The Effects of Hauntings

 It was the last week of 2018 and I had 16 stories in the bag, four more than my goal... but I was not done yet.

I'd seen glimpses in the earliest understandings of these Tales of a small child in a nightgown. These earliest impressions were never more than this and I did my best to ignore her. That turned out to be somewhat hard to do as she kept appearing to me amongst the far edges of my increasing number of visitors. I could not get close enough to her thought to learn anything about her. I will say I was wary for I knew from the first Tale there was a significant Chinese population in town and I was so hoping that the name I ascribed to her was not so... mainly because I did not want to play into certain visuals made famous in horror films based primarily from Korea and Japan. I did not want to have such an obvious ethnic cliche', one which posed appropriation issues insofar as conceptual imagery... I go only there because I have not seen these films nor their Americanized versions though I have seen image clips of a jerky-moving girl in stained dress and ratted hair.

I learned later when I got a better glimpse at her that I could not tell what ethnicity she was for the "china" that inspired her name came from the white porcelain mask over her face. This intrigued me but it still did not answer who she was. That the mask was allowed me to break free from that image construct that I had been hoping so hard to avoid. This is the same reason that I don't have any characters running around in jumpsuits with hockey masks on. I still did not know who she was though, or what she was and why she was appearing. There was no explanation for her and that was not sitting well with me. She remained just this figure in the background who I wanted to ensure I kept track of so she didn't slip away and get lost in the rising hosts that would stop by to tell me their stories.

Unexpected things happen at unexpected times. For example, this little girl started showing up where she was least expected, making it onto the written page. The year before, as I was finishing the final story of 2017, "Homecoming", this little girl made an appearance and there is in existence a photograph of her taken by one Norbert Pike. She is there amidst that host gathering at the end, the only one present described in any detail and this is due to her appearance in the view-finder. Earlier in 2018 this little girl appeared as well in "The Fairies of Esmy" amongst that small gathering as well. She made herself known through her ever-presence in my thoughts out onto the page... twice... but I still had no idea who she was.

There are a couple of historical events which mark the progress and fall of Baird's Holler, ones which are established in the timeline well enough that their import reveals across these Tales. One of these is the plague that spread from November of 1875 through April of 1876, known to the inhabitants as the Black Throat. The other is the blizzard that struck the week before Christmas in 1877. These, like Christmas of 1871 and the final week of the town, are important events within the overarching narrative that defines these Tales. One other little bit of information that was swimming through my head this last week of 2018 was rather fresh, taken from "Tears in Green Satin" and about the two other women who arrived in Baird's Holler with Charlotte on that stage after their Madam passed in Prescott as the brothel was moving from Maryland to California.

I at this point in these stories did not have all the names of all 30 members of the Mortenson Party. This is kind of embarrassing to speak of, but there are an awful lot of them and no, diving into telling who each was was not an option ever in these Tales. I write them as they appear to me, or as I dig them out and discover them. It is best to follow leads, not force them. As of this writing, I now know who all the Sultans were, at least in name. At least five of them have never been mentioned in any stories... unless you call a shout-out to a local hill bearing a name unexplained in that story a mention or someone stating his great-great-grandfather had once worked in mine in that area (this was the last known... oddly enough, I'd known his descendant since my 2nd story). I do not know the nature of all that awaits them... a few of them are merely names mentioned and some only briefly touched upon. Take Charles Lahore... mentioned in passing in "I'll Always be With You, Boys" but without context to anything relating to his fate and then again, referenced in "The Obsession of Doctor Paulk" though without any name attached, just mention of his status. There are quite a few in this list I've never touched too tightly on.

This is what I had going when I sat down to write "She Leaves Tonight". These were the elements which were to go into this Tale... that and the final ingredient of still being royally pissed at that woman for calling and demanding personal information on my disabled child. Sarah, husband of the Sultan George Franz, became the third portrayal of this person, aside from Charlotte the harlot and the Patchwork Witch, in four stories out of the five written after completing my goal of 12 stories for the year. Being that three of these four stories (not this one but I've only sent it out once) are now in print, I'm going to say that this little response to the threat I got served quite well, cleared my pipes so to speak. A couple of rather intriguing characters were born, one with legacy potential, and serious development of the community and history took place.

"She Leaves Tonight" was completed within the last hour of 2018 as I sat typing furiously in those last hours of the year. My daughter was down visiting her mother at the time and, well, New Years Eve is best spent writing extremely horrifying and monumentally sad stories as opposed to becoming one wrapped around a tree or a light post. I have all sorts of stories of such wild New Years Eves, some where I don't even stay up to within two hours of giving a damn. This one was one of the wildest yet with the story coming to a close at 5,000 words (another one stopping to my amusement on that dime... er, nickle). Ah, my capacity to party is... limited. I'm pretty good at hanging people from banisters though.