By the pricking of my thumbs. . .

I've thought about it, and decided that Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes must be one of the ten greatest novels in the English language, and one of the five greatest American novels. Its horror is set in the American heartland, but Cooger and Dark's sideshow is about much more than just giving you the shivers. It asks all the big questions about life, death, youth and age, time and history, regret, and the setting aside of regret.

The dark ones feed off tears, and I have been giving them an awful lot of sustenance lately. That has to stop. Tears do not honor the dead.

All of this is due to my recent viewing of Jack Clayton's film version of the book, scripted by Mr. Bradbury himself. It's just about as good as any film adaptation could be, at least on this budget, benefiting greatly from a deeply felt performance from Jason Robards and a tightly controlled one from Jonathan Pryce as Mr. Dark.

Their main confrontation in the town library, with Dark literally ripping the pages out of Robards's book of life, is probably the film's best scene, coming straight from the book, a confrontation unlike any other I can think of on film. Robards plays a man choked with regret, but one wise enough to refuse Mr. Dark's offer of "help."

For Mr. Dark only gives gifts that take away. He lives to turn children into sad old people, and to bait victims with dreams come true in order feed on their pain when the dream turns to ashes.

This was to be my movie for Halloween night, but it was delayed until two nights later. It was exactly the right story to revisit in the fall of 2010. I thought it would make me sad, but it had the opposite effect. When Robards urges his young son to stop despairing -- "That's what they like! Come on! Whoop it up! Make some noise!" -- it's almost a moment to make one leap out of the chair and applaud.

And now with the October Country behind me it's time for me to turn away the dark in more ways than one.

-- Freder.

Fly away home

It doesn't look like much from the air. And the photo was not taken during a green season. This has been my home for almost 35 years. Under the Purchase Agreement that I signed on Monday night, I have the right to stay until June (in fact, the new owners would prefer it if I could stay that long. They cannot take occupancy until that time, and would have to drain the place if I wasn't there). Then, ready or not, I have to leave forever.

My head tells me that it's for the best. I do not have the resources or abilities to restore the house to its former condition, and it makes little sense to sink money from the estate into it, money that we most likely could not get back out. It's too much house for me, clearly. We always said that it needed the efforts of more than one person, and I've been doing it essentially alone now for more than five years while my mother gradually failed and faded away.

The new owners can bring everything to the place that I can not. They're decent people and big Disney fans -- so Mom would like them.

But I'm so tired of saying good-bye. It seems as if this year has been about nothing else.

Snow in October

It was not a good Halloween, but Halloween had a good one on me.

I woke to a heavy snowstorm blanketing the yard. It ended by 11:30 and melted away shortly after, but it's the principle of the thing, damn it! Snow on  Halloween day! Another punch in the face.

This was going to be my day for me -- some time to get a few things done, but also some time to write: not just emails or the blog, I wanted to start in a small way on completing a short story that has been sitting on my computer desktop for a year.

It didn't happen. Phone calls, emails, chores that took longer than they should have. I was just sitting down to warm up by doing a blog post when my sister turned up in the yard.

She wanted to go through Mom's clothes. I felt like telling her that she'd had her chance. But I figured that letting her do this would get it out of the way, and then I would never have to see her again.

The whole time she was going through the clothing, she kept asking me when I was going to move. I kept answering "I don't know." Because nothing is final yet and I'm not packing one box until I have a completed deal. And then I am going to move at my own pace. I am tired of being pushed on every damn thing.

She asked if I'd spoken to my neighbors about selling the place. I said no, and for the same reasons. I don't want to have the place sold out from under me when I have nowhere else to go.

She seemed unwilling to accept this answer and started pushing me again to go down there and speak to them. I said I didn't want to. She said, "I know R____, really well, I'll go down and talk to him. Do you want to come with me?"

I said I wished she wouldn't. She chose not to hear me. She demanded that we load up her truck with all the clothes it could carry so that she could "help" me by taking it all to Goodwill. I said I didn't need or want her help. She chose not to hear that, and started loading up her car.

I gave up at that point. I just wanted her gone. I started helping her load just so that she would go away, let me have what remained of my Sunday, and the next time, if there was one, it would be easier to control the situation just by not letting her in.

It must have been three-thirty or later when she finally left. I breathed a sigh of relief, and started to try to pick up where I'd left off. I had a load of laundry in the washer and a VHS that had finished duping, so I set about shutting down those operations for the day.

She hadn't been gone ten minutes when there was a knock at my door.

It was her again. She hollered in at me, "R____ wants to see the house, it's his step-son that's interested and they're leaving for California tomorrow!"

I couldn't believe it. I started cleaning up. My sister hollered in at me to get the keys to the barn. She started going through my key rack. "Which one of these is the right one?"

"None of them," I said. In truth, the keys on that rack (which my mother made many years ago) are for decorative purposes only.

There were two men standing in my yard. One of them introduced himself as the step-son.

They walked through the barns and then they came into the house, Claudia leading the way, giving them a hard-sell sales pitch the whole way, never shutting up. They went into my mother's room. They went down the basement and into the outrooms. Claudia said nothing about the window I'd boarded up after she broke it entering the house illegally.

I didn't want her to go into the main house. I didn't want her to see what I had kept and how I was making the place comfortable again. But there was no way to stop her without making a scene, she was in full carnival barker mode.

When she entered the living room she saw the head of the lion costume and said, "Oh, there's my lion costume! -- Ours!"

It never was hers or ours. It belonged to our mother. She merely let us use it once in a while (usually with reluctance!). It's not mine even now. I'm just its caretaker. That means I have to protect it from my sister.

She didn't remember half of the things that Mom had made, just as she hadn't remembered her own WAC costume from her childhood when we found it in Mom's closet. But she kept saying "Our mother made most of this stuff!" to the men as if it meant something to her.

They went upstairs and looked in all the bedrooms. When they looked in what had once been Claudia's bedroom, but which has been an extra room for me now many years, I heard Claudia exclaim, "Oh, you saved my old desk! My desk! Hmmm, I wonder what I could do with it. How could I use it?"

I thought: It hasn't been your desk for thirty-five years, you bitch. Now it's coming with me, or it's going to the auction house.

When they were done, Claudia took them down through the back field to see the pond, and I stood just behind the closed door and sobbed.

But I wasn't rid of them yet. Ten minutes later I saw them in the front yard, all talking. They went out into the driveway and talked some more. I kept going back to the window and finding them still there and thinking to myself, Why don't they go?

After what must have been twenty minutes I saw them coming back to the door.

I made the mistake of opening it. The guys were very polite and friendly, and I suddenly realized that they were a gay couple.

"J____ and J____ have something to say to you," my sister said.

Pop Culture blather: just to take my mind off of all the other stuff...

Where have John Brahm and Laird Cregar been all my life? More to the point, with all the old movies I've watched and all the time I've spent reading about them, why have I never heard of these two men before?

With Cregar, at least there's an excuse. He died quite young, not even living to see the release of his final picture, Hangover Square.

But Brahm appears to have had a long and varied career, and if the three films I watched this weekend that bore his name as director are any indication, the man was a true stylist, and a great unsung talent.

First up was The Lodger, Fox's 1944 version of the often-filmed story about Jack the Ripper. You know that you're in the hands of a master from the opening shots, with the camera creeping about London's night streets, following its inhabitants through a variety of tableaux until the first murder happens right under everyone's noses. The papers immediately rush out a new edition and the newsboys carry the word from the slums to the homes of the once-wealthy.

And then Cregar lurches out of the darkness to select his new name from a gaslit street sign. Cregar was a giant of a man, six foot three and three hundred pounds, and his presence is imposing to say the least, even when he's playing mild-mannered. His performance as the Ripper is mesmerizing and covers a wide range of emotional territory. At no time are we in doubt as to his guilt; only his motivations are in doubt, and these seem to be driven by a sweeping Romanticism fixated around his own brother. You get the sense that Cregar is a runaway horse straining to control itself. I won't spoil the final scene, but I will say that Cregar holds it all in his eyes and on his very considerable shoulders.

Sir Cedric Hardwicke is also in the movie, almost unrecognizable under a beard, and Merle Oberon does the blithely seductive thing: she is the meat dangling as bait to draw the Ripper into final confrontation.

The whole picture is so striking that I wonder why it has been so little shown and is so little known.

But wait, the goodness continues. Hangover Square is a virtual second helping. Cregar (who was desperately trying to remake himself in ways that directly led to his death) had slimmed down considerably by this time, and gets to play for more sympathy in this picture, but he is no less imposing in stature and his performance is no less remarkable. This time the killer is a somewhat meek composer who is driving himself so hard that sometimes experiences blackouts -- periods in which he does things that no one ought to do.

Once again, Brahm is directing, and once again the opening sequence contains an exceedingly well-staged and chilling murder. Once again there's no doubt as to the identity of the perpetrator. And once again the "hero" ends in a smashing self-inflicted downfall, this time to the music of the great Bernard Herrmann. It's all so well done that you feel like you're waking from a dark dream when the end title rolls.

And oh, that Linda Darnell!

But wait: the goodness doesn't stop: The Undying Monster is a nifty little murder mystery cum werewolf story (again directed by Brahm); it's so restrained that you don't even see the monster until almost the final shot -- and what a shot it is. There's no Laird Cregar to give a crashing performance that roots it to the floor, and the investigator is played particularly poorly. But there is a very strong heroine to drive the picture, and many, many wonderful shots of characters plunging through the darkened moors, both in pursuit and being pursued.

These three pictures were all brand-new to me, and hands-down the best part of my Halloween weekend. They come in a box set from Fox, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes, em, this sort of thing.

Stop the world, I want to get off...

I have no less than three posts in draft and they're all made redundant by what just happened.

My father called me and informed me that the deal on the first house is going through. I had written it off and was carrying on life searching for different options. Now, all of a sudden, I'm moving.

I think the house is great, and will be good for me, but I seem to have lost control of the process along the way. I'm in a state of turmoil.

Rapping, gently rapping. . .

Last night, following my nightly episode of Dark Shadows, I sat in the living room (yet another thing that would not have been possible a couple of weeks ago) and assembled Halloween treat bags with my new Nox Arcana CD playing in accompaniment.

I'm trying to acclimate Tiger Whitestockings to the house and the other cats so I can bring her in full-time. She sat on the floor, cowering beside my feet while I worked. All the cats were a little spooked by my choice of music.

I know little more about Nox Arcana than that it is a two-man group, that the founding member, Joseph Vargo, is also a painter and does all the art for their albums (the above image is a montage of his paintings for Carnival of Lost Souls), and that the group is an offshoot of another goth band, Midnight Syndicate.

A person might go nutty listening to their kind of music all the time, but for Halloween it is great stuff, a kind of new age old gothic style with sound effects and chorale backing. They do create a mood.

The first Nox Arcana album that I tried, last year around this time, was Carnival of Lost Souls, and it was a fortunate place to begin. Each of the albums has a theme, and the guys really knuckled down and got into this one. This sideshow is indeed a gruesome one, and the gypsy fortune teller doesn't have anything positive to say (unless it's that she's absolutely positive that your future looks bleak!). The circus animals are lumbering, nightmare monstrosities lashed on by demons in Harlequin costumes, and I don't even want to think about what's in the Freak Show.

Not all of their albums possess the depth of composition that's on display here. Blackthorn Asylum is a perfect example. This was their new release earlier this year, and I tried it around the time of Walpurgis Night. Unfortunately, despite a couple of effective cuts (their shock therapy cut goes right up and down my backbone), this feels like a rush job. Let's face it, after something like fifteen albums of this stuff (and more coming out all the time -- they've had two releases in the eight months or so since Asylum was issued), it's all going to start to sound the same.

Nonetheless, I tried again this week with their Poe-themed CD, Shadow of the Raven, and this was much better. After one listen, I can tell you that the music has more complexity and is less derivative than Blackthorn Asylum; once again, it may well be due to the theme. Poe is a great subject. You've got the man and his work to build upon, and this album features music based on specific stories and poems that also play as a kind of elegy to the troubled artist.

I was happily putting my treat bags together, petting Whitestockings to let her know that she was among new friends, and most of the other cats were lounging about. Once in a while one of them would come over to check her out.

Then I noticed that Pooky had woken from a sound sleep and was staring nervously at the CD player. Whitey had turned to look at it, too, and his ears were back. Whitestockings was peering around my leg, her whole body tight in anticipation. The next thing I knew, it wasn't music coming out of the CD player anymore, but cats yowling. Whitey actually started. I talked to them, saying "It's OK guys, don't worry, it's not real, it's not real!" -- but the yowling got louder and nastier and scarier and I had to drop what I was doing to keep Whitestockings from launching herself into flight. "It's OK, guys, don't worry, it's okay!"

I was about to get up and hit the fast forward on that puppy when it suddenly ended in silence. Not a moment too soon! "See guys, it's all over! Bad cats are gone! It's OK!"

A couple of them looked at me as if to say, "Don't ever do that again!"

What can I say? It's Halloween at the Duck House, and even in greatly reduced circumstances we are trying to get in the holiday spirit.

--Freder.

Safe as Houses?

This morning another torrential rain lashed the house, and my anxiety felt like a physical thing, burrowing in the bottom of my stomach, wrapping itself around my spine. You might ask, what am I so afraid of? I'd ask you back, What's not to be afraid of? Everything. I'm afraid of everything.

I normally have a hard time deciding what to have for dinner -- so making a decision about moving out of the house and buying a new home is beyond the pale for me, even when the facts all point to it being the right decision.

Mr. C_______ took me house-hunting yesterday; we viewed five homes over a period of two hours. I discovered that homes all start to look alike after a while.

On my own hook, I had already driven past the Victorian that's pictured above. Lots of character. Price absolutely right. I was prepared to make an offer right away. All it had  to do was to not be terrible inside, to be ready for me to move in.

But there was a reason for the low price. It needs a lot of work in there. They had replaced the roof on the gable, but had not finished the job: the attic rooms were open to the air. They had changed the home heating system to gas since the picture above was taken, and the sides and backs of the house were bordered with three unsightly tanks. There was only one bathroom in the place -- the so-called downstairs half bath was nothing more than a toilet in the unfinished basement. Even Mr. C_____, who was supposed to be selling the place, said that it smelled like a money pit to him. I regretfully struck it off the list.

House #2 was a smaller Victorian, very solid, needing only a paint job. But it had been remodeled sometime in the '60s, beyond the dining room everything was wood-paneled, and upstairs was worse. Not that I have anything against wood paneling in the right context, but it was not right for this 1880's house. The laundry set-up was in a corner of the basement that was too low for me to stand upright in. But there was a finished room on the third floor that would have made a good study. Still, it did not "feel" like the right house for me.

The house was obviously still being lived in. I felt uncomfortable moving through that person's life.

House #4 had a couple of nice features but overall was horrible and depressing as all get out. I don't even want to type about it. The owner has two nice cats, though.

House #5 was on a noisy street, but managed to be quite quiet indoors. It had lovely wood trim throughout, a wood fireplace, a good layout. But the owners had done everything in their power to make it hideous -- wallpaper that looked like it came from a nursing home, plastic wood covering the walls, things that it would not be easy for me to undo.

The only one that felt remotely right was House #3. And of course it's the most expensive one we looked at, but it could be moved into right away. Very cute from the outside. A two-car garage connected to the house by an archway, to keep you dry. A neat back yard, a small back deck. At just over 1700 square feet it feels a hair on the small side. There are two tiny connected living rooms that, if you put them together, would add up to about the size of the front room in my mother's house. It would be cozy. There's a small windowed-in front porch -- I'd prefer it to be screened for my kitties, but the glass isn't a deal-breaker. Three bedrooms upstairs and an upstairs sitting room that would most likely become my study. Five minutes from work; I could come home on my lunch break to give my kitties a treat and a pet. Though dark inside, it still managed to feel cheery. I just don't know if the house can contain me, and all the baggage I carry.

Years and years ago, I had a dream about climbing a glass stairway. Because I could see through the steps, it was vertiginous even at the lower levels. As it spiraled around and up, the steps grew farther and farther apart. Eventually the distance became so great that I had to reach out with my hands and pull myself up to the next step. Then I reached a gap that could not be breached. I tried for it anyway, and found myself stuck, with my hands barely clinging to the step above and my feet slipping on the one below. I could not move backward, I could not move forward. All I could do was hang there staring at the drop below me until my strength gave out.

That's exactly the position I do not want to be in now!

Halloween Movie Challenge: FAIL!

Oh, dear. I started in watching Fox's 1944 The Lodger last night, and although I found it very well done and intriguing, suddenly twenty minutes into it I got up and turned it off.

It's not the fault of the movie. I look forward to seeing the rest of it sometime. I guess that I'm just not in the mood to sit passively and watch telly when I should be up and about, doing things, getting caught up. If I'm to stay in this house for even a short period of time, I can not have boxes full of stuff sitting on the floor in the front room. I can not have things just all a-jingling. I can not have dust bunnies and rubble in the corners.

Plus, my scrapbook keeps calling to me. I never would have thought that this would be an activity for me, but there you are, I have scrapbooking supplies neatly arranged (for me) on the dining room table. I could not find a scrapbook that I liked in the stores, so when an unused ledger of my mother's turned up, I started manually blackening the pages with India ink and mounting my photos there, writing captions in white ink and adding scarp elements cut from documents, magazines, cards. It's going to be pretty arty when I get done.

I find it more comforting to be in a well-lit room working on something like that, than to be sitting in a darkened room watching old movies. When I go to bed at night, I feel as if I've accomplished something. The cats are starting to settle down and take advantage of the new arrangement. We all sit in the living room, and I put some music on (until Melanie arrives, Herb Alpert is getting a lot of play) and I work on emptying the boxes, loading the bookshelves, repacking linens into drawers, or I sit and work on the scrapbook.

The living/dining room, the kitchen and the front room are all pretty good now. But the study needs more cleaning, more furniture and more thought, and the front hall is merely storage space at the moment. I haven't even begun to clean up my mother's bedroom. I don't like going in there.

Oddly enough, the pickers took next to nothing out of her bathroom, so it's like an oasis in there at the edge of a wasteland.

Tonight maybe I'll try again, maybe not. Tomorrow I go looking at houses.

-- Freder