The Evolution of Company
A few years ago, when I was in college, in a room full of students preparing to be teachers, I explained to them my writing process and was shocked to learn how many of them seemed to think the story just popped out of my head, fully-formed. To me, writing is just as much about revising as penning the original draft. My initial idea is always vague and hazy, and it is only as I continue to write, draft by draft, that the story becomes sharp and clear.
With this in mind, I wanted to show you various drafts of Company, my novel of a ghost and an imaginary friend, from the first idea to a near final draft, so you can see how it changed as I revised. I’m going to focus on the first chapter. At the end of draft, I’ll give my “commentary,” letting you know how I see the chapter now, how I felt about writing it, and how I approached revision. I hope this may be of interest to fans of Company or other writers who may be struggling with the process of revision themselves.
With this in mind, I wanted to show you various drafts of Company, my novel of a ghost and an imaginary friend, from the first idea to a near final draft, so you can see how it changed as I revised. I’m going to focus on the first chapter. At the end of draft, I’ll give my “commentary,” letting you know how I see the chapter now, how I felt about writing it, and how I approached revision. I hope this may be of interest to fans of Company or other writers who may be struggling with the process of revision themselves.
The Raw Idea
“Discarded Imaginary Friend (Company)”
September 6, 2012
September 6, 2012
I had the kernel of an idea last week after the writer’s club meeting about an imaginary friend being discarded by their owner. My first instinct was to turn the imaginary friend into a psycho killer and stalk its creator. In order to fit the Halloween theme, you see. But here’s a new thought.
What if the discarded imaginary friend meets a ghost? What if it’s a gentle love story? What if the imaginary friend was once a girl’s creation? Then she was brought back to help the girl cope with the death of her family. But now, after an intense amount of psycho-therapy, the girl decides she doesn’t need the imaginary friend anymore.
So this is the story of the imaginary friend.
The girl wanted a sister, but she was told she wasn’t going to have one. So she made one up and the imaginary friend was her sister. Then her parents died and she resurrected the imaginary friend. The girl went to live with her aunt, who was neglectful. Or maybe she was in the military? The girl was a teenager at the time. And so, the imaginary friend (for some reason, I want to call her Jenny) helped her cope with it all, and eventually the girl went to counseling and was asked to let go of her imaginary friend. So she does.
Anyway, the ghost sees the “letting go” ceremony. He thinks at first she’s a ghost, but finds something strange about it, so he goes and talks to her.
I guess the imaginary friend’s been through this dismissal/ waiting before. She’s never completely gone, but always comes back when she’s called. But the waiting is the hardest, the ceasing to be. It’s like eternal starvation. She needs a soul to sustain her.
“A soul,” says the ghost. “Not a body.”
She startles. “You’re-you’re a ghost.”
He nods. “I died 25 years ago. Serial killer. I’m still waiting.”
“For what?”
“For somebody to find my body.”
He sits next to her.
“Shall we wait together?”
“I could use the company.”
What if the discarded imaginary friend meets a ghost? What if it’s a gentle love story? What if the imaginary friend was once a girl’s creation? Then she was brought back to help the girl cope with the death of her family. But now, after an intense amount of psycho-therapy, the girl decides she doesn’t need the imaginary friend anymore.
So this is the story of the imaginary friend.
The girl wanted a sister, but she was told she wasn’t going to have one. So she made one up and the imaginary friend was her sister. Then her parents died and she resurrected the imaginary friend. The girl went to live with her aunt, who was neglectful. Or maybe she was in the military? The girl was a teenager at the time. And so, the imaginary friend (for some reason, I want to call her Jenny) helped her cope with it all, and eventually the girl went to counseling and was asked to let go of her imaginary friend. So she does.
Anyway, the ghost sees the “letting go” ceremony. He thinks at first she’s a ghost, but finds something strange about it, so he goes and talks to her.
I guess the imaginary friend’s been through this dismissal/ waiting before. She’s never completely gone, but always comes back when she’s called. But the waiting is the hardest, the ceasing to be. It’s like eternal starvation. She needs a soul to sustain her.
“A soul,” says the ghost. “Not a body.”
She startles. “You’re-you’re a ghost.”
He nods. “I died 25 years ago. Serial killer. I’m still waiting.”
“For what?”
“For somebody to find my body.”
He sits next to her.
“Shall we wait together?”
“I could use the company.”
Commentary
What strikes me, looking back on the original idea, is that the first character I started to develop was Jenny, the imaginary friend. I had barely finished asking “What if,” when I began to imagine Jenny’s background. From there, I came up with the opening scene: the ritual where Charlotte “lets go” of Jenny, which Curtis happens to see. At that point, I hadn’t given Curtis a name and the details of his death that I jotted down turned out to be wrong. But their brief dialogue did capture the spirit of their friendship.
I wrote the idea in 2012, and 2012 was the year I began to keep an idea journal. At that point in my life, I was convinced I was not very creative, so I tried to actively cultivate ideas. (As it turned out, this particular journal got filled up by January 2013, and also contained the concepts for Three Floating Coffins and “The Necklace of DuChelle.”) I had recently joined The Brea Library Writer’s Club, and they were having short story contests every month. Since Halloween was coming up, it put me in mind of ghosts. I put the idea of a ghost with an imaginary friend, and suddenly I had an idea.
Initially, I thought that my “ghost and imaginary friend” idea might make for a good short story for my writer’s group contest. But as I began to think about how an imaginary friend came to life, how a ghost happened to be murdered on the same property she lived in, and what the two would actually do once they met, it seemed like a stronger concept than I thought. I didn’t want to write a short story. I wanted to write a novel.
Draft 1
Chapter 1
November 1, 2013
November 1, 2013
The car must have pulled up while I was lying in the grass, staring at the sky and trying to will the clouds into letters with my psychic powers. So far said powers were proving remarkably ineffective. Presumably because I had no psyche to speak of. I was wallowing in boredom, killing time until sunset when I might find the energy to get up and do something. Maybe check to see if the owl chicks were still alive.
I didn't notice the hum of the car engine, but I did hear the car door slam. That's when I sat bolt upright. Visitors. The next sound confirmed it.
"It looks older than I remember. Shabbier. But I guess things change."
A girl's voice. I was wide awake now.
In the front yard, a blue Corolla was parked against the curb. A large woman in a teal suit lifted the trunk. She wore little spectacles and huge loop earrings. I didn't know what to make of her. She didn't look like a real estate agent.
"I think it's a beautiful house," the woman said. "Full of happy memories."
Her voice was low and raspy. Not the girl's voice I'd heard before.
"I wish I could go inside."
The girl's voice came from the porch. She was pressed up against the window, peering gingerly through the dust. She wore jeans and a loose orange shirt, and her hair was an artificial-looking shade of bright-dyed red. I couldn't picture an older, respectable adult with that color hair, so I guessed she was either a teenager or in her early twenties.
About the age I'd been back before, you know, my untimely death.
I was trying to think of how to approach her--a tap on the shoulder or a full on attempted possession--when she turned around.
Gray eyes.
I don't know why, but it threw me. Gray eyes meant something, I just couldn't remember what. It was frustrating. But my guess about her age was right. She looked old enough to be one of my classmates. When I was alive. Which was how many years ago? The ensuing years had all gone fuzzy on me.
While I was still calculating, the girl stepped through me.
"I should have brought the key," she told the woman. "It was right there on the table. I kept thinking myself, ‘Take it, Charlotte, just put it in your pocket. You know you'll want to go inside as soon as you get there. Take the key.' But then, like the idiot I am, I left it behind."
"Now, now. Remember what I said about self-compassion."
"Sorry, Dr. Lerner."
"Do you want to take the box? I'll get the table out."
Young Charlotte took a shoe box filled with frames and things from the teal-suited Dr. Lerner who in turn pulled out a cheap card table. It was old too, all stained and frayed. While the doctor set up the table, I passed my hand through her head and willed my thoughts into her.
I am Curtis, the ghost that haunts the property. Look at me. Feel my presence.
"Do you have the table cloth, Charlotte?"
"It's in the car."
"Close the trunk. I don't want any bugs crawling in."
I sighed. No psychic powers whatsoever.
Charlotte brought out a cheap sheet of folded plastic. I floated over her shoulder, yelling and pushing and trying in vain to get her attention. She ignored me and smoothed out the tablecloth. Then rummaged through the shoebox and arranged a doll and a couple of picture frames. By now I was getting curious as to what they were doing.
"Do you want the candles on the shrine?" Dr. Lerner said.
"Just the tea lights. The prayer candles can go on the porch."
What in the world was going on? Why were they building a shrine? Had someone died? For a moment, it crossed my mind that this Dr. Lerner might be a psychic. But she didn't seem kooky enough for that... not to mention I'd been screaming for the last five minutes to the acknowledgement of no one.
So I looked to the shrine itself for answers. The frames didn't hold photographs, as I'd assumed, but rather hand-drawn pictures. The first was a crayon scribble on faded yellow paper. It was vaguely person-like, with a purple dress and brown hair. The second picture was a sketch of some anime-ish girl on a lined piece of notebook paper. She had on a checked dress, which looked like what I'd imagined an old-timey farm girl would look wear. Odd. The rag doll had on a similar violet checkered dress, with two purple buttons for eyes and brown yarn braids. I was sensing a theme.
"Who are you?" a new voice said.
I jumped.
A second girl blinked at me with large purple eyes. And I don't mean the kind of dark blue people poetically call violet--I mean bright, grape Jell-O purple. It was actually really creepy.
"What are you doing here?" the girl continued.
"You can see me?"
It was a rather stupid question. Her unnatural purple eyes had fixed on me, so of course, she could see me. But to be honest, I'd long since given up hope that anyone would notice me. Getting such unflinching attention was a shock. I wasn't sure what to do with it.
The girl backed up, uncertainly. "Did she bring you here? She felt guilty for leaving me alone. Are you supposed to keep me company?"
"What?" I said.
"I don't recognize you. Who are you supposed to be?"
"Um... Curtis?"
She shook her head. "Look, I'm not really in the mood for this. I just want to say goodbye to my sister. Do you think you could come back later?"
"Um... okay," I said.
I began to drift into the wind, as I called it, slowly letting my form disappear. But the girl had piqued my curiosity, and I wanted to know what was going on. So instead of going away, I floated up to a branch of a sycamore tree and hid among the leaves. Either the purple-eyed girl didn't notice me up there or she ignored me.
While all this was going on, Charlotte and Dr. Lerner had finished lighting the candles--at least some of which were lavender scented, because of course. Then Charlotte fished out a sheet of paper out of her jean pocket.
"I have a few words, I'd like to say if you don't mind," Charlotte said.
"Go ahead," Dr. Lerner said.
"I feel a little silly."
"This is a safe space. No one will judge you. Feel free to express your emotions however you feel comfortable."
I was starting to catch on that this Dr. Lerner was a shrink and that I was witnessing some sort of grieving ritual. Or something.
Charlotte turned to the purple-eyed girl and took a deep breath.
"Jenny," she said. "You were with me through it all, through every bad time, when I was lonely, when I wanted to kill myself. Without you, I wouldn't be where I am now. So I want to thank you for that. For giving me the strength to move on. For being the sister I never had..."
Her voice cracked. Jenny's purple eyes were misty with tears.
"But," Charlotte resumed, "we both know this relationship isn't healthy. And it's time I move on. I have to live my life without you. So I'm sending you back home. Goodbye, Jenny."
"Goodbye, Charlotte," Jenny said. "But if you ever need--"
Dr. Lerner interrupted. "That was beautiful." She scooped Charlotte into a hug.
Jenny just stood there and shut her mouth. She looked down. Her brown hair braids drooped on either side of her ears.
"I think she'll stay there," Charlotte said. "I think I'll be strong enough without her."
"I'm so proud of you," Dr. Lerner said.
Charlotte glanced at the shrine--but not at Jenny--one last time and got into the car. Dr. Lerner took the time to blow out the candles and even dump her water bottle on them. Then she took to the driver's seat of her Corolla. The door shut. The car backed up and drove back onto the road, leaving behind a cheap card table shrine and a teenage girl curled up on the porch, her shoulders shaking.
I didn't notice the hum of the car engine, but I did hear the car door slam. That's when I sat bolt upright. Visitors. The next sound confirmed it.
"It looks older than I remember. Shabbier. But I guess things change."
A girl's voice. I was wide awake now.
In the front yard, a blue Corolla was parked against the curb. A large woman in a teal suit lifted the trunk. She wore little spectacles and huge loop earrings. I didn't know what to make of her. She didn't look like a real estate agent.
"I think it's a beautiful house," the woman said. "Full of happy memories."
Her voice was low and raspy. Not the girl's voice I'd heard before.
"I wish I could go inside."
The girl's voice came from the porch. She was pressed up against the window, peering gingerly through the dust. She wore jeans and a loose orange shirt, and her hair was an artificial-looking shade of bright-dyed red. I couldn't picture an older, respectable adult with that color hair, so I guessed she was either a teenager or in her early twenties.
About the age I'd been back before, you know, my untimely death.
I was trying to think of how to approach her--a tap on the shoulder or a full on attempted possession--when she turned around.
Gray eyes.
I don't know why, but it threw me. Gray eyes meant something, I just couldn't remember what. It was frustrating. But my guess about her age was right. She looked old enough to be one of my classmates. When I was alive. Which was how many years ago? The ensuing years had all gone fuzzy on me.
While I was still calculating, the girl stepped through me.
"I should have brought the key," she told the woman. "It was right there on the table. I kept thinking myself, ‘Take it, Charlotte, just put it in your pocket. You know you'll want to go inside as soon as you get there. Take the key.' But then, like the idiot I am, I left it behind."
"Now, now. Remember what I said about self-compassion."
"Sorry, Dr. Lerner."
"Do you want to take the box? I'll get the table out."
Young Charlotte took a shoe box filled with frames and things from the teal-suited Dr. Lerner who in turn pulled out a cheap card table. It was old too, all stained and frayed. While the doctor set up the table, I passed my hand through her head and willed my thoughts into her.
I am Curtis, the ghost that haunts the property. Look at me. Feel my presence.
"Do you have the table cloth, Charlotte?"
"It's in the car."
"Close the trunk. I don't want any bugs crawling in."
I sighed. No psychic powers whatsoever.
Charlotte brought out a cheap sheet of folded plastic. I floated over her shoulder, yelling and pushing and trying in vain to get her attention. She ignored me and smoothed out the tablecloth. Then rummaged through the shoebox and arranged a doll and a couple of picture frames. By now I was getting curious as to what they were doing.
"Do you want the candles on the shrine?" Dr. Lerner said.
"Just the tea lights. The prayer candles can go on the porch."
What in the world was going on? Why were they building a shrine? Had someone died? For a moment, it crossed my mind that this Dr. Lerner might be a psychic. But she didn't seem kooky enough for that... not to mention I'd been screaming for the last five minutes to the acknowledgement of no one.
So I looked to the shrine itself for answers. The frames didn't hold photographs, as I'd assumed, but rather hand-drawn pictures. The first was a crayon scribble on faded yellow paper. It was vaguely person-like, with a purple dress and brown hair. The second picture was a sketch of some anime-ish girl on a lined piece of notebook paper. She had on a checked dress, which looked like what I'd imagined an old-timey farm girl would look wear. Odd. The rag doll had on a similar violet checkered dress, with two purple buttons for eyes and brown yarn braids. I was sensing a theme.
"Who are you?" a new voice said.
I jumped.
A second girl blinked at me with large purple eyes. And I don't mean the kind of dark blue people poetically call violet--I mean bright, grape Jell-O purple. It was actually really creepy.
"What are you doing here?" the girl continued.
"You can see me?"
It was a rather stupid question. Her unnatural purple eyes had fixed on me, so of course, she could see me. But to be honest, I'd long since given up hope that anyone would notice me. Getting such unflinching attention was a shock. I wasn't sure what to do with it.
The girl backed up, uncertainly. "Did she bring you here? She felt guilty for leaving me alone. Are you supposed to keep me company?"
"What?" I said.
"I don't recognize you. Who are you supposed to be?"
"Um... Curtis?"
She shook her head. "Look, I'm not really in the mood for this. I just want to say goodbye to my sister. Do you think you could come back later?"
"Um... okay," I said.
I began to drift into the wind, as I called it, slowly letting my form disappear. But the girl had piqued my curiosity, and I wanted to know what was going on. So instead of going away, I floated up to a branch of a sycamore tree and hid among the leaves. Either the purple-eyed girl didn't notice me up there or she ignored me.
While all this was going on, Charlotte and Dr. Lerner had finished lighting the candles--at least some of which were lavender scented, because of course. Then Charlotte fished out a sheet of paper out of her jean pocket.
"I have a few words, I'd like to say if you don't mind," Charlotte said.
"Go ahead," Dr. Lerner said.
"I feel a little silly."
"This is a safe space. No one will judge you. Feel free to express your emotions however you feel comfortable."
I was starting to catch on that this Dr. Lerner was a shrink and that I was witnessing some sort of grieving ritual. Or something.
Charlotte turned to the purple-eyed girl and took a deep breath.
"Jenny," she said. "You were with me through it all, through every bad time, when I was lonely, when I wanted to kill myself. Without you, I wouldn't be where I am now. So I want to thank you for that. For giving me the strength to move on. For being the sister I never had..."
Her voice cracked. Jenny's purple eyes were misty with tears.
"But," Charlotte resumed, "we both know this relationship isn't healthy. And it's time I move on. I have to live my life without you. So I'm sending you back home. Goodbye, Jenny."
"Goodbye, Charlotte," Jenny said. "But if you ever need--"
Dr. Lerner interrupted. "That was beautiful." She scooped Charlotte into a hug.
Jenny just stood there and shut her mouth. She looked down. Her brown hair braids drooped on either side of her ears.
"I think she'll stay there," Charlotte said. "I think I'll be strong enough without her."
"I'm so proud of you," Dr. Lerner said.
Charlotte glanced at the shrine--but not at Jenny--one last time and got into the car. Dr. Lerner took the time to blow out the candles and even dump her water bottle on them. Then she took to the driver's seat of her Corolla. The door shut. The car backed up and drove back onto the road, leaving behind a cheap card table shrine and a teenage girl curled up on the porch, her shoulders shaking.
Commentary
As I sit and re-read this now, I will say that I still enjoy the bare-bones nature of my first draft. It gets right down to the plot, and I have to say, I like that Curtis has a bit of an attitude. However, it’s also clear that I wrote this draft with no idea of the setting. Not only is there no description of the house, I can barely tell where Curtis is in relation to the other characters. I also had yet to figure out a lot of world-building details, such as whether or not ghosts could go through human bodies.
This whole chapter was written on the first day of Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) in 2013. It probably took me no more than an hour and a half. I already had the idea in my head, so at that point, it was just a matter of getting it down on paper. For whatever reason, I chose to write in first-person from the ghost’s point of view, a decision that stuck.
I can’t remember why I chose to write Company for Nanowrimo, aside from the fact that it was sparse. The goal of Nanowrimo is to complete a novel of about 50,000 words in a month. I tend to hit the 50,000 words without coming anywhere close to a complete novel. But I figured that with two characters and one setting, how could I not finish? If anything, I thought I would struggle to come up with plot.
Weirdly, though, once I got started, I found it was easy to keep going. I had some notes and my brain filled in the rest. The ending I wrote in my first draft is, plot-wise, pretty close to the ending in its final form. Company is still, to this day, the only novel I started and finished in the space of one month, and I’m proud of that.
Draft 2
Chapter 1: “Visitors”
September 2016
September 2016
They arrived while I was sprawled over the dirt in the woods, wallowing in boredom. I’d been staring at the summer sky for hours, willing the clouds to form a message. So far, my psychic powers proved ineffective. Probably because I had no psyche to speak of. Blocks of clouds had transformed into wisps of pulled cotton, but not a hint of a letter materialized. Time for something new.
I was about to go check on the owl chicks, when I heard a car door slam.
Caretaker’s early, I thought.
The caretaker was a man in his fifties with squinty eyes and a puckered mouth. He came up the dirt road twice a year to make sure the mansion’s floorboards weren’t rotted and the roof hadn’t collapsed. Each time, I shouted my metaphorical head off and leaped through his body. He didn’t notice; he had the supernatural awareness of a can of beans.
Still I needed my bi-yearly dose of human contact. Kept me healthy. I floated upright.
A second car door shut.
“What a charming house.”
A woman’s voice.
If I’d had a heart, it would have banged against my chest. No one ever came here. Was someone finally buying the old place? More importantly, would they be susceptible to my admittedly lame attempts at haunting?
I zoomed to the front of the house. Two cars were parked in the driveway--a red pick-up truck and blue Buick--each powdered with a fresh coat of dirt.
A large woman in a teal pants suit stood next to the blue car, hands on her hips, admiring the house. She wore little spectacles and huge loop earrings. She looked vaguely professional, but not like a real estate agent, which had been my first guess.
A girl leaned tentatively against the dusty truck, arms crossed, looking thoroughly uncomfortable. She looked about my age--or the age I’d been when I died--late teens, maybe early twenties. She had choppy hair dyed a color I could only describe as siren red. Because it reminded me of a flashing police siren. She wore jean shorts and a blowzy orange top and had dangling bottle caps for earrings.
Is trash in style now? I wondered.
Who cares, I replied. Go talk to them!
I crouched behind a one-needle pine, gathering my voice. Which is not as easy as in human form. In human form, all you need to do is fill your lungs with air. As a ghost, I had to collect my energy, my will, and my confidence, roll it into a ball and let it explode. I hadn’t practiced in a while. It meant having emotion. I had sort of gone numb from boredom, so right now the best I could muster was tepid curiosity.
“How does it feel to see your old home?” the woman asked. She had a raspy voice that oozed compassion, and I guessed she was a shrink.
“It’s different,” the girl said quietly. “It looks older than I remember. It seems sad.”
Sad? It’s downright cheerful for a haunted house.
Okay, so maybe weeds had cropped up between the cobblestone path and maybe the flowers in the window boxes had died long ago and maybe the dirt and cobwebs gave it a dull look. Even so, it was a beautiful house. A rich person’s house.
The front of the house had seen better days. Weeds had grown in between the cobblestone cracks, the window boxes had no flowers, and the wood planks needed a good wash. The house had a dark gray shingle A-frame roof. Above the door was a stained glass mural, which had seen better days, and there was a huge porch that wrapped around the whole house. There were stone pillars.
Come to think of it, maybe that was why I had so much trouble getting through. The house didn’t project the right atmosphere.
The only thing that seemed remotely frightening about the house was name. “Welcome to Thornfield Manor,” declared a sign hanging from an adorable wooden fox sitting on a polished tree stump near the mail box. “Home of the Landrys” declared its twin, who guarded the bird house. I’d never gotten the name. Thornfield? The woods were chock full of pines, oaks, juniper, sagebrush, and wildflowers--but not thorns. I figured it must be a joke. Rich people humor.
“Mr. _____ did a good job with repairs.”
“He did.” the girl said.
So that’s the caretaker’s name, I thought. Only took me seven years.
I decided that this was the time for me to make my entrance. I charged through a pine tree like a bull, waving my hands, and booming out in my loudest voice:
“I AM CURTIS, THE GHOST WHO HAUNTS THORNFIELD MANOR.”
The woman in blue looked at the girl. “Can you tell me what you’re feeling?”
I raised my voice. “I AM THE GHOST WHO--”
“I feel okay,” the girl said. “Better than I thought.”
“HEAR MY VOICE AND--”
“It still hurts, though. When I think about what happened, how I lost them.” She put her chin to her chest and looked down.
“THIS HOUSE IS MY HAUNT AND I DEMAND--”
The woman’s arm passed through me as she put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “It’s good to acknowledge your feelings. Returning to your childhood home is bound to be painful. It takes courage to face the past.”
My spirit slumped. I just didn’t have any luck, did I? I could already feel my energy sap from the discouragement, deflating like air from a balloon. My emotions were going downhill fast. Still, I gathered what I could to try again.
“I AM CURTIS, THE GHOST--”
“Would you please keep it down?”
There was another girl. She was in the cabin of the red pick-up truck, peering out the window. I wondered how I missed her. The truck was in the shade.
She was sort of similar to the first girl, but perhaps younger. It was really hard to tell her age, because of her clothes. She was wearing a short-sleeved dress, checkered purple, that seemed old-fashioned. Really old, fashioned. Like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, old fashioned. She also had two brown braids in the front, which was doing nothing to help comparisons. But then, I had to go and look at her eyes and that was when things got creepy.
Her eyes were purple.
You know how sometimes people call dark blue eyes violet. It’s poetic and all that. Well, her eyes weren’t violet. They were a vivid shade of grape Jell-o purple and they looked so completely unnatural on this otherwise wholesome farm girl, it sort of gave me the creeps.
“You can see me?” I asked stupidly. Of course she could see me, her unnatural purple eyes were fixed to me.
The girl looked me over. “What do you want, Curtis the ghost?”
“I, uh...”
What did I want? To be honest, I’d been so focused on getting someone, anyone to notice me, it never occurred to me what to ask for once I got their attention.
“To cross over,” I ventured.
“Is that all?”
I wracked my brains to think of something else, something to distinguish myself from a stereotypical ghost, but I came up with nothing. Not one thing.
“Yes?” I admitted.
She sighed. “Charlotte did this, didn’t she?”
“Charlotte?” The name sounded vaguely familiar. I glanced at the girl with red-light-special hair. Did I know her?
“She put you here to keep me company,” the purple girl said.
Her words made no sense. I double-checked, before responding with an articulate, “What?”
The girl shook her head. “I’m really not in the mood for this.”
“I died--” I began.
“I’m sure you did,” she cut me off. “We can discuss it later. For now, I just want to have this moment with my sister while I still can.”
She hopped out of the truck.
She didn’t open the door; she jumped through the paneling. Then she began walking for the house as if nothing had happened. As she stepped out of the shade, sunlight streamed through her transparent body, dust mites dancing through her like glitter in a snow globe.
I was about to go check on the owl chicks, when I heard a car door slam.
Caretaker’s early, I thought.
The caretaker was a man in his fifties with squinty eyes and a puckered mouth. He came up the dirt road twice a year to make sure the mansion’s floorboards weren’t rotted and the roof hadn’t collapsed. Each time, I shouted my metaphorical head off and leaped through his body. He didn’t notice; he had the supernatural awareness of a can of beans.
Still I needed my bi-yearly dose of human contact. Kept me healthy. I floated upright.
A second car door shut.
“What a charming house.”
A woman’s voice.
If I’d had a heart, it would have banged against my chest. No one ever came here. Was someone finally buying the old place? More importantly, would they be susceptible to my admittedly lame attempts at haunting?
I zoomed to the front of the house. Two cars were parked in the driveway--a red pick-up truck and blue Buick--each powdered with a fresh coat of dirt.
A large woman in a teal pants suit stood next to the blue car, hands on her hips, admiring the house. She wore little spectacles and huge loop earrings. She looked vaguely professional, but not like a real estate agent, which had been my first guess.
A girl leaned tentatively against the dusty truck, arms crossed, looking thoroughly uncomfortable. She looked about my age--or the age I’d been when I died--late teens, maybe early twenties. She had choppy hair dyed a color I could only describe as siren red. Because it reminded me of a flashing police siren. She wore jean shorts and a blowzy orange top and had dangling bottle caps for earrings.
Is trash in style now? I wondered.
Who cares, I replied. Go talk to them!
I crouched behind a one-needle pine, gathering my voice. Which is not as easy as in human form. In human form, all you need to do is fill your lungs with air. As a ghost, I had to collect my energy, my will, and my confidence, roll it into a ball and let it explode. I hadn’t practiced in a while. It meant having emotion. I had sort of gone numb from boredom, so right now the best I could muster was tepid curiosity.
“How does it feel to see your old home?” the woman asked. She had a raspy voice that oozed compassion, and I guessed she was a shrink.
“It’s different,” the girl said quietly. “It looks older than I remember. It seems sad.”
Sad? It’s downright cheerful for a haunted house.
Okay, so maybe weeds had cropped up between the cobblestone path and maybe the flowers in the window boxes had died long ago and maybe the dirt and cobwebs gave it a dull look. Even so, it was a beautiful house. A rich person’s house.
The front of the house had seen better days. Weeds had grown in between the cobblestone cracks, the window boxes had no flowers, and the wood planks needed a good wash. The house had a dark gray shingle A-frame roof. Above the door was a stained glass mural, which had seen better days, and there was a huge porch that wrapped around the whole house. There were stone pillars.
Come to think of it, maybe that was why I had so much trouble getting through. The house didn’t project the right atmosphere.
The only thing that seemed remotely frightening about the house was name. “Welcome to Thornfield Manor,” declared a sign hanging from an adorable wooden fox sitting on a polished tree stump near the mail box. “Home of the Landrys” declared its twin, who guarded the bird house. I’d never gotten the name. Thornfield? The woods were chock full of pines, oaks, juniper, sagebrush, and wildflowers--but not thorns. I figured it must be a joke. Rich people humor.
“Mr. _____ did a good job with repairs.”
“He did.” the girl said.
So that’s the caretaker’s name, I thought. Only took me seven years.
I decided that this was the time for me to make my entrance. I charged through a pine tree like a bull, waving my hands, and booming out in my loudest voice:
“I AM CURTIS, THE GHOST WHO HAUNTS THORNFIELD MANOR.”
The woman in blue looked at the girl. “Can you tell me what you’re feeling?”
I raised my voice. “I AM THE GHOST WHO--”
“I feel okay,” the girl said. “Better than I thought.”
“HEAR MY VOICE AND--”
“It still hurts, though. When I think about what happened, how I lost them.” She put her chin to her chest and looked down.
“THIS HOUSE IS MY HAUNT AND I DEMAND--”
The woman’s arm passed through me as she put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “It’s good to acknowledge your feelings. Returning to your childhood home is bound to be painful. It takes courage to face the past.”
My spirit slumped. I just didn’t have any luck, did I? I could already feel my energy sap from the discouragement, deflating like air from a balloon. My emotions were going downhill fast. Still, I gathered what I could to try again.
“I AM CURTIS, THE GHOST--”
“Would you please keep it down?”
There was another girl. She was in the cabin of the red pick-up truck, peering out the window. I wondered how I missed her. The truck was in the shade.
She was sort of similar to the first girl, but perhaps younger. It was really hard to tell her age, because of her clothes. She was wearing a short-sleeved dress, checkered purple, that seemed old-fashioned. Really old, fashioned. Like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, old fashioned. She also had two brown braids in the front, which was doing nothing to help comparisons. But then, I had to go and look at her eyes and that was when things got creepy.
Her eyes were purple.
You know how sometimes people call dark blue eyes violet. It’s poetic and all that. Well, her eyes weren’t violet. They were a vivid shade of grape Jell-o purple and they looked so completely unnatural on this otherwise wholesome farm girl, it sort of gave me the creeps.
“You can see me?” I asked stupidly. Of course she could see me, her unnatural purple eyes were fixed to me.
The girl looked me over. “What do you want, Curtis the ghost?”
“I, uh...”
What did I want? To be honest, I’d been so focused on getting someone, anyone to notice me, it never occurred to me what to ask for once I got their attention.
“To cross over,” I ventured.
“Is that all?”
I wracked my brains to think of something else, something to distinguish myself from a stereotypical ghost, but I came up with nothing. Not one thing.
“Yes?” I admitted.
She sighed. “Charlotte did this, didn’t she?”
“Charlotte?” The name sounded vaguely familiar. I glanced at the girl with red-light-special hair. Did I know her?
“She put you here to keep me company,” the purple girl said.
Her words made no sense. I double-checked, before responding with an articulate, “What?”
The girl shook her head. “I’m really not in the mood for this.”
“I died--” I began.
“I’m sure you did,” she cut me off. “We can discuss it later. For now, I just want to have this moment with my sister while I still can.”
She hopped out of the truck.
She didn’t open the door; she jumped through the paneling. Then she began walking for the house as if nothing had happened. As she stepped out of the shade, sunlight streamed through her transparent body, dust mites dancing through her like glitter in a snow globe.
Commentary
When I read this chapter now, I feel profoundly neutral about it, which is an improvement, because, for the longest time I hated it. Draft 2 feels very much like an expanded version of Draft 1. You can see Charlotte's house in this version, and the description is stronger. Because of the expansion, I decided to move the ritual portion to the next chapter. This version is probably easier for an audience to read, but there’s no poetry or emotion. For me, it just falls flat.
Which is why I hated it so much. I must have spent a miserable ten hours on this chapter, trying so hard to visualize every detail and get the prose to read smoothly. But it was so boring, and it felt so forced. That negative experience cast a pallor over the novel. I didn’t want to write it or even look at it. I felt stuck. I powered through two more chapters, then I stuck it into a computer file folder and didn’t touch it for years.
It was very frustrating. In theory, I knew how to revise, yet I could not seem to revise Company. I had a vision, vague though it was, of how the story ought to be. But I couldn’t seem to get there. I knew that the problem had to do with Curtis’s voice. In the first draft, I felt he had a unique perspective, but it wasn’t coming across in the second draft. All my attempts at tone were over-wrought. I knew how to add description--but how do you add voice?
draft 3
Chapter 1: "The Girl with Gray Eyes"
Summer 2018
Summer 2018
I finally decide to spend the afternoon looking at clouds. Lame, I know, but there’s nothing else to do. The heat of the day sends the birds back inside their pine trees, and the lizards sit on rocks expanding their necks. Even the mosquitos barely twinkle on the surface of the pond. But the sky’s an electric blue, and the clouds are puffy, wispy, and white, like cotton balls pulled apart. So I climb onto the balcony and lie flat on my back on the dusty wooden planks.
In a manner of speaking.
I suppose, technically, it’s more accurate to say that I astral-project my spirit to float parallel to the boards and lift my psychically-reconstructed face toward the sky--but whatever. It’s all semantics, and when you’re talking to yourself, who cares?
Clouds are pretty.
Finding shapes in them passes the time, and if I’m lucky, I’ll be rewarded with a long-submerged memory. Like when I saw an elephant in the clouds and recalled a battle scene with hordes of barbarians riding atop those tusked, armored beasts. It was from a movie, but I don’t remember which one, even though I probably saw it a hundred times. That’s the problem with being dead. You forget.
I wish I could remember my family.
Maybe one day I’ll see their faces in the clouds.
Not these clouds, though. These particular clouds don’t want to form into neat little shapes. They want to expand over the sky, getting longer and wispier, and the only memory they summon is that of a kindergarten craft project, and me squirting glue onto cotton balls and smooshing them down onto the outline of a sheep.
Clouds and sheep. Original.
Do I even know what a sheep looks like? An actual sheep, not a cartoon one you see on T.V.? I can’t recall. Maybe I never saw a sheep—not in real life. Then again, how many animals can you say you’ve really seen? Half our images come from books or movies or computer screens, but we’ve never looked them in the eye for ourselves, not even in zoos.
I wonder…
The sound of thunder interrupts my thoughts, right as I’m on the verge of something profound. Only, come to think of it, it’s not thunder. The noise is low and rumbling, but also grating and harsh. Plus, I’m staring at the sky, and there’s not a hint of precipitation, let alone a storm. No, it’s not thunder, and it’s not coming from the sky. The noise is coming from the front of the house.
Oh.
I know what it is.
It’s a car coming up the gravel road.
I spring to my feet. So to speak. Technically, I astral-project my spirit into an upright--who gives a damn! There’s a car on the road! People are coming!
People never come here.
Except the caretaker.
But only in the fall. Only when the bird-pecked apples drop from their branches, and the smell of smoke lingers thickly in the night sky. It’s not fall. Not even close. The apples are little green bulbs just beginning to swell under the leaves. The caretaker’s either early or--
It’s someone new.
I float through the house.
Two vehicles kick up dirt clouds on the road. The first one is a pick-up, not the weird olive green color of the caretaker’s truck, but red. If I had a heart, it would be pumping. The lack of internal organs aside, I do feel vague anxiety. New people mean a chance of changing the mess I’m in. I just need to get their attention. Problem is, I don’t know how to do that, and if I ever had a plan, it’s long since spilled out of my head. I stand on the front porch and wait.
The truck pulls up to the driveway. The door opens, and a girl steps out.
She has red hair that’s clearly not her natural color. It reminds me of an ambulance siren, especially when a sunbeam hits it and the sheen nearly blinds me. She’s wearing ripped shorts and a dark gray hoodie she has zipped up to her neck. She slams the car door, walks around to the front of the car, and stands against the bumper, arms crossed. She seems young. About the age I was when I died.
As she waits for the second car to park, I float in front of her face and unabashedly stare at her. She is white and fair-skinned--no tan--and she’s not done up with make-up except some eyeliner. She’s got freckles spattered like constellations on her cheeks and nose and forehead. I want to get a better look at her eyes, but she’s staring at the ground, and all I really see are her lashes. They’re brown. So are her eyebrows. I don’t know why, but she seems sort of familiar.
All at once, she looks up, straight at me, or through me, I suppose is more accurate, and that’s when I see her eyes.
They’re gray.
A natural gray, I’m pretty sure, because I don’t see that small, almost invisible circle in the whites that indicates contacts. But these eyes--I think, no, I know I’ve seen them before.
The little girl with the red gloves.
This is her?
No. Can’t be.
Damn. She grew up.
Even the shape of the eyes seem familiar, too, the way they tilt down at the edges, making them look rounder, giving her a doe-eyed look. It gives me a bad feeling, but I don’t know why…
The slam of a car door causes the girl’s head to turn and suddenly I’m staring in her ear. She’s wearing an earring made of bottle caps. Is that a thing now? Not that I understood girl’s fashion when I was alive.
“What a beautiful house!”
A woman steps out of the second car, a blue Buick.
She’s tall and big and looks nothing like the girl. She has hot pink lipstick smeared on her lips, stringy blond hair done up in a headband, and droopy eyes. She strikes no memories within me whatsoever. The woman wears a teal pants suit that looks out of place and hot, but she has sneakers instead of heels, so she climbs the driveway quickly, as she inspects the house.
“So this is where you used to live, Charlotte?”
Charlotte. That’s her name.
Charlotte has gone back to staring at the ground. Her face is blank. The woman walks toward her but gets distracted by the carved wooden statue of a fox in front of the porch steps. She reads the sign in its paws.
“Thornfield Manor. Home of the Landry’s.”
Yeah, I never got that.
I guess you could call the house a manor, though I think it looks more like a cottage from the front. It’s mostly unpainted wood, except for the cobblestone pillars that hold the gray roof over the wrap around porch. High above the door is a half circle of stained glass. You can tell it’s a rich person’s house. Right now, the flower boxes on the windows are empty and pigeons have nested in the beams, but all in all, it’s pretty cheerful for a haunted house.
It’s the “thorn” part of the name that always puzzled me. The surrounding land is filled pine trees, oak trees, juniper trees, trees I can’t name, manzanita bushes, and prickly weeds, but nothing I’d call especially thorny--not even rosebushes.
This woman, however, blinks once and smiles. “Jane Eyre. How literary.”
I still don’t get it. But then, I couldn’t name a book with a gun to my head. Not that a gun to my head would act as motivation. In fact, I’d probably be more fascinated by--
Focus!
I’m supposed to be getting their attention.
The woman has moved away from the sign and gone up to Charlotte. “Returning to your childhood home is bound to be painful. It takes courage to face the past.” She smiles in a way that oozes compassion. “Tell me what you’re feeling.”
Well, that tears it. This woman’s a shrink.
Not that I’m that familiar with therapists. I don’t think I am. Who knows? But she seems like the kind of touchy-feely person who might be susceptible to the psychic energies of ghosts.
I think as hard as I can. I picture wavy beams radiating off my head.
I am Curtis, the ghost of Thornfield Manor. See me!
“I feel a little sad,” Charlotte said. “Numb, mostly.” She glances briefly at the house. “It still looks the way I remember it.”
I am Curtis, the ghost of--
“Anything you want to talk about?” the woman asks.
Charlotte shakes her head. “I just want to get this over with.”
Oh, shit. They aren’t staying. I think louder.
I AM CURTIS--
“I know it’s a lot to process. Sometimes nostalgia creates a shrine of permanence around our memories. We cling to an idealized past because it gives us a feeling of security.” She puts a hand on Charlotte’s shoulder. “Shattering the illusion may cause pain, but ultimately it frees us to embrace the present.”
What the hell does that mean?
No, really, what does it mean? I sort of want to know.
There’s no time to dissect her words. I’m supposed to transmit psychic energies, but I keep getting distracted. Maybe the problem is that I’m thinking the words, instead of feeling them. I need to summon emotions from the depths of my soul--years of frustration, confusion, and boredom--, put them into a ball of energy, and shoot it at the people standing before me.
I AM CURTIS--
“I don’t care about the past,” Charlotte gestures angrily, her arm slicing through my chest. “My parents are dead. Yeah, it hurts, and I’m still angry at how they were taken from me. But I’ve made peace with it. I know they’re not coming back. My life will never be the same. It will never be what… what it might have been…” She swallows. “But that’s not why we’re here.”
Why are they here?
Ghosts are supposed to be vessels of raw, unbridled emotions, but right now, all I’m feeling is raw, unbridled curiosity. I have so many questions. Questions like, who were Charlotte’s parents and how did they die and why did Charlotte decide to bring a shrink of all people to her old house? Not to mention what happened to Charlotte since she went from a kid to… whatever age she is now.
Focus! I AM CURTIS--
The shrink withdraws her hand from Charlotte’s shoulder. “You have some things you want to bring out?”
“In the back.” Charlotte motions her head toward the truck.
“Do you need a hand?”
“Maybe moving the display case.”
They make their way to the back of the truck, which is covered by a tarp, and while I desperately want to see what’s in it, I need to clear my head. Who knows when I’ll see another visitor? I cannot sacrifice years of my… not-life… for a few minutes of curiosity. They are going to see me. They are going to know my name.
I charge at them like a bull, screaming.
“I AM CURTIS, I AM CURTIS, I AM--”
“Curtis. Yeah, I got that.”
I lurch to a halt. A second girl sits inside the truck.
She peers at me from the other side of the dusty passenger window, which she makes no attempt to roll down. She’s very similar to Charlotte, except that she has two brown pigtails on either side of her face.
She said my name.
What do I do?
“I am--I’m--You see me?” I blurt out, which is dumb, because clearly she does. She is staring right at me--not through me, at me--and her gaze is a little intense. Her eyes seem to be an odd color but that may be the reflection off the tinted window. She’s not smiling. Her mouth is hard.
“Why are you here?” she says.
“I live here,” I reply. “Died here. I sort of exist here.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She’s still giving me that hard stare. Frankly, I don’t know what answer she expects, but my brain must have kicked in, because I suddenly words are spilling from my mouth:
“I’m trapped here. I can’t cross over, I can’t leave. I’ve been waiting for someone to notice me and now that you’re here, I--”
“Stop.”
Her voice is commanding, but also weary. She brings a hand to her forehead, squeezing her eyes. I shut up. I think I’ve caused her pain somehow.
“I can’t.” She shakes her head, eyes still shut. “I’m sorry, but these are my last few minutes with Charlotte. I’m sure she has good intentions, but this is not how I want to spend the day. Just go away. Please.”
I don’t know what to say.
Go away? I wish I could.
“I am--” I start to say.
She hops out of the truck.
She doesn’t open the door; she jumps through the steel panel. And now that she’s in the sun, I can see light stream through her body. The dust particles dance in her skin like glitter in a snow globe.
She’s a ghost, too.
Great.
In a manner of speaking.
I suppose, technically, it’s more accurate to say that I astral-project my spirit to float parallel to the boards and lift my psychically-reconstructed face toward the sky--but whatever. It’s all semantics, and when you’re talking to yourself, who cares?
Clouds are pretty.
Finding shapes in them passes the time, and if I’m lucky, I’ll be rewarded with a long-submerged memory. Like when I saw an elephant in the clouds and recalled a battle scene with hordes of barbarians riding atop those tusked, armored beasts. It was from a movie, but I don’t remember which one, even though I probably saw it a hundred times. That’s the problem with being dead. You forget.
I wish I could remember my family.
Maybe one day I’ll see their faces in the clouds.
Not these clouds, though. These particular clouds don’t want to form into neat little shapes. They want to expand over the sky, getting longer and wispier, and the only memory they summon is that of a kindergarten craft project, and me squirting glue onto cotton balls and smooshing them down onto the outline of a sheep.
Clouds and sheep. Original.
Do I even know what a sheep looks like? An actual sheep, not a cartoon one you see on T.V.? I can’t recall. Maybe I never saw a sheep—not in real life. Then again, how many animals can you say you’ve really seen? Half our images come from books or movies or computer screens, but we’ve never looked them in the eye for ourselves, not even in zoos.
I wonder…
The sound of thunder interrupts my thoughts, right as I’m on the verge of something profound. Only, come to think of it, it’s not thunder. The noise is low and rumbling, but also grating and harsh. Plus, I’m staring at the sky, and there’s not a hint of precipitation, let alone a storm. No, it’s not thunder, and it’s not coming from the sky. The noise is coming from the front of the house.
Oh.
I know what it is.
It’s a car coming up the gravel road.
I spring to my feet. So to speak. Technically, I astral-project my spirit into an upright--who gives a damn! There’s a car on the road! People are coming!
People never come here.
Except the caretaker.
But only in the fall. Only when the bird-pecked apples drop from their branches, and the smell of smoke lingers thickly in the night sky. It’s not fall. Not even close. The apples are little green bulbs just beginning to swell under the leaves. The caretaker’s either early or--
It’s someone new.
I float through the house.
Two vehicles kick up dirt clouds on the road. The first one is a pick-up, not the weird olive green color of the caretaker’s truck, but red. If I had a heart, it would be pumping. The lack of internal organs aside, I do feel vague anxiety. New people mean a chance of changing the mess I’m in. I just need to get their attention. Problem is, I don’t know how to do that, and if I ever had a plan, it’s long since spilled out of my head. I stand on the front porch and wait.
The truck pulls up to the driveway. The door opens, and a girl steps out.
She has red hair that’s clearly not her natural color. It reminds me of an ambulance siren, especially when a sunbeam hits it and the sheen nearly blinds me. She’s wearing ripped shorts and a dark gray hoodie she has zipped up to her neck. She slams the car door, walks around to the front of the car, and stands against the bumper, arms crossed. She seems young. About the age I was when I died.
As she waits for the second car to park, I float in front of her face and unabashedly stare at her. She is white and fair-skinned--no tan--and she’s not done up with make-up except some eyeliner. She’s got freckles spattered like constellations on her cheeks and nose and forehead. I want to get a better look at her eyes, but she’s staring at the ground, and all I really see are her lashes. They’re brown. So are her eyebrows. I don’t know why, but she seems sort of familiar.
All at once, she looks up, straight at me, or through me, I suppose is more accurate, and that’s when I see her eyes.
They’re gray.
A natural gray, I’m pretty sure, because I don’t see that small, almost invisible circle in the whites that indicates contacts. But these eyes--I think, no, I know I’ve seen them before.
The little girl with the red gloves.
This is her?
No. Can’t be.
Damn. She grew up.
Even the shape of the eyes seem familiar, too, the way they tilt down at the edges, making them look rounder, giving her a doe-eyed look. It gives me a bad feeling, but I don’t know why…
The slam of a car door causes the girl’s head to turn and suddenly I’m staring in her ear. She’s wearing an earring made of bottle caps. Is that a thing now? Not that I understood girl’s fashion when I was alive.
“What a beautiful house!”
A woman steps out of the second car, a blue Buick.
She’s tall and big and looks nothing like the girl. She has hot pink lipstick smeared on her lips, stringy blond hair done up in a headband, and droopy eyes. She strikes no memories within me whatsoever. The woman wears a teal pants suit that looks out of place and hot, but she has sneakers instead of heels, so she climbs the driveway quickly, as she inspects the house.
“So this is where you used to live, Charlotte?”
Charlotte. That’s her name.
Charlotte has gone back to staring at the ground. Her face is blank. The woman walks toward her but gets distracted by the carved wooden statue of a fox in front of the porch steps. She reads the sign in its paws.
“Thornfield Manor. Home of the Landry’s.”
Yeah, I never got that.
I guess you could call the house a manor, though I think it looks more like a cottage from the front. It’s mostly unpainted wood, except for the cobblestone pillars that hold the gray roof over the wrap around porch. High above the door is a half circle of stained glass. You can tell it’s a rich person’s house. Right now, the flower boxes on the windows are empty and pigeons have nested in the beams, but all in all, it’s pretty cheerful for a haunted house.
It’s the “thorn” part of the name that always puzzled me. The surrounding land is filled pine trees, oak trees, juniper trees, trees I can’t name, manzanita bushes, and prickly weeds, but nothing I’d call especially thorny--not even rosebushes.
This woman, however, blinks once and smiles. “Jane Eyre. How literary.”
I still don’t get it. But then, I couldn’t name a book with a gun to my head. Not that a gun to my head would act as motivation. In fact, I’d probably be more fascinated by--
Focus!
I’m supposed to be getting their attention.
The woman has moved away from the sign and gone up to Charlotte. “Returning to your childhood home is bound to be painful. It takes courage to face the past.” She smiles in a way that oozes compassion. “Tell me what you’re feeling.”
Well, that tears it. This woman’s a shrink.
Not that I’m that familiar with therapists. I don’t think I am. Who knows? But she seems like the kind of touchy-feely person who might be susceptible to the psychic energies of ghosts.
I think as hard as I can. I picture wavy beams radiating off my head.
I am Curtis, the ghost of Thornfield Manor. See me!
“I feel a little sad,” Charlotte said. “Numb, mostly.” She glances briefly at the house. “It still looks the way I remember it.”
I am Curtis, the ghost of--
“Anything you want to talk about?” the woman asks.
Charlotte shakes her head. “I just want to get this over with.”
Oh, shit. They aren’t staying. I think louder.
I AM CURTIS--
“I know it’s a lot to process. Sometimes nostalgia creates a shrine of permanence around our memories. We cling to an idealized past because it gives us a feeling of security.” She puts a hand on Charlotte’s shoulder. “Shattering the illusion may cause pain, but ultimately it frees us to embrace the present.”
What the hell does that mean?
No, really, what does it mean? I sort of want to know.
There’s no time to dissect her words. I’m supposed to transmit psychic energies, but I keep getting distracted. Maybe the problem is that I’m thinking the words, instead of feeling them. I need to summon emotions from the depths of my soul--years of frustration, confusion, and boredom--, put them into a ball of energy, and shoot it at the people standing before me.
I AM CURTIS--
“I don’t care about the past,” Charlotte gestures angrily, her arm slicing through my chest. “My parents are dead. Yeah, it hurts, and I’m still angry at how they were taken from me. But I’ve made peace with it. I know they’re not coming back. My life will never be the same. It will never be what… what it might have been…” She swallows. “But that’s not why we’re here.”
Why are they here?
Ghosts are supposed to be vessels of raw, unbridled emotions, but right now, all I’m feeling is raw, unbridled curiosity. I have so many questions. Questions like, who were Charlotte’s parents and how did they die and why did Charlotte decide to bring a shrink of all people to her old house? Not to mention what happened to Charlotte since she went from a kid to… whatever age she is now.
Focus! I AM CURTIS--
The shrink withdraws her hand from Charlotte’s shoulder. “You have some things you want to bring out?”
“In the back.” Charlotte motions her head toward the truck.
“Do you need a hand?”
“Maybe moving the display case.”
They make their way to the back of the truck, which is covered by a tarp, and while I desperately want to see what’s in it, I need to clear my head. Who knows when I’ll see another visitor? I cannot sacrifice years of my… not-life… for a few minutes of curiosity. They are going to see me. They are going to know my name.
I charge at them like a bull, screaming.
“I AM CURTIS, I AM CURTIS, I AM--”
“Curtis. Yeah, I got that.”
I lurch to a halt. A second girl sits inside the truck.
She peers at me from the other side of the dusty passenger window, which she makes no attempt to roll down. She’s very similar to Charlotte, except that she has two brown pigtails on either side of her face.
She said my name.
What do I do?
“I am--I’m--You see me?” I blurt out, which is dumb, because clearly she does. She is staring right at me--not through me, at me--and her gaze is a little intense. Her eyes seem to be an odd color but that may be the reflection off the tinted window. She’s not smiling. Her mouth is hard.
“Why are you here?” she says.
“I live here,” I reply. “Died here. I sort of exist here.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She’s still giving me that hard stare. Frankly, I don’t know what answer she expects, but my brain must have kicked in, because I suddenly words are spilling from my mouth:
“I’m trapped here. I can’t cross over, I can’t leave. I’ve been waiting for someone to notice me and now that you’re here, I--”
“Stop.”
Her voice is commanding, but also weary. She brings a hand to her forehead, squeezing her eyes. I shut up. I think I’ve caused her pain somehow.
“I can’t.” She shakes her head, eyes still shut. “I’m sorry, but these are my last few minutes with Charlotte. I’m sure she has good intentions, but this is not how I want to spend the day. Just go away. Please.”
I don’t know what to say.
Go away? I wish I could.
“I am--” I start to say.
She hops out of the truck.
She doesn’t open the door; she jumps through the steel panel. And now that she’s in the sun, I can see light stream through her body. The dust particles dance in her skin like glitter in a snow globe.
She’s a ghost, too.
Great.
Commentary
Looking at this now, the description is stronger than in Draft 3 than in Draft 2, which is ironic, since all I did in Draft 2 was focus on description. But the main thing that strikes me is how I emphasized Curtis in this draft. In the previous versions, Curtis barely had a paragraph to himself before Charlotte arrived and the plot kicked into gear. This time, however, he has nearly a page to wallow in boredom. This is risky, because who wants to start a story on a note of boredom? But I think the extra time helps the audience create a connection to Curtis and understand how momentous Jenny’s arrival is. This is also the first draft where Curtis’s memory loss is made clear from the beginning.
I began work on Draft 3 in 2018, a.k.a., the year my life fell apart. The disruption caused me to look at Company with new eyes; suddenly it seemed like an important story to tell. However, I still didn’t know how to tell it, until I decided to make one very subtle change that forced me to restructure the entire novel.
I wrote in present tense.
I’d never written a novel in present tense. On the surface, it seems easy: you turn “did” into “do,” “was” into “is.” But present tense forces a writer to be in the moment all the time, and that, in turned, forced me to focus on Curtis’s thoughts and emotions rather than on the descriptions or the events. It was a challenge to write, but that challenge inspired me and gave the story the momentum it needed.
If you look at the final version of this chapter, it’s actually pretty similar to Draft 3--all I did was take out a few sentences and rearrange words to make it a little more elegant and efficient.