Status: Re-uploaded 29/09/2012. Paperback $15- http://www.lulu.com/shop/tristrum-rees/the-macabre-tales-of-young-edgar-paperback/paperback/product-20248115.html
The Macabre Tales of Young Edgar
Prologue
At a writing desk in a lamplit room sat Edgar McArbre.
A scarecrow youth of eighteen years, he slouched forward, more out of habit than because he was feeling dejected. A shock of mousy hair hung over his eyes, which were the precise pewter-grey of oysters, and left shadows underneath his wasted cheeks. His white linen shirt fell open from the collar, revealing a sunken chest that held the heart Lord Edmund Vile so treasured. The lamplight painted his ribs in stark relief, so that they protruded like xylophone keys or steps on a ladder.
Flames danced in kerosene lamps like fireflies trapped in amber. Licking their containers like slivers of the inferno, they danced wildly in the slight breeze, flinging orange stains against the grim wallpaper. They made caricatures of the portraits and ghastly marionettes of the eel skeletons and dried seahorses suspended from the ceiling.
The tinted light raced around the square of parchment that had been unrolled on the desk, weighted at each corner with seashells, corked bottles and black pebbles from the seashore. That light was a twirling maverick, pushing the quill in Edgar's limp, white hand. It was a devil, daring that quill to dance, tempting it to enlist itself in a Faustian bargain- lasting hellfire in exchange for briefly burning words.
In Edgar's hand, however, the quill was quite unresponsive, clutched like prey in the mandibles of a pale, brooding spider. It idled above the parchment, dripping its juices, poised...
Edgar was not hesitating. He was not asleep. Rather, he was simply dreaming.
A portal had opened in his mind, and it ran as deep as the ocean; as black as the inkwell set into the top of the desk. On the surface, he was as still as the liquid in that well, which was the only other thing in the room that did not rustle or tick or creep in the thickening night. It was the only other thing that waited, though it was full of potential, biding its time as the springs of the clock in the corner wound tighter, the gears creaking and that baritone gong tensing in apprehension.
As Edgar sat, quiet as a doll who is shelved by day and yet whom nightmare might possess, his page of desperately slanted writing remained half-finished. He sat, and the hands of the clock inched closer and closer to midnight.
A scarecrow youth of eighteen years, he slouched forward, more out of habit than because he was feeling dejected. A shock of mousy hair hung over his eyes, which were the precise pewter-grey of oysters, and left shadows underneath his wasted cheeks. His white linen shirt fell open from the collar, revealing a sunken chest that held the heart Lord Edmund Vile so treasured. The lamplight painted his ribs in stark relief, so that they protruded like xylophone keys or steps on a ladder.
Flames danced in kerosene lamps like fireflies trapped in amber. Licking their containers like slivers of the inferno, they danced wildly in the slight breeze, flinging orange stains against the grim wallpaper. They made caricatures of the portraits and ghastly marionettes of the eel skeletons and dried seahorses suspended from the ceiling.
The tinted light raced around the square of parchment that had been unrolled on the desk, weighted at each corner with seashells, corked bottles and black pebbles from the seashore. That light was a twirling maverick, pushing the quill in Edgar's limp, white hand. It was a devil, daring that quill to dance, tempting it to enlist itself in a Faustian bargain- lasting hellfire in exchange for briefly burning words.
In Edgar's hand, however, the quill was quite unresponsive, clutched like prey in the mandibles of a pale, brooding spider. It idled above the parchment, dripping its juices, poised...
Edgar was not hesitating. He was not asleep. Rather, he was simply dreaming.
A portal had opened in his mind, and it ran as deep as the ocean; as black as the inkwell set into the top of the desk. On the surface, he was as still as the liquid in that well, which was the only other thing in the room that did not rustle or tick or creep in the thickening night. It was the only other thing that waited, though it was full of potential, biding its time as the springs of the clock in the corner wound tighter, the gears creaking and that baritone gong tensing in apprehension.
As Edgar sat, quiet as a doll who is shelved by day and yet whom nightmare might possess, his page of desperately slanted writing remained half-finished. He sat, and the hands of the clock inched closer and closer to midnight.
