An Unexpected Visit turned out to be quite the unexpected surprise. After penning my debut novel, Seeing (beginning it in the fall of 2010 and spending three years perfecting the manuscript), I was satisfied being just a novelist, following that YA coming-of-age with an adult thriller/mystery/paranormal romance described by author Sheila Banning (Terroir) as a "Gothic-scented tale of grief" in The Painted Lady. In the aftermath of Lady, I had a few ideas for the next novel, but some small, inner voice pleaded with me to try my hand at something different - a piece of shorter fiction; namely, a novella.
Truth be told, I adore novellas. I hadn't written many because, unfortunately, there are not too many avenues to getting novellas published (unless you go the self-pub route) - they're not seen as a marketable form of storytelling since they are longer than a short story but shorter than a novel. Knowing my publisher, Winter Goose, has put out a few novellas in the past (Sea of Trees by Robert James Russell, and Withering by Kellie Elmore), I wanted to try my hand at developing a story of novella length, which meant I didn't have to devise any subplots and could, instead, keep readers in the main event of the story.
The idea for An Unexpected Visit rose from a terrifying thought I had of a boy, helpless, cowering beneath the bed covers, frost covering the windows, listening to the endless howls of his father from a couple rooms down, obviously suffering some kind of night terror. It was just this boy and his father in the house, which was located out in the countryside, away from anyone else. Away from help, as a snowstorm started blowing through.
The original plan was for Visit to be published in October, however a few final tasks in getting the book ready have taken a smidge longer to complete and, thus, has pushed the release back into early November. Not a big deal at all. Still, I apologize to those waiting.
I hope this tiny excerpt of the story is enough to hold you over.
A N U N E X P E C T E D V I S I T
Excerpt
*
FRIDAY
When my father still lived at home he had an office to the left at the top of the stairs. I didn’t much go in there when he was around—if the door was closed it meant he didn’t want to be disturbed with whatever he was working on—and I went in there even less after he decided not to come home. One angry day Mom decided she wasn’t giving up space in her house to someone who didn’t want to be there. After boxing everything of his, the space became her sewing room.
More times than not I would catch her in there sulking. She’d be at the desk that was centered under the darkened light fixture in the ceiling, the pale orange illuminance from the tiny bulb on the sewing machine cast a shine that painted her shadow on the wall behind her, a worn out and holey pair of my school pants half fed through the machine, but her remaining still. Her hands were down at her sides, her foot away from the pedal under the desk.
I’ve never believed in ghosts. There just hasn’t been any concrete evidence to support their existence. I do, however, believe a house can be haunted by the presence of someone who used to live there. Memories burrow into walls and floors that can’t be covered up by a new carpet or a fresh coat of paint. My father very much haunted his office, much as I can assume some spirit of him also occupied their bedroom, and the bed they shared.
That morning, on my way down for breakfast, I stopped in front of that open door that once lead into his office. So many memories flooded in of the times I would pass by on mornings heading out for school, or coming up to bed at night, and seeing my father at his desk, either typing away on his computer, or talking on that special phone that was installed as a direct line just for him. He always made sure to give me a reassuring smile whenever he caught me peeking in on him.
That morning, I could almost picture him standing by the desk that used to be his. One hand on the phone, the cord wrapped around his body as he sat atop the desk, the other hand tossing me a wave.
It was my mother calling that snapped me out of the trance.
*
The plan was that I would be dropped off at his place around six. My father lived on the outskirts of the itsy bitsy town of Dalton, Pennsylvania. The trip would take us a little over an hour due to the increasing traffic near the NY/PA border. Dalton was the kind of place where the term “next door neighbors” meant having to drive at least a mile in either direction to the next house over. Dense woods and wide fields of long grass populated the hills and along the winding side roads, some of which consisted of loose dirt and stone. There was only one mainline drag that showcased the essentials: your basic stop-n-fuels, a few bars and sammich shops, and an Arby’s. Everything in Dalton branched off Main Street like veins from an artery.
The sky that late Friday afternoon was a burst of fiery reds and pinks as we followed 81 South in my mother’s forest green Jeep Wrangler. The sun sat a few degrees above the horizon and was shining bright through my window on the passenger side. I had to squint through the dirty smudges on the glass to see the stacks of smoke rising out of the brick chimneys of large farmhouses passing by in the blur from the highway. Aside from the occasional cough or sniffle, the majority of our ride down was encased in silence. I wasn’t happy about being twelve and having no say in my weekend plans, and I think my mother didn’t know how to make it any better so she didn’t even try. The first time she said anything was when we passed a sign proclaiming the exit for Dalton to be twenty miles out.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
It had come so abruptly I wasn’t sure she’d even spoken, not until I looked over at her and saw she was looking back, possibly to ascertain some sense of forgiveness from me. A ray of light from the setting sun hit me square in the eyes as I turned away and resumed staring out my window. “About what?” I asked, as if I didn’t have an inkling. My breath fogged a small section of the glass directly in front of my mouth.
She sighed. “When things . . . happened . . . with your father . . . I just . . . didn’t handle them right. I got so . . . angry. How could he do this to us, you know? How many times were we just supposed to be understanding of things? How many times had he been called away—sent somewhere he couldn’t tell us about, you know? How many times did he have to leave us in the blink of an eye and we didn’t even know if we’d ever see him again? That we had to plan our lives around him and what he did because we never knew when that goddamned phone of his would ring again.”
Hearing her rant the way she did, I wondered more as to why I wasn’t more pissed off about it all. My displeasure regarding having no say in the visit that weekend has been well documented already, but, in the grand scheme of it all, I just felt more slighted than anything else. You would think I should have been more upset towards the man who hadn’t made it a point over the last two years to arrange time for me, but I wasn’t. A two-year absence to someone so young is fragile; it feels like a lifetime. At the young age I was, I didn’t feel I really knew my father anymore, much less needed him.
“I never wanted you to feel like I was keeping you from him,” my mother explained. I looked back at her. She wiped at a tear under her right eye before it had a chance to take shape and slide down the mound of her cheek. “None of this has been fair to you, and I’m sorry for that.”
She composed herself. The ribbons of dusk in the changing sky—luminous and full of variety one moment—took on a monochromatic and sinister tone. The reds, oranges, and pinks had turned a cool shade of violet in the atmosphere, the landscape now black, erasing all those fields and houses in coarse shadow. The darkening of the skyward color was fitting, a sign of how I felt internally, like some astrological mood ring.
“He left both of us,” I said.
The next sign to pass on the right indicated we were fifteen miles outside of Dalton. It would be full on dark when we got there.
Once the apologetic conversation had been taken care of, my mother’s demeanor shifted. What came out of her mouth next was said without even the slightest hint of question as to whether or not she was deadly serious. She was being blunt for the sake of making sure I couldn’t possibly misinterpret. It did, however, make me wonder just what I was in for, and how it was she could leave me so far from home without her.
“I’ll be an hour away, Noah,” she said. “If, for God’s sake, anything happens, you don’t call me, all right?”
I kept a blank stare on her, trying to follow.
“It’ll take me too long to come get you. You call 911. Understand?”
I nodded to let her know I did. I wasn’t sure what it was she thought, or feared might happen, and I didn’t dare ask.
Having that knowledge now . . . I should have asked.
An Unexpected Visit
COPYRIGHT © 2016 by Joseph Falank
Excerpt appears courtesy of Winter Goose Publishing
