THE
PRICE OF SUCCESS
Walt
Trizna
Long ago, to gain success
and fortune, I accepted help. I had no idea what the cost of my weakness
would be.
* * *
I made West Chester, Pennsylvania
my home.
It’s a small hamlet forty miles west of Philadelphia. Although
construction marched across the
landscape, there were still open fields, some farming and a sense of freedom
not found in the city. I pursued a writing
career turning out short stories and poetry published by small presses. I had
not made a cent. Working as a short-order cook and doing
seasonal work, I managed to get by.
For years I’ve also
been working on a novel of gothic horror. I felt the story line was fine but
could not
capture the moodiness of the genre, could not complete the book. Every night,
after work, I would sit and
produce nothing but a pile of crumpled paper.
The manuscript lacked a life of its own, remaining far from a finished product.
To boost my spirits, I would
sometimes visit one of my favorite haunts in
West Chester – Baldwin’s Book Barn.
Baldwin’s is a rambling building with shelves upon shelves of old books
spread over five ramshackle floors. I
would roam the barn for hours, finding treasures on the shelves to ponder in
one of the comfortable rocking chairs scattered throughout the barn or, if the
price was right, take home.
One day, while visiting
Baldwin’s, I wandered past the rare book
room. This room was kept locked and
special arrangements were needed to gain entry.
Although I had wanted to spend some time in that room, I knew my pockets
were not deep enough to gain admittance.
This day, however, much to my surprise, the door to the room was
ajar. I cautiously entered and found the
room to be empty. It was a small
room. Its walls lined with bookshelves
and a solitary table and chair off to one side.
The shelves held leather-bound volumes, first editions of some of the
most famous authors of the English language.
There were books by Hemingway, Hawthorne and Poe. Herman Melville was
represented along with H.
G. Wells. As I poured over the titles, something
caught my eye, a slight movement from the direction of the table. I turned quickly
but could find nothing. I continued to wander around the room and
again felt a presence, a feeling that I was not alone. I turned slowly to the
table to discover that
my intuition was correct. For a fleeting
moment I was not alone, and in that moment, I knew I must return to the Book
Barn that night.
I left the bookstore and
drove my car from the small parking lot in front
of the barn to one of my part-time jobs.
My plan was to return near closing time, sometime before nine o’clock.
I would park my car in a nearby development
and walk the mile to the bookstore. I
was sure that they checked their parking lot at closing time to see if any
customers remained in the store and in this way my presence would go unnoticed. The
store itself was one huge hiding
place. With its haphazard arrangements
of shelves, it was full of nooks and crannies where one could easily be
concealed.
Entering the store at eight,
I nodded to the manager and made my way to
the upper levels. I quickly found a
hiding place on the second floor, the home of the rare book room. Soon after
nine, I heard the store manager
climb the rickety stairs and begin turning off the lights, starting at the
highest level and working his way down.
I made sure I was nowhere near the light switch and my hiding place went
undiscovered. The only sounds I heard
were the occasional creaking of the old building settling in for the night.
Security lights illuminated
the first floor and some of the light filtered
up through the spaces between the floorboards.
I tried the door to the rare book room and found the door to be
locked. I located a comfortable rocking
chair and began my surveillance. The
excitement of the quest quickly gave way to the weariness of the day, and I was
soon dozing, then fast asleep.
It was one A. M. when I
suddenly awoke.
It took me a few moments to remember where I was. I slowly made my way
through the darkened
passageway of the bookshelves until I stood before the rare book room. An eerie
glow emanated from beneath the
door. I tried the door and it opened
easily. There, sitting before the ghost
of a candle was the figure I had glimpsed that afternoon. I recognized him immediately
by his manner of
dress, the small mustache and the sorrowful eyes – it was Edgar Allen Poe. He
sat at the table piled high with papers,
his face sad with the knowledge he held.
He did not look up, but his lips were moving and the words entered my
brain.
“I exist in neither heaven nor
hell,” he said, “but between these leather-bound volumes. My soul is tied to my
thoughts, to my dreams and my fears, and it is mostly the fears that lie
between these covers. … The tortured nightmares that pursued me in life I
entrapped on the page, their number was endless as I dipped into their essence
for material. Once a fear was conquered
it was replaced by a fiercer, more wicked specter.” Glancing at me, he
continued, “You carry
demons within you, as we all do,” he said as he slowly shook his head.
It was then he began to
write. It was the same story I had
written, well, almost the same for the improvements were obvious. He rewrote
sections with which I had been
having the most trouble, sections that would not come together. His lips moved
and I could hear the words he had
written.
Then he said, “Nothing
in life comes easy, there is always a price.” With that he set aside his
writing, stood,
and was gone. With trembling hands, I
retrieved the pages. I accepted the
help. I needed help even if it came from
beyond the grave. I kept all the
changes, and the story was published. To see my name in print, accepted now by
a major publisher, to have my work recognized was like a drug. I could not get
enough. That was some time
ago. Fame and fortune are mine, but I
now know the price.
It began one night, months
after my book was published. I dreamt that a creature was squatting in the
corner of my room, a being not of the waking world. He had a narrow face ending
in a pointed
chin. His eyes glowed red like the fires
of hell. I refer to this being as ‘he’
but the more proper term would be ‘it’.
Its body was covered with gray
matted fur and its short thin legs bent backward at the knee. It there is a
hell; this creature journeyed
from that destination.
Speaking in a hollow –
echoing voice it spoke to me of horrors. The horrors I could see as the demon’s
form
faded to be replaced by the story it told.
This visage from hell weaved unspeakable stories, stories to gruesome to
use. I took their essence of horror and
changed them for no one would believe what was depicted in my dreams. It was
after the stories were published that I learned the horrible consequences of my
plagiarism.
The first was of a man possessed
by demons. His wife had just given birth to their first
baby, a son. The demons told the man
that the son would grow to be a spiritual leader and must be destroyed, and was
murdered by his father. I could see this in my dream, every detail, along with
the shocking outcome. With changes made
I wrote the story, and it was published.
Once in print, the story became reality.
A man did kill his son as I had dreamed, and if I had dreamed longer, I
would have seen him slaughter his wife and end his own misery.
I thought that surely this
was a horrible coincidence, and then my
nightmare visitor paid me another visit and revealed another dream.
This scenario played itself
out more times than I choose to remember. The demon enters my dream, and then
the story
begins a movie in my mind. The more I
use its stories, the greater becomes my writer’s block, until I have no stories
of my own to tell.
My nights grew restless,
filled with demonic dreams, dreams that would
make your blood curdle. I have no
release until the story is written. Once
on paper, my stories are readily published, and the cycle begins again. The
demons hiding in the shadows seek the
light of day in my dreams. I fear sleep
because I know the stories won’t stop.
It has been some time since
I published my first novel. From that publication on success came easily,
but I did not recognize the price – the horror I have unleashed upon the world
and became an addict to my ill-gotten fame and fortune. I must find a way of
release. My conscience can no longer endure the havoc I have done and my yet
do.
* * *
The open window beckons
me.
I take my first step toward
oblivion and freedom.
THE
END
