and found me working on the drawing. He studied it for a moment, then looked toward the lantern on the shelf.

“Ya know, your cell phone has a camera. You could just take a picture.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you drawing it?”

“Because a picture shows me what it looks like. Drawing makes me see it.”

While I was speaking, Nate turned and walked over to the shelf where the lantern lay on its side. He reached toward it, and I thought he meant to stand it up.

“Don’t. Bessie’s card says it has to stay lying on its side.”

Nate withdrew his hand but leaned closer. “There’s a red glow inside the gl—hold on. Might just be something behind the soot.” Before I understood what he meant, he dragged his index finger across the globe. “This thing is a mess.” He looked down at his grime-darkened finger and wiped it across his denim jeans, leaving a smear. “It’s brighter now. See?”

He stepped aside. Through the streak he had cleared, I saw a small red flame trembling behind the cracked glass. I was on my feet in an instant. “Why would you do that? I’ve told you not to touch the things down here!”

“Calm down. All I did was clean it a little bit.”

“I know. That’s the other warning on Bessie’s card. Do not clean glass. It’s even underlined.”

Nate paused at that news, but only for a second. “Well, nothing happened to me. I’m still okay. Judgment did not fall from the heavens or something. I do wonder where the light inside there is coming from, though…” He leaned closer. “It’s so strange.”

“Nate, this is serious!” I said as I grabbed his hand to inspect his finger. It was still covered in soot. I led him over to the workbench where I kept some rubbing alcohol for cleaning. I poured some on an old rag and wiped at his finger. The stain remained. On the shelf behind us, the lantern burned a little brighter.

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Next in Written Ward

Written Ward follows a four-week rhythm during each season:

Next week brings the first episode of Spoken Ward. What Remains will return in week three.

In the meantime, I’d like to know: Would you have cleaned the glass? You can reply to this email or leave a comment below.

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To that end, I began writing a novel about an antique store named What Remains. The store is located in the place where I spent my childhood: Fenwick, West Virginia.

Since I’ve always been a fan of the more fantastical side of storytelling, the story features an old woman with the gift (or curse) of psychometry. That’s a fancy term that means she’s able to learn about significant moments from an item’s past by touching them.

Some of the stories she discovers are hopeful. Others are bittersweet. A few are unsettling in the way a ghost story told around a campfire might be. More uncanny rather than frightening.

The heart of this novel lies in those stories.

I’ve spent more than a year writing those stories. It’s largely why this newsletter has been relatively silent during that time. And yet I feel that this silence was ultimately a good thing. I’ve spent all of that time thinking about what this newsletter should be.

Over the past year, I’ve realized that this newsletter, Written Ward, isn’t really about technology, nostalgia, books, or even fiction. They were different ways of exploring the same idea. It’s about preservation. That’s the theme I’ve been seearching for all this time.

Writing my novel, What Remains, helped bring this idea into focus. It gave me a clearer understanding of what Written Ward is meant to be.

This newsletter is about stories that endure. It’s about the unseen, unnoticed people who create meaningful work. It’s about the objects we keep even after they’ve outlived their usefulness because they remind us who we used to be.

That’s what Written Ward is about.

Each month, we’ll step through the front door of that antique store. Many weeks we’ll join Hank Shaw in his attempts to catalog and understand the strange objects his great-aunt Bessie locked away in the cellar. He sketches them, studies them, and tries to figure out why they were hidden in the first place.

Then, we’ll follow those objects backward through time.

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Along the way, I’ll share books, films, newsletters, and creators whose work deserves a wider audience. I’ll sit down with writers to talk about the stories they’re telling and why they matter.

Some months, we’ll linger with a single artifact. Other times, we’ll leave the store behind entirely and follow a longer tale to see where it leads.

If you’ve ever wondered about the people you see in old photographs, or tried to imagine what made items in a box of keepsakes special, I think you’ll feel at home here.

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Welcome. The shop is open.

Meet Red. That’s a picture of him from fifteen years ago, when we brought him home from the shelter. We were still strangers to him back then.

We are strangers no longer. Now, his muzzle is gray and he moves a little slower. Back then, he forced my routine to change. Now he is the routine.

Red came into our life because my daughters wanted a dog more than anything. I was the holdout who finally gave in. Soon the girls will be leaving for college, but I’ll still have the dog—and the daily walks his presence has forced on me.

I don’t enjoy walking this dog. He stops constantly. Every blade of grass demands investigation. Every morning, he wanders into my office and gives me the look—the one that means he’s ready to go out. I’ve learned it also means that it’s around 10 a.m. Time to allow myself to be inconvenienced.

One such morning, I’d just finished picking up Red’s poop when my phone rang. It was a FaceTime call from my dad. I finished tying up the plastic bag and answered.

My dad and sister were on the call. We said our hellos and shared our weather reports. Dad loved hearing about the weather. Then my sister and I spoke about our day so far—how we’d spent our morning and what we had planned. After that, it was Dad’s turn to speak. He looked away from the camera, swallowed, and when he came back into frame, he told us about a doctor visit and some test results.

I’d always kept in touch with my dad, but phone calls had been a weekly thing. After that FaceTime I decided to make a point of calling him every day. And so that was added to my routine. Every walk with the dog came to mean another phone call with Dad.

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The changes came slowly but consistently. Pauses grew longer. Words became harder to find. More and more I would have to call over and over while he struggled to answer. Sometimes he would answer but forget to hold the phone up to his ear, and we’d spend the entire phone call trying to understand one another. Each new call felt like a game of chance. Who would answer today?

One morning he answered with, “The helicopters are back.” His voice was low. Almost like he was afraid of being overheard.

I glanced into the brilliant blue of an early morning sky several hundred miles north from where he sat and said, “Really?”

“Those people are up to something. I see them. They’re doing something over in those woods.”

Red stopped to raise his leg. I waited and tried to think of how to respond. Finally, I asked if he’d heard from my sister and that was enough. He started talking about her.

Each call brought something different. Sometimes he’d be fully coherent, and other times silences would drag on while I waited for him to find words. Some conversations never really progressed beyond the two of us repeating the word hello to one another.

As Red and I approached an intersection, he fixated on some smell. The dog would not move. He had to know what scent was lingering in those blades of grass.

I didn’t mind, because I was caught up in an investigation of my own. I was trying to get my dad to repeat himself clearly enough so that I could understand him. I pivoted and navigated back to the topics he handled best: the weather, the news, and past memories.

On one particularly cold morning, I was shocked to discover that my dad had been involved in a series of meetings with Elon Musk. I’m not quite sure what those meetings were about or how they happened, but the outcome was that Elon was going to send a significant amount of money to both my sister and me. As of today, I have not received this money or heard from any of Elon’s representatives. I am, however, grateful for the comfort this thought seems to have provided for my dad at a time when he was clearly worried about his children.

On my way back home, I ran into my neighbor and his wife as they were out for their morning walk. We stopped and spoke for a while. After we’d said our goodbyes, I realized that I hadn’t spoken to Dad that day. We used to FaceTime almost every day, but we’d had to switch to audio-only phone calls because he had such a hard time understanding how to answer a video call. For whatever reason, though, I decided to try to FaceTime him that day, and he managed to answer on his first try. This was a hopeful sign, because it meant he was having a good day. And he was. I’d caught him shortly after he’d finished his breakfast. He asked several questions about me and my family. He wanted to know what was going on in our lives. It had been so long since we’d spoken.

I’d made it back home. Dad waited while I took the dog off his leash and put him in the house. Then I sat down on our front porch to continue our conversation. I wanted to spend every moment I could speaking to him while all of him was still present. We spoke for several more moments, and I asked him if he had any big plans for the day. He never had plans. His daily schedule consisted of making it to his recliner and watching TV or nodding off, but sometimes that question would reveal a trip to the doctor that I hadn’t heard about. He looked at me with a big grin on his face and said, “I’m going home now.”

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The dog had walked into my office every morning for two months. This time when he gave me the look, he had to wait while I put my AirPods in and started the latest podcast episode. Then we went through our morning routine of attaching his harness and heading out.

There’s a place just outside my property line where my home Wi-Fi and cellular signals get mixed up. I’ve learned that I need to wait until I pass that handoff area before I call Dad. Otherwise, the call will sometimes drop. The dog and I made our way to this location. I know we’re there because that’s where the mailbox Red loves to mark is located.

I paused the podcast and pulled out my phone. My finger automatically went to the Call icon, but I pulled back before touching it. I stared down at my dad’s contact picture. I don’t know how much time passed, but eventually I felt Red pulling on his leash. Time to go. I squeezed the stem of my AirPods to begin playing the podcast again and wiped my eyes.

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Tommy Noonan felt his daughter’s arm twist in his grip as she tried to pull back. He held tighter. Not rough, but firm enough to ensure that she couldn’t slip free.

She made a sound. Sharp, frustrated. He couldn’t tell if it was anger or something else. He hated leading her around like she was a toddler, but she needed to stay close. Not ten feet ahead or lagging behind. Right beside him. Especially today, because this would be his last opportunity.

They cut through the parking area toward the rural crossroads where vendor booths occupied three corners of the intersection. The evening sun stretched long shadows across tables and canopies. Most vendors were already packing up, calling to each other as car doors slammed in the background.

A canvas banner sagged between two poles. In faded letters across its surface, a professionally printed message read: CROSSROADS BAZAAR. Then, stenciled over it in rough black letters were the words: FINAL WEEKEND.

“Tommy!” A stoop-shouldered man approached, carrying a box of battered paperbacks. “You’re cuttin’ it close, my friend. Got some Clive Cussler hardbacks I set aside for you. Miranda’s at my booth if you want ’em. Buy ’em and I won’t have to drag ’em back to the car.”

Tommy nodded without slowing, his eyes scanning the remaining booths. Two years of searching. Tomorrow this place would be gone.

Natalie pulled against his grip again. Harder this time.

“Dad. It’s past six. The sign literally says ‘final weekend’ and everyone’s packing up. What are we doing?”

“I know.” His eyes kept moving across the booths. “I just… please. Just…”

Natalie gestured at their surroundings. “Look around. Vendors leaving, cars leaving, light fading. Can we just… not?”

He couldn’t explain. Not yet. Not until…

She stopped pulling against his grip. Her arm went slack. Not agreement. Surrender. “Right. Okay. Cool.”

Past the regular vendors, he spotted unfamiliar booths. These were sellers he’d never seen before. His pulse began to quicken. They were also packing up, but beyond them, tucked near the edge: a brown canopy. Wooden shelves. A figure behind a table, organizing something with careful precision.

Relief hit him so hard it hurt.

“There.” His voice broke on the word. “That’s him.”

Tommy focused hard on the brown canopy ahead, passing a young man who had just left the booth. He was smiling and crying, both at once.

Tommy stared after him.

Smiling was happy. Crying was sad. Both together…

He didn’t know.

The young man disappeared into the thinning crowd.

Tommy stepped up to the table.

Behind it sat a man in an immaculate dark suit. The cut was decades out of fashion but the fabric was pristine. He bent over a large leather-bound ledger, making notations with a fountain pen. Behind him, shelves lined the booth’s interior. They displayed mirrors of various sizes, old books, and objects Tommy couldn’t quite identify in the fading light.

The man looked up. Smiled briefly.

“Ah, Thomas. So good of you to come.” His voice was formal, precise. Almost British, but not quite. “Do forgive me. I must complete this notation first. The details fade if one delays.”

He returned to his ledger, pen moving with careful deliberation.

Tommy’s pulse hammered against his ribs. Two years. Two years searching every weekend market, every crossroads flea market within fifty miles. And now…

“Dad.” Natalie’s voice was flat. Dead. “Who is this?”

Not a question. A demand.

“Just…” He couldn’t explain. Didn’t have the words. “Please.”

She exhaled through her nose. Said nothing.

The man set down his pen with deliberate care. Blotted the page. Closed the ledger with both hands, the gesture somehow proper. Final.

“Thank you for your patience.” He looked at Tommy directly now, and something in the way he looked… Tommy felt his breath catch. It was like being recognized. Like being known.

“It has been some time, has it not?” The man’s gaze shifted to Natalie, considering.

“It has,” Tommy said, but he was barely listening to his own words. His eyes moved past the man to the mirrors on the shelves behind him. Different sizes, different frames. None of them right. Where was…

“Finnegan Gancangh is the name.” The man’s voice pulled Tommy’s attention back. He was extending his hand toward Natalie. “It is such a pleasure to meet you.”

Natalie hesitated. Tommy saw her shoulders tense, then she shook his hand briefly.

“Charmed,” Finnegan said. “May I assume that Thomas is your father?”

Tommy glanced back. She gave Finnegan a hesitant nod and then asked, “So what’s the deal here?” Natalie’s voice, sharper now. She was gesturing at the shelves around them. “Antiques, curiosities, or are we more in the ‘cursed object’ category? Because Dad dragged me here like it’s a matter of life and death, and I’m trying to figure out what I’m looking at.”

She’d turned slightly toward him on the word “Dad,” her expression… he couldn’t read it. Irritation? Something else?

“I would characterize the inventory as… selectively enchanted, Miss Noonan.” Finnegan’s hands rested on the table, fingers steepled. “Though I assure you, the curses are entirely optional.”

Tommy turned back to the shelves. Mirror. Focus. It had a brass frame, oval, about this big…

Natalie laughed. Short, surprised. “Optional curses. That’s either the best sales pitch or the worst disclaimer I’ve ever heard.”

“I find transparency serves both parties in any transaction. Would you prefer I obscure the particulars?”

“Nah, I appreciate honesty.” Natalie’s voice was lighter now. Almost playful. “It’s refreshing. It’s like finding a non-sketchy guy at a place called ‘Crossroads Bazaar.’ Which—not gonna lie—is giving me major ‘deal with the devil’ vibes.”

“I am obliged to tell you that I am neither diabolical nor particularly sketchy, madam.” Finnegan’s tone remained perfectly even. “Merely… punctilious in my arrangements.”

“Punctilious… okay.” Natalie was smiling. Tommy could hear it in her voice even without looking. “Breaking out the fifty-dollar words.”

“I should hardly think fifty dollars adequate compensation for proper diction, Miss Noonan. Inflation, you understand.”

Natalie laughed again. Louder this time. “Did you just… okay, that was actually good. Didn’t see that coming.”

Tommy straightened, turned back toward them. They were both smiling now. Natalie had relaxed. Her arms weren’t crossed anymore. She was leaning forward slightly, one hand on the table.

“I’ve had considerable practice, if I may say so.”

“How considerable we talking?” Natalie tilted her head. “Because you’ve got this whole ‘I’ve seen some things’ energy. Very Gandalf-meets-pawn-shop-owner.”

Finnegan’s smile deepened. “A somewhat reductive comparison, though not entirely inaccurate. I confess I have occupied this particular niche for… longer than most.”

“Cryptic. Love it.” Natalie was grinning. “Very mysterious-old-dude-at-a-market of you.”

Tommy’s chest tightened watching them. She was talking to this stranger the way she used to talk to him. Before. Easy, quick, back and forth like…

He looked away. Focused on the shelves again.

“And you, Miss Noonan, possess rather a remarkable facility for rapid-fire observation.”

“I’m twenty-one. I’ve seen my share of weird.”

Finnegan’s voice shifted. It was still formal, but softer underneath. “Your mother had a similar gift, if memory serves.”

Tommy froze.

Silence. Then Natalie’s voice, different now. Quieter. “You knew my mom?”

He turned back. Natalie was staring at Finnegan. Her face had changed. Tommy couldn’t name what he was seeing, but something had shifted. Her whole body had gone still.

“Oh, indeed.” Finnegan reached behind him without looking, his hand moving to a specific spot on the shelf. He pulled out a small brass compass and set it on the table in front of her. “She stood precisely where you are standing, must be… twenty years ago? At the very least. She was quite fond of that compass, as it happens.”

Natalie picked up the compass slowly. Turned it over in her hands, examining it. Her head was bent, hair falling forward. Tommy couldn’t see her face.

“Okay, that’s…” She looked up at Finnegan. “How do you remember that?”

“I remember all of my customers, Miss Noonan. It is rather the point of the profession.”

“Right. Sure.” Natalie set the compass down but didn’t let go of it. Her fingers rested on its edge. “Totally normal to remember someone from that long ago at a random flea market.”

“I should hardly characterize this establishment as random, madam. Crossroads rarely are.”

Natalie’s hand froze on the compass. “There it is again. That cryptic thing. You’re really committing to the bit, huh?”

“I assure you, Miss Noonan, I am quite sincere. Though I understand sincerity may appear rather… theatrical when delivered with proper formality.”

She was quiet for a moment. Studying Finnegan. Tommy watched her face, trying to understand what she was thinking. Was she suspicious? Curious? He didn’t know.

“You know what?” She lifted her hand from the compass. “You’re either the most elaborate weirdo I’ve met all week, or you’re legit something else entirely. Haven’t decided which yet.”

“I am content to remain categorically ambiguous for the present, if that suits.”

“It super doesn’t,” Natalie said, “but I respect your commitment to the aesthetic.”

Finnegan’s smile returned. Small, controlled. “Most kind of you to say so.”

Tommy moved forward, coming to stand beside his daughter at the table. Close enough to touch her arm but he didn’t. “Honey, I wanted to show you something.”

Natalie didn’t look at him. Her eyes stayed on Finnegan. “This isn’t over. I’m figuring you out.”

“I have no doubt you shall make a formidable attempt, Miss Noonan.”

Tommy took a step back as Natalie turned to face him.

“What did you want to show me?”

“A mirror.” Tommy looked past Finnegan to the shelves again. Mirrors but not the right ones. The same books. The same old photographs. His hand went to his hair. “It was here. Thirty-two years ago. I held it, I looked into it.” His fingers caught in the tangles. “It’s not… he must have sold it.”

“A mirror, yes. Let me see…” Finnegan bent to look under the table. Tommy heard him moving boxes aside. “Here it is: the very one!”

Finnegan straightened, holding a small oval mirror with a brass frame. The metal had darkened with age, and the intricate symbols that decorated the edges were barely visible.

Tommy’s breath stopped. That was it.

“I believe this is what you are looking for.” Finnegan held the mirror out toward him.

Tommy reached for it. He pulled it close with both hands. Finally. After two years. She would see. She would finally see what he couldn’t say. She would understand. His thumb traced the edge of the frame, following the worn symbols. “Now I can show you…”

“I do hope the question isn’t too impertinent.” Finnegan’s voice cut through, drawing Tommy’s attention back to him. “But where is Melanie?”

The words hit Tommy like cold water. He looked up.

Finnegan was watching him. Waiting.

Tommy opened his mouth. Nothing came.

“She died,” Natalie said. Her voice was flat. Hard.

Tommy’s hand tightened on the mirror.

Finnegan went still. He paused and looked at Natalie. Really looked at her, the way you might look at a photograph of someone you used to know, checking if the resemblance holds. “You have her eyes,” he said quietly. Then, almost to himself, “Twenty-one. You’re the same age she was… Surely, that’s not possible. But… has it been thirty years already?”

Silence. Tommy couldn’t make sense of the question. Thirty years? His wife had been gone two years. Two years, not…

“Wait.” Natalie’s voice changed. “How exactly did you know my mom?”

Finnegan looked at her. Then at the compass still on the table between them. His fingers touched its edge, adjusting its position slightly.

“Your mother was indeed a customer. She and I conducted business, Miss Noonan. Your father was present for the… conclusion of our arrangement.” His eyes moved to Tommy briefly, then back to Natalie. “I had not realized the terms had reached their fulfillment. Two years ago, was it?”

Natalie’s hand came down flat on the table. “Terms? What terms? What are you talking about?”

Tommy opened his mouth, but no words came. He looked at the mirror in his hands, then at Finnegan. Something was wrong. Something he should understand but couldn’t…

“What deal?” Natalie’s voice rose. “What did my mother agree to?”

“Thirty-two years ago,” Finnegan said, “your mother came to this booth. Alone, initially.” He glanced at Tommy. “She came seeking… clarity.”

Natalie’s hands lingered on the edge of the table. “Clarity about what?”

“About whether her affections might ever be reciprocated by a young man of her acquaintance.” Finnegan’s voice took on a more formal quality, the words precise and measured. “She had spent the better part of six months in his company. She had offered him every conventional signal of romantic interest. He had noticed none of them.”

The market sounds seemed to recede slightly. Or perhaps Tommy had simply stopped hearing them.

“Your father,” Finnegan continued, meeting Natalie’s eyes, “does not perceive emotional regard as most people do. He cannot read affection in facial expressions or interpret the significance of another’s attention. It is not that he was indifferent to your mother, Miss Noonan. He was simply… unable to see what she was offering.”

Natalie pushed back from the table. “Wait. What are you…” She turned to Tommy. “Dad, what is he talking about?”

Tommy tried to speak, but the words were not there. His hand went to his hair. He looked down at the compass still sitting between them.

“I am speaking of a limitation,” Finnegan said gently. “One your father has carried his entire life. Your mother understood this, even then. She did not fault him for it. She merely wished to… bridge the gap.”

Natalie stared at her father. Tommy could see her face changing, her expression shifting through something he couldn’t name. Confusion? Hurt? He didn’t know.

“Bridge the gap,” Natalie repeated slowly. “Okay. So what, like… therapy? Communication skills workshop? Couples counseling before they were even a couple?” The jokes were coming faster now, her default when things stopped making sense. “Did she buy him a self-help book? ‘How to Read People for Dummies’?”

“Your mother sought a more… direct solution.” Finnegan reached toward the mirror Tommy had set down. He turned it slightly so it caught the fading light. “I explained to your mother that I possessed a mirror. This mirror, in fact. It reveals what cannot otherwise be seen. It shows the truth of one’s feelings as perceived by another. She wished your father to see her heart. The mirror would show him precisely that.”

“A magic mirror.” Natalie’s voice went flat. “Right. Of course. Makes total sense. Magic mirrors, crossroads bazaars, mysterious old men with fountain pens. This is…” She pressed her fingers to her temples. “I’m having a stroke. That’s what this is. I’m twenty-one and having a stroke.”

“I assure you, Miss Noonan—”

“No, no, I get it now. Brain aneurysm. Burst blood vessel. Any second I’ll wake up in a hospital and a doctor will explain that I hallucinated this whole conversation due to oxygen deprivation or—what’s the word—hypoxia, that’s a good one, very medical…”

“The cost,” Finnegan continued, his voice cutting through her spiral with quiet precision, “was twenty years of her life.”

Natalie stopped mid-breath.

“From fifty-one to seventy-one,” Finnegan continued. “The years one becomes a grandmother. The years one grows old with one’s husband. She offered those years.”

The market sounds receded. Not suddenly. Gradually, like someone turning down a volume dial Tommy hadn’t known was there. Finnegan’s voice remained clear, pronounced, but everything else became muted. The vendors calling to each other, the cars starting in the distance, the evening wind… all of it faded to a dull murmur at the edges of his awareness.

Tommy’s hands clenched on the edge of the table. Twenty years. Melanie had paid twenty years and he’d never known.

“Okay, so…” Natalie’s voice came out strained. “Let me get this straight. Twenty years. She just… gone. Poof. Handed them over like a… a layaway plan on life? Pay now, die later?”

She looked at Tommy. Her face had drained of color.

“Dad?”

Tommy shook his head. Not denial. Just… why didn’t he know what to say?

“Wait.” Natalie’s voice dropped. “Mom died at fifty-one.”

“Two years ago,” Finnegan said quietly. “The terms were that she would surrender her last twenty years. Under that agreement, she lived exactly thirty years after she made the bargain.”

Silence. Tommy felt the words settle in his chest, heavy and suffocating. The terms had reached their fulfillment. That’s what Finnegan had said. The terms. Like it was a contract. Like Melanie’s death had been…

His vision blurred. He blinked hard.

“So you…” Natalie’s voice shook. She was staring at Finnegan now, and Tommy could see her hands trembling on the table. “You killed her. You took her last twenty years and she… she had cancer, she suffered, she…” Her voice cracked. “Are you cancer? Is that what you are? Are you like… some anthropomorphic disease? Magic murder?”

“I am neither architect of illness nor the arbiter of mortality, Miss Noonan.” Finnegan’s tone remained even, formal, but noticeably restrained. “I facilitate exchanges. Your mother offered years. I accepted the terms. But I do not determine the manner in which those terms manifest. That is beyond my province.”

“Beyond your…” Natalie laughed, sharp and bitter. “Right. Sure. You just take the years, wash your hands, not your problem how they disappear. Very clean. Very ethical.”

“I was bound to explain the cost to her in full detail before she accepted. She understood those terms. She chose freely.”

“She was twenty-one!” Natalie’s voice rose. “She was a kid! She didn’t—people don’t understand what twenty years means at my age. They can’t…”

“No,” Finnegan agreed quietly. “They cannot. It is the nature of youth to offer what it does not yet understand. However, your mother stood where you are standing, Miss Noonan, and accepted terms she could not fully comprehend.” He paused. “That is why I am telling you this now.”

Natalie opened her mouth. Closed it. Her anger seemed to collapse inward, leaving only confusion in its wake.

“What did she get?” The question came out small. “What did my mother receive for twenty years of her life?”

“Your father’s love, of course.”

Tommy flinched. The words hit like a physical blow.

“She brought him here to this market the following weekend,” Finnegan continued. “They spent time at various booths. Your mother admired that compass.” He touched it again, shifting it toward her slightly. “And then I presented him the mirror.”

“I don’t…” Natalie’s voice was quieter now, the fight draining from it. “What does that even mean? What’s so special about a mirror?”

Finnegan looked at Tommy. “Would you like to explain it, Thomas?”

Tommy shook his head. He wanted to. Desperately wanted to. But the words wouldn’t come, wouldn’t form into anything that made sense.

“When your father looked into the mirror, Miss Noonan, he saw himself through your mother’s eyes. He perceived her love for him: complete, unconditional, profound. For the first time in his life, he understood how another person felt about him. He saw what had been invisible to him.”

Finnegan’s fingers rested on the edge of the ledger.

“Their relationship began from that moment.” A pause. “And she never told him what she had paid.”

Tommy’s chest constricted. She’d never told him. Twenty years of her life, twenty years she’d traded for him, and she’d carried it alone. Every day of their marriage, every moment with Natalie, every dinner and laugh and quiet evening… all of it purchased with years Melanie would never see.

And he’d never known.

He tried to speak. His throat wouldn’t work.

“Dad?” Natalie’s voice came from somewhere far away. “Is that true? Did you… did you really not know?”

He managed to shake his head. Once. The only answer he could give.

Natalie turned back to Finnegan. Her face had changed again. The anger had been replaced by something rawer. Something Tommy recognized even if he couldn’t name it: grief, fresh and sharp.

“She knew,” Natalie said softly. “She knew she’d only have until fifty-one and she… she did it anyway. She never said anything. She just…” Her voice broke. “Why wouldn’t she tell us?”

“I cannot speak to your mother’s reasons,” Finnegan said. “But I can tell you that she did not regret her choice. She lived fully in the years she had. She loved your father. She loved you. That much I know to be true.”

The world had contracted to the space within Finnegan’s booth. Everything beyond it: the vendors, the parking area, the crossroads themselves… it had all faded into shadow. Tommy was aware of Natalie beside him, of Finnegan across the table, of the mirror and compass between them. Nothing else existed.

Natalie wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “This is insane. Magic mirrors, supernatural deals, twenty-year contracts…” Her voice was shaking. “You expect me to believe this? Any of this?”

She looked up at Finnegan, and her eyes were red but her voice had regained some of its edge. “You know what I think? I think you’re a con artist. A fraud. A carnival barker peddling cheap tragedy to people who’ve already lost enough. These stories about my mom, about magic mirrors… they’re just stories. Fairy tales. Made-up garbage.”

“I assure you, Miss Noonan, I have only spoken the truth.”

“Truth.” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Right. Because random old men at flea markets are so trustworthy.”

Finnegan regarded her for a long moment. Something shifted in his expression. It wasn’t offense exactly, but a kind of quiet dignity asserting itself.

“I understand your skepticism. I would not expect you to accept my word without verification.” He gestured toward the mirror. “If you doubt my account, you need only confirm it for yourself. Look into the mirror. It will show you what I cannot adequately describe in words.”

Natalie stared at the mirror. Then at her father. Then back at Finnegan.

“You’re serious.”

“Entirely.”

“You want me to look into a magic mirror.”

“I am inviting you to verify the truth for yourself. What you see or do not see will resolve your doubts far more effectively than any further explanation I might offer.”

Finnegan’s hands folded on the table, formal and precise.

“I offer this verification freely, Miss Noonan. No obligation. No cost. Simply… truth.”

Tommy watched his daughter stare at the mirror. It lay on the table next to the compass. Small. Ordinary. Just brass and glass.

“Why then do you hesitate?” Finnegan asked.

Natalie’s jaw tightened. Tommy could not read emotions, but even he understood that look. He’d seen it enough times. She didn’t like to be challenged. She reached, picked up the mirror, and lifted it to face herself.

Tommy watched her posture change. How her spine went rigid. Her breath caught.

What was she seeing?

Natalie saw her own face.

Then the reflection shifted.

Okay, weird. She was still looking at herself. Same dark hair, same expression she’d been wearing for the past hour, irritated with a side of deeply-over-this, but something was off. Wrong angle. Wrong perspective. Like watching herself in someone else’s phone video that she didn’t remember them taking.

She was seeing herself from the outside. From across the table. From…

Oh.

Oh no.

This was how her father saw her.

Not just… okay, not just what he saw when he looked at her face. How he saw her. The difference between a photograph and actually standing in the room. The difference between knowing someone exists and actually perceiving them, which… okay, that’s getting philosophical, focus…

She braced herself. Okay. Here it comes. The coldness. The distance. The proof that he’d checked out two years ago and never checked back in. That she’d been right all along. That he’d loved Mom and tolerated her and now that Mom was gone the performance was over and she finally seeing the real…

The love hit her like a freight train.

She actually gasped. Actually stumbled back half a step even though she was standing completely still. The mirror stayed steady in her hands but everything else was tilting, the ground was moving.

It wasn’t a feeling.

It was everything. All at once. A tsunami. An ocean trying to fit through a keyhole and the keyhole was her chest and it was too much, it was way too much, she couldn’t…

He loves me like this?

She’d never felt anything like this directed at her. Not from anyone. Not from Mark. Her ex had barely managed “fond” on a good day. Not from her friends. She loved them but this was different. She’d never known anyone could feel this much about another person. Never imagined…

Her father felt this way about her?

Every single day? All the time? Even when she’d been… even when she’d been the worst. Cold and dismissive and giving him one-word answers and making it crystal clear she didn’t want him anywhere near her. Even when she’d rolled her eyes and walked away mid-sentence and said things that were designed to hurt…

Even then?

The love didn’t waver. Didn’t flicker. Didn’t dim. It was just… there. Constant. Like gravity. Like bedrock. The kind of foundation you could build an entire world on if you knew it existed.

But she hadn’t known.

She’d been so sure. So absolutely, self-righteously certain that he’d loved Mom and tolerated her. That she’d only mattered to him through Mom. That once Mom was gone the performance had ended and she was finally seeing what had been there all along.

Nothing. Absence. A man going through the motions because that’s what you do when your wife dies and you’re left with a kid you never really wanted in the first place.

Except that wasn’t…

This wasn’t…

That’s not even close to…

I was so wrong.

Her throat closed up. Her eyes were burning. No. Nope. Not crying. Not crying at a flea market in front of her dad and some weird vendor guy. Not…

The tears came anyway. Hot and fast and completely unstoppable. The reflection blurred but she could still feel it. The weight of his love pressing against her like a physical thing. Like being held even though no one was touching her.

The answer came before she could push it away: Because he couldn’t show it.

And she understood. With this horrible, sinking, awful clarity that the love was only half of what she was feeling.

The other half was his confusion.

It sat underneath the love like a second current running in the opposite direction. Rip tide. Cross-current. Whatever the thing was that pulled you under when you weren’t expecting it. She could feel him looking at her. Staring at her face, at her expression right now in this exact moment… and he didn’t understand what she was feeling.

Couldn’t read it.

She was making a face. She knew she was. Shock, probably. Maybe disbelief. Her eyes were definitely wide and her mouth was open and she could feel the expression from the inside the way you always know what your own face is doing…

But from his side… from the perspective she was experiencing right now through this impossible mirror, it was just… a face. Doing something. Moving somehow. He could see the mechanics: eyes wider, mouth open, probably looking generally distressed, but he didn’t know what it meant.

Was she angry? Scared? Surprised? About to cry? Already crying?

He didn’t know.

He was searching for the answer. She could feel him trying. Reaching. Grasping for comprehension like… it was like trying to solve a puzzle when half the pieces were missing and you didn’t even have the box to show you what the picture’s supposed to be. He was looking at the same information she’d been broadcasting her entire life. Her facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, all of it, but none of it was translating. None of it clicked into meaning.

It was like he was colorblind, but the entire world was color.

Like he was trying to read a book in a language where he only knew every third word. He could see that something was happening. That she was communicating something. But the signal wouldn’t resolve. Wouldn’t become sense.

And it wasn’t just her face right now.

It was every face. Every interaction. Every single time someone said one thing but meant another. And that was, like, constantly. People do that all the time. Every time body language contradicted words. Every time context was supposed to fill in what wasn’t being said out loud…

He missed it.

All of it.

Constantly.

She could feel his frustration like static electricity. Like that feeling when you try to grab smoke. It built and built and went nowhere because there was nothing to grab onto. The understanding he needed stayed just out of reach no matter how hard he tried.

And he was trying.

He was trying so hard.

She could feel the effort like muscle strain. Like physical exhaustion. The desperate reaching. The hope that maybe this time… this interaction, this moment… Tthe hope that this time something would click. Something would make sense. He’d finally know what to say, what do, how to help, how to be what she needed…

But it never came.

The words couldn’t come either.

She could feel him searching for them. Reaching for language the way she reached for words when she was upset. Except for her, words were always just there. Waiting. Ready. She could grab them out of the air and shape them into jokes, arguments, explanations, whatever she needed. Words were her tools. Her default. Her first line of defense.

For him, words scattered like marbles on a hardwood floor.

He’d reached for one and it would roll away. He’d try to catch another and it would slip through his fingers. By the time he managed to grab onto something solid, the moment was already gone. The thing he’d needed to say didn’t fit anymore. Or he’d say it and know—he’d feel—that it was wrong. That she was reacting badly. But he couldn’t tell how it was wrong or what he should have said instead or how to fix it.

How do I tell her?

The question echoed through the connection between them. Desperate. Circular. Going nowhere.

How do I make her understand? How do I show her I love her when I can’t find the words and even if I find them, I don’t know if they’re the right ones?

He’d been asking himself this for two years?

Every single day.

Every interaction. Every time she pulled away or gave him monosyllables or looked at him with that flat, dead expression he couldn’t read.

How do I reach her?

And underneath that question, another one: Why can’t I do this? What’s wrong with me? Why could Melanie do this so easily?

The answer hit her like ice water.

He’d never been able to do it.

Not on his own.

The difference was that Mom had…

Oh no.

Oh no. No. No…

The understanding crashed into her like a second wave and this one was worse, this one was so much worse…

Mom had been translating.

The entire time.

Every interaction Natalie remembered from childhood. Every moment when Dad had seemed present, engaged, understanding. Every time he’d known what she needed or how she felt or what to say… Mom had been there.

Mom had told him.

Whispered in his ear. Nudged him. Given him the words. She’d been interpreting Natalie’s feelings and translating them into something he could actually understand. She’d been the interpreter. The bridge.

She’s excited, honey. Not anxious. Ask her about the exhibit.

She’s upset. You hurt her feelings. You need to apologize.

She’s not mad about the test. She’s afraid you won’t be proud of her.

Every single time. For nineteen years.

And then Mom died. And the translation stopped. And he’d been trying to do it alone for two years and he couldn’t…

Not because he didn’t care. Not because he’d checked out or given up or chosen grief over being her father. Because he literally, physically, actually couldn’t read her.

The same way someone who was colorblind couldn’t see red. It wasn’t a choice. It wasn’t lack of effort. It wasn’t him deciding grief was more important than she was. It was a fundamental deficit in how he perceived the world and she’d spent two years thinking he was cold, thinking he’d abandoned her, thinking he’d stopped trying.

When the truth was he’d been trying harder than ever. He’d never stopped.

He’d been trying desperately. Constantly. Failing over and over and over again. Drowning in confusion while she pulled further and further away. And she’d interpreted every single failure as proof he didn’t care.

What did I…

Her hand was shaking. The mirror was wobbling. She could barely hold onto it. The love and confusion and the desperate helplessness were too much. They were way too much. She couldn’t take it.

And he’d kept trying anyway.

Because he loved her.

Because he didn’t know what else to do.

Because even though he was drowning and confused and helpless he couldn’t just… he wouldn’t just…

I didn’t know.

The thought came out broken. Ashamed.

Dad, I didn’t know. I didn’t understand. I thought you didn’t care. I thought you’d given up. I thought…

She tried to make a joke. Some quip about dramatic revelations or magic mirrors or something, anything to break the tension, to get control back, because this was too much and she needed to…

The joke wouldn’t come. Her wit–, her constant, reliable, always-there wit–, had completely failed her.

She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. Tried again. Still nothing.

Words had always been her shield, her weapon, her way of processing the world and they were… gone.

Dad, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t know.

The reflection shifted again.

Tommy watched his daughter lower the mirror. Tears ran down her face. His wife had told him that sometimes tears meant happiness, but he couldn’t tell. Natalie’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. She was trying to speak but nothing came out.

Had the mirror hurt her somehow? Stolen her voice?

“Your mother served as your father’s interpreter for thirty years.” Finnegan’s voice was quiet, careful. “Without her guidance, he is… adrift.”

“So, what…” Natalie’s voice cracked. She tried again. “This is like the Ghost of Christmas Past or something? Am I supposed to…”

She stopped. Her hand went to her mouth.

Tommy watched her struggle. He wanted to help but didn’t know how. The same way he never knew how.

“Dad, I…” She tried to continue. Failed. Her chest rose and fell rapidly. “You… you feel this way about me?” Her voice was barely a whisper. “All this time?”

He wanted to explain. Wanted to make her understand everything. Wanted her to know how he’d tried, how he’d failed, how much he loved her despite never being able to show it the right way. The words tangled in his throat.

“Yes.” He forced it out. “I tried to…”

He couldn’t finish. Could only nod.

Finnegan tapped the table lightly with one finger. Both Tommy and Natalie looked at him.

“Your daughter now understands,” Finnegan said. “But understanding alone is not enough, is it, sir?”

Finnegan placed his hand on the brass compass that sat beside the mirror. The sounds of the market began to quiet. Not silent, but… muted. His voice, however, remained perfectly clear. In fact, it became Tommy’s entire focus.

“This compass your mother admired was not merely decorative. It provides navigation. Not of geography, but of emotional truth. The holder gains the ability to perceive what lies beneath surface words and gestures.”

Natalie stared at the compass. At the worn brass catching the wan light of evening.

“It has been employed by various individuals across the years,” Finnegan continued. “Showmen. Industrialists. Those who built empires by understanding what others truly wanted, what they truly felt.” He picked up the compass, turned it slowly in his hands. “Your mother was drawn to this object because she recognized its function. She was, in her way, a compass for others.” His eyes moved away from Natalie for a moment. “Particularly for you, Thomas. The object resonated with her nature.”

He set the compass down gently.

Natalie’s voice was smaller now. Raw. “What’s the cost? Twenty years? Like Mom?”

“No, Miss Noonan.” Finnegan’s tone softened slightly. “The cost is determined by the individual, not the object. For you, it would not be years. It would be your capacity for romantic love. You would live a full life. You would experience friendship, family, achievement, but you would never know the partnership your parents shared. Never fall in love. Never wish to.”

The words hung in the air. Tommy noticed the light had changed somehow. Not darker, but the shadows under the brown canopy seemed deeper. The booth felt separate from the market around them. Everything was still visible. Still here but removed. Like they were standing in a bubble of stillness while the rest of the world continued at a distance.

Finnegan slid the compass across the table toward her.

Tommy didn’t like the way Natalie was looking at the compass. The price was too high. Surely, she would know that. But even as he thought it, he saw her hand move toward the compass. Saw her fingers hovering over the brass. She was considering it. She was actually considering this horrible offer.

No. No, she couldn’t. She didn’t understand. She was twenty-one. How could she know what she’d be losing?

As if in response to his thoughts, Finnegan spoke up. “Your mother stood where you are standing. She accepted twenty years without understanding what those two decades would mean. Should you accept these terms, you are offering your capacity for romantic love. I wonder if you truly understand that price. The difference, Miss Noonan, is that your father knows. He knows precisely what you would be surrendering.”

Tommy’s chest tightened. He did know. He knew exactly what Finnegan was asking her to give up. He’d had his years with Melanie. All those years of partnership, of being known, of being loved in the way Finnegan was describing. The kind of love that made everything else bearable.

And Natalie was about to trade that away. For him.

Natalie’s glance moved from Finnegan to her father and back to the compass. Tommy’s heart dropped when he heard her say, “Yes.” She looked at the compass, then at Tommy. “I’ve already tried that whole love thing. It didn’t work. But you… I can’t lose you too.”

Without hesitation, she stepped forward and picked up the compass. Her eyes locked on Tommy as she moved toward him. Before he could say no, she forced the compass into his hands. “Dad, please. We can finally have each other again. It’ll be like it was before.”

Tommy felt the weight of the compass in his hands. The metal was cold. The glass was scratched. The needle was spinning erratically.

Then everything changed.

His daughter stood before him and suddenly he could see. She was desperate. Lonely. The same crushing loneliness he felt. She wanted her father back. Wanted the connection they used to have. Wanted it so badly she’d give up anything.

The usual confusion was gone. The constant second-guessing. The fear that he was reading everything wrong. He just… knew.

He could keep the compass. This could be his life. Always understanding. Always knowing how she felt. Catching all the signals he’d been missing for two years. Not only from her, but from everyone. It would change everything.

But she would never have what he’d had with Melanie. That partnership. Being seen, being known. Being loved anyway. She would never have that. And he couldn’t take that from her. The price…

The price was too high.

He looked at the compass one last time. Then he knew what he had to do. The same certainty he felt seeing her emotions, he felt it about this choice too.

He lifted the compass into the air.

“I would not—” Finnegan began.

Tommy brought it down hard on the mirror. Glass shattered. Brass struck the table with a crack. Shards bit into his palm.

“No!” The word tore out of Tommy, loud enough that heads turned across the market.

Blood welled up from his hand. The compass lay amid the fragments of the broken mirror.

Tommy stumbled backward. He looked at Natalie. He needed to explain, needed her to understand, but the only words he could manage were, “I can’t. I won’t let you give that up. Not for me.”

The sounds of the market came rushing back. Voices, movement, the distant sound of a car horn. Tommy heard people talking nearby. Several were staring at him.

The outside world had returned.

Finnegan was looking at him. Tommy wasn’t good at reading people, but something in the vendor’s expression had changed. Respect, maybe. He couldn’t have said how he knew—maybe the compass was still working a little—but Finnegan’s opinion of him had shifted.

“Your wife paid so you could see her love,” Finnegan said quietly. “You have paid so your daughter may one day find love of her own.”

Finnegan gave a single, measured nod. Then he produced a dustpan and a small broom and began sweeping up the broken glass.

Tommy looked at Natalie. He could no longer understand what she was feeling. Tears still ran down her face. Were those the happy tears? He didn’t think so. But he couldn’t be sure.

She was staring at his hand. At the blood. Her mouth opened like she was going to speak, then closed. She stepped toward him and took his bleeding hand carefully in both of hers.

Two security guards approached the booth.

“Is there a problem here?” one of them asked.

Finnegan looked up from his sweeping. “There was a misunderstanding, but no harm has been done.”

The shorter of the guards pointed at Tommy’s hand. “Sir, you’re hurt.”

“I’m fine.” Tommy tried to pull his hand back but Natalie held on. “It’s not bad.”

The guard spoke into his radio. “We need a paramedic at the north end. Near Gancanagh’s booth.”

“Really, I’m okay.”

“What about the broken glass?” the first guard asked Finnegan. “What happened here?”

Tommy watched as Finnegan straightened, holding something. The small oval mirror. Intact. Pristine. No cracks, no damage. Tommy looked down at his hand. Blood was seeping through Natalie’s fingers where she held it. He looked back at the mirror.

“As you can see, sir,” Finnegan said calmly, “all is well. Simply raised voices and a moment of confusion.”

The guard examined the mirror, frowned slightly, then nodded. “Paramedic’s on the way. You should get that looked at.”

Footsteps approached. A young man in a blue uniform, carrying a medical kit.

“Hi there. I’m Matthew.” He crouched beside them, setting his kit down. “Looks like you’ve had a bit of an accident. Can you tell me what happened?”

Tommy opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at Natalie.

“He cut his hand,” Natalie said. Her voice was hoarse. “On broken glass.”

“Okay. Sir, may I take a look?” Matthew reached for Tommy’s hand gently. “Can you make a fist for me?” Good. Any numbness or tingling?”

“No.”

“That’s good.” Matthew pulled antiseptic wipes from his kit. “This is going to sting.”

It did. Tommy focused on the sharp chemical burn, the pressure of the cloth against his palm.

“Not too deep,” Matthew said, studying the cut. “Won’t need stitches. You got lucky.” He pressed gauze against the wound. “Hold this here. Keep pressure on it.”

Tommy held the gauze while Matthew prepared bandaging supplies. That’s when the young man glanced up.

And stopped.

He was looking at Natalie.

The moment stretched. Matthew stared at her. Tommy watched his daughter’s face. Watched as something shifted in her expression.

She smiled.

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Tommy had seen her smile hundreds of times in the past two years. Quick, automatic, gone before he could blink. This one was different. It started slower. Lasted longer. Something about her eyes, though he couldn’t have said what. His wife had told him once that real smiles showed in the eyes. He didn’t know if this was one of those. But it looked different.

“Sorry,” Matthew said, shaking his head slightly. He looked back at Tommy’s hand, then up at Natalie again. “I’m Matthew. I, uh… I said that already.”

“Natalie.” Her voice was quieter than usual.

“Natalie.” He said it like he was trying it out. Then he seemed to remember what he was doing. “Right. Let me get this bandaged.” But he was smiling now too. “You okay? That was… that looked intense. Whatever happened.”

“Yeah. I’m…” She paused. “I’m okay.”

Matthew wrapped Tommy’s hand with practiced efficiency, but Tommy noticed how he kept glancing at Natalie. “All set,” he said finally. “Keep it clean and dry. Change the dressing tomorrow. When was your last tetanus shot?”

“I don’t… I’m not sure.”

“You should probably check with your doctor. Just to be safe.” Matthew stood, but didn’t immediately leave. “You’ll be around for a bit? In case I need to check on that?”

Tommy saw his daughter’s mouth curve slightly. “Yeah. We’ll be here.”

Matthew nodded. Picked up his kit. Hesitated. “Good. That’s… good.” He backed away a few steps before turning.

Tommy watched his daughter watch the young man walk away. She was still smiling. That same soft, real smile.

He couldn’t read what she was feeling. Couldn’t understand what had just happened between them. But he knew what he was seeing.

She could still do that. Still smile like that. Still open to someone. She could still begin.

The price he’d paid had been fair. His hand throbbing now, the compass broken, the understanding gone… none of it mattered.

She could still smile like that.

Tommy glanced toward Finnegan’s booth. The vendor was packing items into boxes, but he’d paused. He was watching them. When their eyes met, Finnegan’s expression was… Tommy couldn’t name it. But the vendor gave another small nod.

Then he returned to his packing.

Father and daughter walked across the field toward the parking area. The sun had dropped lower, stretching their long shadows across the worn grass. Most of the cars were already gone. Vendors had finished loading their trucks, calling final goodbyes to each other as engines started and gravel crunched under tires.

Tommy’s hand throbbed beneath the bandage. He flexed his fingers carefully, felt the pull of the gauze, the sting where the glass had cut deepest. He looked at the white wrapping, then at the field around them.

Tomorrow this place would be gone.

They’d pave it over. Build apartments, the signs said. Retail space. The crossroads where he’ d truly seen Melanie all those years ago, where she’d made her bargain, where he’d just made his… it would all be erased. He’d never be able to come back here. Never stand at that booth again.

Not that it mattered. Finnegan would be somewhere else. Crossroads shifted, the vendor had said. But this specific place, with its worn paths and sagging banner. This would all be gone.

Nothing had changed.

Except.

She was walking next to him. Not ten feet ahead like she usually did. Not dragging behind with her phone out, making it clear she didn’t want to be there. She was beside him, matching his pace. Their shoulders almost touching.

That was different. That was new.

She was looking at something in her hand. A small white card. The paramedic, Matthew, he’d said his name was Matthew, had written something on it before they left. His number, probably. Tommy didn’t know what else it might say. Didn’t know if Natalie would call him or throw the card away the moment they got in the car.

But as he watched, she smiled.

Not a big smile. Just a small one. The corner of her mouth turning up as she looked at whatever Matthew had written. Her thumb rubbing across the edge of the card.

Tommy’s chest hurt watching her.

He couldn’t read her expression. Couldn’t tell if the smile meant she liked Matthew or if she was just being polite or if she was thinking about something else entirely. He had no idea what she was feeling. No idea what she needed from him in this moment.

But she was smiling.

Really smiling. Not the tight, fake smile. He thought that one was fake, anyway. She sometimes gave that smile to him. And it wasn’t the flat expression she’d worn for most of the past two years. Her mouth was turned up at the corners. She was looking at the card in her hand, the one the paramedic had given her.

She was smiling. Freely. Easily. And he hadn’t seen that in two years. Not since before Melanie died.

Something in his chest loosened watching her. Relief, maybe. Or hope. He didn’t have the right words for it. But whatever she was feeling looking at that card… looking at what Matthew had written had made her smile like that. Tommy had protected that. That made him feel good.

She could smile at a stranger who’d been kind to her. Could maybe… he didn’t know what came next. Build something? Feel something? He couldn’t understand how people connected, how relationships formed, what all those unspoken signals meant.

But she could do it. Whatever it was. She had that capacity.

Natalie wouldn’t need a mirror. Wouldn’t need to trade years of her life just to be seen. She could just be herself. Smile at someone who smiled back. Let it unfold however it was supposed to unfold.

He didn’t understand how any of that worked. Probably never would.

But he’d made sure she could do it.

That was enough.

His hand throbbed again, sharp enough to make him wince. He looked down at the bandage, at the small spot of red seeping through the white gauze. The paramedic told him to go to urgent care if it didn’t stop bleeding. Tommy wouldn’t. It would heal on its own. Things like this always did.

“Dad?”

He looked at her. Her expression had changed. He didn’t know to what. Couldn’t read it. But she was looking at him, and her voice was soft.

“Yeah?”

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Tried again. “I…” She stopped. Looked down at her feet as they walked. Then back up at him. “Thank you.”

Two words. Simple. Clear.

He didn’t know what to say back. Wanted to tell her he loved her, that he’d do it again, that she was worth every moment of confusion and isolation. Wanted to explain everything he’d felt holding that compass, seeing her desperation, understanding what she was willing to give up. Wanted her to know that watching her smile at a stranger had made the whole thing worth it.

But the words tangled in his throat. Knotted up. Wouldn’t come.

So he just nodded.

And reached over with his good hand.

She looked at his bandaged hand, still pressed against his chest. Then at the one he was offering. She took it.

Her hand was warm. Smaller than his. Her grip was firm.

They walked the rest of the way to the car like that. Hand in hand. Not talking. Just walking. She knew he loved her. He knew she understood.

The gap between them was still there. But they were on the same side of it now. Both aware. Both trying. She could still love. Could still smile at strangers the way she’d smiled at Matthew. That was worth it.

That had to be worth it.

They reached the car. Natalie let go of his hand to open the passenger door. She paused before getting in, turned back to look at him, and then gave him a sudden kiss on the cheek.

Her expression was… something. He didn’t know what. Couldn’t read it. Might never know. But she was here and so was he.

“I love you, Dad,” she said.

He started to reply, but he stumbled over the words. Why was this always so hard? Finally, he nodded and said, “I know.”

She paused a moment and then burst into laughter. “Did you just Han Solo me? ‘I know?’” She was shaking her head, still laughing. “That’s… it’s perfect. It’s actually perfect.”

He didn’t know what Han Solo meant. Some movie, maybe? But she was smiling, really smiling, and that made him happy.

She continued to laugh until they got in the car. He started the engine. Pulled out of the grass parking area onto the gravel road. In the rear view mirror, he could see the field receding. The brown canopy. The crossroads.

He was happy that tomorrow it would all be gone. But this, tonight, would remain. Everything was different. Nothing had changed. And, somehow, impossibly, that was okay.

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I first encountered this idea of being weird from Seth Godin’s blog. Later, I purchased his book devoted to the topic and fell in love with the idea. I can’t recommend this book or the follow-up book, Tribes, strongly enough.

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Dre seems to have come to these conclusions by her own lived experience. She makes many of the same points that Godin makes in his book, but presents them in a way that’s more concise. I hope you’ll enjoy this episode and that you’ll take us up on the challenge that I issue at the end where I encourage people to share their true, authentic, and weird selves and to tag both myself and in the post.

Your Thoughts Matter

Hey everyone! I wanted to begin by telling you how impressed I am with this community. You folks are really smart. Seriously—every comment, every response, and all of our interactions on Notes have shown me that time and again. I’m regularly amazed by the insightful comments you make during our conversations. And that’s exactly why I’d like to bounce something off all of you today.

Earlier this week, Amazon emailed me to announce they’re shutting down Kindle Vella, their short fiction initiative. I had high hopes for it, but it never quite hit the mark for me. But it got me thinking about something bigger…

What if we could jumpstart fiction right here on Substack? What would it take for us to transition from these nascent beginnings to a thriving, robust community? I’ve got some ideas (which I’ll share below), but first, I want to be clear that this isn’t a monologue. This is a conversation.

Here’s what I’m proposing: take a look at my plan below and let me know your thoughts. Better yet, if you’ve got a completely different vision, why not write it up on your own newsletter? I'd love to read it and share it with others.

Vella, we hardly knew ya…

Before we dive into our plan, I want to give credit where it's due. Though Kindle Vella didn’t work out, they nailed one thing: making stories discoverable. The way they showcased their fiction really put the spotlight on the stories themselves.

They didn't stop at just one way to feature stories. As you can see in this Top Faved showcase, they created multiple discovery zones throughout the platform. Each section was carefully designed to help different types of stories shine—from monthly favorites like these to other high-performing works that caught readers' attention.

Take a look at their Featured row below. Whether these titles were chosen by algorithms tracking performance (most likely) or human editors (less likely), this prominent placement served an important function: it put carefully selected stories right where readers could find them.

Romance Wins Again

One genre stood out on Vella: romance. No surprise there—romance leads the way, just as it always does.

What makes romance readers special? They’re incredibly adaptable. While some genres have rigid expectations—fantasy readers who demand 500-page epics, for instance—romance readers are different. They’ll embrace any format, any length, any platform... as long as the story delivers what they love. Short fiction? Sure. New distribution method? They’re there. Brand new platform? They’ll give it a shot, especially if it means following their favorite authors.

This flexibility isn’t just a quirk—it's a superpower. Romance readers’ willingness to explore new formats and platforms keeps the genre innovative and thriving. Where they go, other genres often follow.

The Vellys

As shown below, Kindle Vella ran a writing competition with significant prize money at stake. The path to winning combined reader popularity metrics with final selections made by a judging panel.

Here were the basic requirements for entry:

A Plan for Substack

Here’s where I see an opportunity: Substack could step into this space. We already have a growing community of short and serialized fiction writers. And soon, many successful authors will be looking for a new platform. The timing couldn’t be better to invite them into our community.

The Dream

Maybe we can get a patron to put up 25,000 dollars in prize money. Maybe I'll find pirate treasure in my backyard too, but who knows? Anything’s possible.

The tech world has a history of unexpected benefactors, and here’s one such story: Marc Andreessen began following an account on what was then called Twitter. The account, Truth Terminal, was run by a dedicated AI chatbot. As the chatbot gained a large following, the researcher needed to upgrade his servers to handle the increased workload. When Andreessen heard about the need, he gave the researcher a bitcoin to cover the costs. At the time, Bitcoin was trading at around 50k. Given Bitcoin’s current value, we’d only need about 25% of a single coin to hit our target. Yes, it’s unlikely, but you never know who will take an interest in your work.

If you want to watch or listen to the exchange, the link is below. Marc starts talking about it at 25:04 in the recording.

Chris Best

Marc Andreessen on the front foot

Marc Andreessen helped define the web as we know it, has founded multiple billion dollar companies, and is a legendary VC and champion of the tech industry. His firm is also an early backer of Substack…

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2 years ago · 67 likes · 12 comments · Chris Best

The Stackys

The following is a bit of wishful thinking, but let’s assume we do find a sponsor for this contest. Since the goal is to attract both authors and new readers, we want to make this contest as straightforward as possible. We’ll reach out to existing authors on Substack, but also leverage the fact that fiction authors tend to frequent the same online spaces which gives them non-Substack networks where they can speak about and promote the contest.

Each author would receive a unique signup URL or referral code that their audience could use when creating a new account1. At the end of the contest period, Substack would tally up who brought in the most new people—it’s that simple. No complicated point systems or user types to track, just pure growth. The authors who generate the most signups will be our winners. Substack will recognize the top performers (three? five? ten... however many we decide) with prizes.

• The Core Goal: Drive platform growth by leveraging existing authors’ networks and influence. Instead of complicated metrics or weighted systems, success is measured purely by new signups generated.

• How Authors Participate: Each participating author receives a unique referral code or signup URL. They can share this with their audience across any channel—social media, their newsletter, word of mouth, wherever they have reach.

• Simple Tracking Mechanism: When someone creates a new Substack account using an author's referral code, that author gets credit for the signup. Additionally, if an existing Substack user helped recruit that author to the platform, they also receive credit. This creates a multi-level reward system, similar to a pyramid scheme: users who recruit authors who then bring in many new readers can qualify for monetary prizes.

• Contest Duration: A defined timeframe (like 30 or 60 days) gives authors clear parameters to work within and maintains momentum throughout the competition.

• Selecting Winners: At the contest’s end, the authors who generated the most signups are identified through their referral codes. The top performers receive part of the 25,000 dollar prize money.

I referenced the $25,000 figure because that’s what The Vellys established, but realistically, a smaller amount could just as effectively motivate many authors. While established writers might expect larger sums, there’s a vast pool of aspiring authors out there who would be energized by even a $500 prize. To get things started, an annual contest with a total prize pool of $10,000 (divided into first, second, and third place awards—or however many tiers the contest has) could create significant momentum.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

A More Pragmatic Approach

The dream of an external savior swooping in to revolutionize fiction on this platform is alluring, but ultimately unrealistic. Our best path forward lies in taking action ourselves.

The good news? Writing networks already exist and thrive in digital spaces. Authors gather on Kindle Forums, in private Facebook groups, and countless other online communities. Many of you likely have connections to established authors—perhaps through family, old friendships, or past collaborations. Consider introducing them to Substack, not necessarily for full-length novels, but for shorter works better suited to this platform. Substack offers unique opportunities in this realm.

This is especially relevant for those of you embedded in the romance community. As writers familiar with Kindle Vella, you know talented authors who'll soon need a new home when that platform closes. Why not show them what Substack has to offer?

Every fiction writer who joins strengthens our collective presence here. While external support would be welcome, our success depends on the community we build ourselves.

Your thoughts?

Now it’s your turn—I want to hear your thoughts. Drop a comment below and share your perspective. What parts of this plan resonate with you? What might need rethinking? I’m genuinely curious to hear what you think.

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What’s Next?

I’m working on an illustrated story that I will be publishing to the Drawing Room section of this newsletter. That should go out sometime later this week. It’ll be a short piece of about 500 words, but with illustrations on each page. This is an effort to determine how well Substack is able to present formats similar to pulp style magazines that I grew up with or the Eastern inspired light novel.

I'm excited to tell you about some changes coming to the newsletter in 2025! This past year has shown me what matters most to you through your comments and engagement. You've helped me see which topics really resonate, and I want to dig deeper into those areas.

As the newsletter grows, I want to make sure you get exactly what you want to read. That's why I'm adding topic choices - a simple way for you to pick what shows up in your inbox. Think of it as picking your favorite parts of our weekly conversations.

Below, I'll show you how to choose the topics you want to follow. You can keep getting everything, or choose just the topics that interest you most—it's completely up to you.

I'm looking forward to sharing more with you in the coming months. I know your time matters, and I want to make sure every newsletter is worth your while.

Managing Your Reading Experience: A Quick Guide

One of the things I love about Substack is how it lets you customize your reading experience. My newsletter spans four distinct sections, each with its own focus:

Story Compass: Fiction and Found Favorites - This is where I share my original fiction where ordinary moments take unexpected turns. I also use this space to explore stories, book recommendations, and things I want to recommend.

Spoken Ward: Conversations, Craft & Community - This is where I sit down with creators to explore their work and process, discussing everything from newsletter strategies to creative decisions.

Stack Cartographer: Mapping the Newsletter Frontier - Occasional observations about the evolving Substack ecosystem, analyzing trends, and trying to understand the best tactics for this platform.

Drawing Room: Sketches, Comics & Visual Stories - This is where I share my illustrations, comics, and sketches, offering glimpses into both finished pieces and works in progress.

While some readers enjoy the full spectrum, you might find yourself particularly drawn to specific sections. The beauty of Substack's section-based subscription system is that you can tailor your experience to match your interests.

How to Customize Your Subscription:

1. Visit my newsletter's home page while logged in

2. Look for the toggle switches next to each section title (they appear as orange buttons, like in the image below).

3. Click any toggle to switch it off for sections you'd prefer not to receive

4. The switch will turn grey when you've unsubscribed from that section

5. Your changes save automatically!

Pro tip: You can always preview what you're getting (or missing) by clicking on any section name (while on the homepage) to see past posts from that category.

Think of it like customizing your own magazine – you get to keep the sections you love while skipping the ones that aren't your cup of tea. And remember, there's no pressure! You can adjust these settings anytime, and toggling a section back on will instantly restore your access to that content.

I value every reader, whether you're here for a specific topic or the whole journey. Take a moment to customize your experience, and let me know if you have any questions! You can simply reply to this message or any future emails.

Thanks for being part of the Written Ward community. I'm truly grateful that you have chosen to spend a little time with me each week, and I look forward to making that time even more valuable for you.

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I’m hoping many people will join me in using the livestream feature as a way to tell us about the books they enjoy enough to keep on their shelves. It would allow all of us to get to know one another better and maybe find some new books while doing so. For example, I’ve always been curious about the many books that has behind him while recording his videos.

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This is a short 7 minute video where I walk through some of my favorite books. The books on that shelf are either poetry or some piece of classical fiction. During the livestream I mention my favorite poem by Edmund Vance Cooke.

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How Did You Die?

Did you tackle that trouble that came your way
With a resolute heart and cheerful?
Or hide your face from the light of day
With a craven soul and fearful?
Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it,
And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it?

You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that?
Come up with a smiling face.
It's nothing against you to fall down flat,
But to lie there -- that's disgrace.
The harder you're thrown, why the higher you bounce;
Be proud of your blackened eye!
It isn't the fact that you're licked that counts,
It's how did you fight -- and why?

And though you be done to the death, what then?
If you battled the best you could,
If you played your part in the world of men,
Why, the Critic will call it good.
Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,
And whether he's slow or spry,
It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts,
But only how did you die?

Join me for my next live video in the app.

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During the livestream, Anthony asked about strategies for serializing fiction. has written two guides that may be helpful for these questions. The first one is here and contains good, general advice for writing on Substack:

Write More with Simon K Jones

Quickstart guide for Substack fiction writers

Updated October 2024…

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3 years ago · 216 likes · 79 comments · Simon K Jones

The second guide is more tailored to the process of actual serialization and that is located here:

Write More with Simon K Jones

How to write serialised fiction

This is a 22 chapter rough guide, taking you from understanding the core form of serial storytelling, through plotting and themes, character creation, plot twists and much more, all the way through to hitting the ‘publish’ button. There’s even a chapter all about how to cope when people say nasty things about your writing…

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4 years ago · 96 likes · 36 comments · Simon K Jones

Thank you , , , , ., and many others for tuning into my live video with and ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Get more from John Ward in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

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