The Dreamer in Fire and Other Stories

by Gafford, Sam

  Later that night, Winslow made another note.

  I managed to convince the old librarian to allow me to take some of the old papers away with me to study. Actually, looking back on it, she didn’t give me much of a fight at all. She actually seemed completely uninterested in the whole matter! This worries me, as I wonder if there may have been more papers at some time that have wandered off or been ‘borrowed.’ Anyway, I brought them back to Daily’s hovel for further study this evening.

  I had planned on doing some writing but did not get very far. Daily has been most cooperative in that he has freely (I say freely instead of happily, as it does not seem that this man does anything happily!) given me plenty of space and time to work. I’ve set the machine on the battered old writing desk in his living room and sat staring at it for over two hours. I was unable to think of a single thing. What I did think of were bits and pieces that weren’t worth putting down on paper. Nothing coherent or complete. I am beginning to wonder if I will ever write again, or even if I should. Daily has been most interested in my work but not the ‘avid fan’ he appeared to be in his letters. His interest seems almost clinical in a way, focusing more on where my ideas come from and what their ‘hidden meaning’ is. I’ve told him that the most distinct hidden meaning in my work is money, but he doesn’t believe that. He has been a most charitable host, however, going out of the house for hours in the evening to give me the time to contemplate and work. (Contemplating work is more like it!) I’ve told him that there is no need and that all I require is to be left alone, but he insists on leaving the house. I’m beginning to wonder where he goes during those times. Where could he go? There is nothing in the town open or vaguely interesting, and it’s at least an hour’s drive to the next town. Perhaps he goes and worships trees while I torture and misuse their remains in these futile efforts. Maybe I should eye my pile of papers before they come alive and seek retribution for the many of their kin I’ve wasted.

  The next morning Winslow made several notes which are written in a hasty, scrawled hand. He appears to have been in great excitement over something he found in the library papers.

  No sleep at all last night! Have been going through the library papers all night and have made an incredible discovery! The majority of the papers are written in the same strange language as the incorporation papers and are virtually indecipherable. They appear to be some sort of business papers or contracts of some kind, but I have no idea what. The big thing is that mixed in with these pages are leaves from someone’s diary, possibly one of the founder’s or their families, and I would estimate that they were written in the early eighteenth century and are extremely brittle with age. But they are written in English! I have to check the library and see if they have any more of the papers or possibly the book itself. Will write more later!

  This entry was written (as near as I can tell, for it is undated) about the morning of February 6, 1946. There are no further entries for that day or the next. All that remains of the entry for 2/8/46 is the enigmatic line, “Have rented a room in the town’s only hotel and pray to be out of here by tomorrow.” There is no indication what has occurred in the past two days that has led to Winslow leaving Daily’s house and staying in town. The mention of ‘pray’ is especially disturbing given Winslow’s violently atheistic philosophy.

  The next memos in the collection are dated February 10 and February 13, 1946, and are annoyingly vague and noncommittal. “Have finally reached home after several sleepless nights. My room is a comfort to me, but I have had to stuff my ears with cotton. The town’s constant murmuring is too much for me.”

  Winslow never directly discusses Northport again in his notes and there are no further letters from Daily in the collection. There is, however, a brief comment that Winslow makes in an entry dated 4/20/46: “I’ve given it all to my uncle for safekeeping. I cannot bear to have the things near me, nor can I destroy them. I kid my uncle by saying that he should hold on to them for the future ‘Winslow Collection’ at some university. Unfortunately, he does not understand the joke or the hidden meaning” (my italics).

  Sometime later, it is not clear exactly when, Winslow would begin writing the rough draft of “The Dreamer in Fire.” Even though he was writing again, he appeared neither enthusiastic nor relieved about it. There has been speculation that this may have been because he despaired of ever selling the piece, but a sense of oppression and resignation runs through the entire story. Clearly, Winslow was purging himself of whatever happened to him in that lonely hillside farmhouse.

  For the next nine years, Winslow would never talk about where his inspiration for the story came from. This is interesting considering his overwhelming response to any praise. When he was having so much trouble with Weird Tales over its acceptance, Winslow lamented to Dexter Wilson: “Better that it never see print. Damn the impulse that made me write it or ever become a writer in the first place! I should have been a ditch digger instead. I only sent it to Weird Tales because it’s too bad for any other magazine and this way it will hopefully lie buried and forgotten. I never want to see it again” (The Winslow Letters, Vol. 3, p. 213).

  The coming years would see an increase in attention to Winslow’s writing and a mysterious decrease in his ambition. He no longer desired to write, and friends and editors were forced to drag stories out of him. While he would continue to produce fine stories (like “The Alabaster Dimension” and “The Lime Network”), he would never hit that same level of intensity that drives “The Dreamer in Fire.” I have written in length elsewhere of the enormous similarities that exist in Winslow’s later work, so much so that one could consider each story a variation of the same theme: loss of identity and self.

  When he died in 1955, a victim of a hideous car crash while driving in the outskirts of New York State, he was recognized as a growing master of the macabre. Yet, strangely, he never wrote about Northport again in any of his notes, memos, or many letters. In an effort to further understand the thinking behind this seminal Winslow story, I made a special trip to Northport.

  The Adirondack region of upstate New York is, in many ways, the same as when Winslow saw it in 1946. Although there are more residences built into this wooded region, there are still vast pockets that are quiet and unspoiled. As one travels along I-93, it is impossible to ignore the spectacle of the mountains rising above the horizon. They dwarf everything in sight and leave one feeling alone and insignificant. These mountains were here hundreds of years ago and will, hopefully, be here hundreds of years from now. Except for the small pockets of commerce, like Lake George and Lake Placid, one can travel on the roads for hours without meeting another car. Northport, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Lake George, remains much the same as when Winslow saw it almost fifty years ago. In its own way, it is as timeless as the mountains that surround it.

  The town is a short distance from I-93 now and is entered by Rural Route 33. The highway, of course, did not exist when Winslow visited the region in 1946, so it was likely that Daily followed Route 6 out of Lake George and connected with Route 33 where they intersect outside of the small township of North Hudson. The road is a long, twisting affair that wanders slowly past farms and towns but most often plunges through some of the thickest forestry in the Adirondack region. There are no streetlights in this area, and travelers are forced to use their high beams when driving on moonless nights.

  There are no road signs for Northport, and the people at the travel stations are hard pressed to find it on the local maps. But, unlike most Lovecraftian towns, if you look hard enough, you will find it printed in small letters between Mt. Marcy and Mt. Pharaoh. While there are many hiking trails marked along the way, there appears to be few people who hike in this section. I was told that it was due to the often steep inclines and poor drainage of the area.

  Traveling along Routes 6 and 33, I was struck by the feeling that this was exactly the way Winslow saw it in 1946. While there are no existing notes for his bus ride from Boston to Lake George
, his meeting Daily, or his traveling along this road, he cannot have helped being impressed by the sheer weight of the nature surrounding him. Perhaps this explains the passage in “The Dream in Fire” that runs: “I have begun to loathe the sight of the trees with their gigantic stature and lofty stares. They crowd around me like an army that cannot be bothered to take notice of an insignificant colony of ants . . .”

  There is no warning when entering Northport. Suddenly the sign “Now Entering Northport, Founded 1709” appears out of nowhere and you are there. The road circles around a few small farms and houses, mostly set back from the road and in varying states of care and decay. Some almost appear new with their bright red roofs and silos, while others are silent and forlorn. Crossing the bridge over the small river brings one directly into the town center.

  It is, in fact, a center in name only. The townsfolk do not cluster around the various buildings, and its solemn appearance looks more appropriate for a graveyard than a town square. Actually, Northport is somewhat unusual for even having a town center. Most towns this size in upstate New York survive without a town center at all, with post offices set in the basements of private homes and firehouses and schools appearing suddenly along the road.

  As I stood in the center of the commons and stared around, I could not escape the feeling that this town should have died years ago and was only pitifully holding onto a sort of cancerous life. The white church had long ago faded to a dull gray (what did this indicate of a flock that would allow its temple to wilt so?), the general store stocked everything one could possibly need assuming one’s needs were small and not picky, a town hall that was built to accommodate a town that never grew larger, and a hotel where there would be no customers. Who put this place here? In the middle of nowhere, what purpose could it serve? Or did any of that make a difference?

  The town commons of Northport is roughly the equivalent of a football field; and while it does not appear to be regularly tended, it is not overgrown or unkempt. The general store is the first building one passes when entering the center and is the only place of activity in the square. A few trucks were parked outside, and there was a haphazard display of farming supplies on the porch. Looking at the building, I would assume that it had been built somewhere in the late nineteenth century and barely touched since. Parking among the unwashed trucks, I went inside.

  The interior of the building mirrored its exterior: functional and simple. There were several men holding a discussion near the counter. I wish I could say that all activity ceased the second that I, the unwelcome intruder, entered the store, but it did not. I was completely ignored. The store was only half stocked, many of the shelves being empty and dusty. I grabbed a soda from the cooler (definitely a 1940s model and a collector’s dream) and a bag of chips. Stepping to the counter, I paid for my purchase and left. Not once did anyone speak to me, acknowledge my existence, or tell me a cautionary tale about the dangers in following the trails of dead men. Neither, I noticed, did anyone ever smile.

  The hotel is across the commons from the general store and I made my next stop there. The hotel, which is actually named The Addams Hotel just as in Winslow’s story, is a short two-story building that could have been built around colonial times. Entering the reception area, I saw a plaque stating that this is exactly so and that the hotel got its name from the fact that John Quincy Adams had once stayed there. Before that it was known as The Stanley Tavern, possibly indicating what one of the original town founders did for a living.

  Upon registering I asked the owner, a young woman named Elizabeth Bradshaw, if they kept records of their guests going back to 1946. I explained my research on Winslow to her, and she appeared quite interested and promised to check if they had kept their records for that long. She appears to be only around thirty or so, so obviously she was not the owner when Winslow stayed here in February 1946. She explained that the hotel was a family-run business, with the recent addition of a small restaurant on the side of the building, and that she inherited it when her mother, Mrs. Anne Bradshaw, died in 1980. Since then she had run the hotel by herself with a small staff of local girls who helped clean and cook.

  I noticed, while signing the hotel register, that not many people stayed at the hotel and no one else was staying there now. Miss Bradshaw explained that they occasionally got skiers or hikers or salesmen traveling through the region but that their business was usually very small. When questioned as to why she even kept the place open, she appeared very confused, as if such a thought had never occurred to her. “Because it’s supposed to be open,” she replied, and I left the matter at that.

  I was given Room 203, overlooking the town square.

  I had, of course, requested this particular room as it was the one that Winslow describes in his story, and I believed it to be the same room in which he had stayed himself so long ago. The hotel is tastefully but plainly decorated, and the room even more so. In fact, it follows Winslow’s descriptions exactly.

  There are no paintings on the wall or decorations of any kind. The only thing here is a bland wallpaper that begins to insult your eyes if you stare at it too long. The furniture is sparse and dangerous. I felt glad that I was not too heavy and likely to strain the limited resources of the thin guest chair. The bed is a small thing tucked into the corner almost as an afterthought. Clearly, little consideration has been given to taste or pleasure. It is a functional room and that is all. No excesses, no frills. Just a bed, a roof, four walls, and two windows. The windows look out upon the street from the second floor, but there is very little to see. Even after so long sitting here waiting, I have seen practically all that Sutter’s Corners has to offer me. It is not a particularly large offering.

  I set my things into the plain dresser and looked out of the window. The angle appeared to be the same, as Winslow describes. The general store across the commons, the town hall a little further down, and nothing else but trees. I hoped to be able to find some of the people who might have been around when Winslow visited, but was not sure of how much success I was likely to have. It had been over forty years, after all. I actually hoped to find Daily’s farmhouse, if it was still standing, and maybe even Daily himself. I believed that Winslow based the deserted farmhouse of his story, where the unspeakable revelation occurs, on Daily’s home but was unsure if Daily appeared as a character in the story himself.

  One of the first things I wanted to do was to visit the local library. I felt as if I did not need anyone to guide me or point it out. After reading the story and Winslow’s own notes, I felt that I knew the town well enough to practically pass for a native. I walked out of the hotel and started down the commons toward the town hall.

  There was no one on the street and I noticed, not for the first time, the strange sense of motion in the air. It felt as if someone or something were whispering or talking softly close by. I attributed it to the closeness of the hotel restaurant and filtering noises from the general store, and entered the town hall.

  The small, red brick building housed all the governmental offices of the town, such as they are. When I walked inside, I noticed that the general reception area was closed. I thought that this was unusual given that it was a weekday, but figured that reduced needs had forced the town officials to cut down on staff. Below me, I knew, would be both the jail and the library. Walking down the stairs, I noticed that there was no sound of conversation anywhere in the building. It was utterly silent.

  The library, luckily enough, was open, and I walked over to the reception area. An old librarian—not the Mrs. Bradley whom Winslow speaks of in his notes—came to the counter. I explained that I was an historian of sorts and was looking for local information. I was politely told that there was very little and that I should try the larger library over in Lake George. Briefly, I outlined the story as I had gleaned it from Winslow’s notes about his finding the papers tucked into a corner of the library.

  The librarian, a Mrs. Martin, was aghast. Never, she told me, had she ever he
ard of such a thing. She had apparently taken over from Mrs. Bradley in 1958, when the latter retired. At that time, she said, the library was a horrendous mess and nothing was in any kind of order. It took her months to put the library into shape, a feat she seemed sincerely proud of, and never during that time had she found any such papers. She hoped that, if they had existed, whoever found them (implying Winslow) had donated them to the Adirondack Historical Society instead of leaving them out to rot. After that was done, she escorted me on a grand tour of the library. I was able to discern, however, that Mrs. Bradley was still alive and living in the area. Consulting a regional phone book, I could find no listing for her. On an off chance, I asked Mrs. Martin if she knew where her predecessor was living.