by Neil Gaiman
“This is his real domain,” muttered Hunter. “Things lost. Things forgotten.”
There were windows, set in the stone wall. Through them, Richard could see the rattling darkness and the passing lights of the Underground tunnels. The Earl was sitting on the floor with his legs splayed, patting the wolfhound and scratching it underneath the chin. The jester stood beside him, looking embarrassed. The Earl clambered to his feet when he saw them. His forehead creased. “Ah. There you are. Now, there was a reason I asked you here, it’ll come to me . . .” He tugged at his red-gray beard, a tiny gesture from such a huge man.
“The Angel Islington, Your Grace,” said Door, politely.
“Oh yes. Your father had a lot of ideas, you know. Asked me about them. I don’t trust change. I sent him to Islington.” He stopped. Blinked his one eye. “Did I tell you this already?”
“Yes, Your Grace. And how can we get to Islington?”
He nodded as if she had said something profound. “Only once by the quick way. After that you have to go the long way down. Dangerous.”
Door said, patiently, “And the quick way is?”
“No, no. Need to be an opener to use it. Only good for Portico’s family.” He rested a huge hand on her shoulder. Then his hand slid up to her cheek. “Better off staying here with me. Keep an old man warm at night, eh?” He leered at her, and touched her tangle of hair with his old fingers. Hunter took a step toward Door. Door gestured with her hand: No. Not yet.
Door looked up at the Earl, and said, “Your Grace, I am Portico’s oldest daughter. How do I get to the Angel Islington?” Richard found himself amazed that Door was able to keep her temper in the face of the Earl’s obviously losing battle with temporal drift.
The Earl winked his single eye in a solemn blink: an old hawk, his head tipped on one side. Then he took his hand from her hair. “So you are. So you are. Portico’s daughter. How is your dear father? Keeping well, I hope. Fine man. Good man.”
“How do we get to the Angel Islington?” said Door, but there was a tremble in her voice.
“Hmm? Use the Angelus, of course.”
Richard found himself imagining the Earl sixty, eighty, five hundred years ago: a mighty warrior, a cunning strategist, a great lover of women, a fine friend, a terrifying foe. There was still the wreckage of that man in there somewhere. That was what made him so terrible, and so sad. The Earl fumbled on the shelves, moving pens and pipes and peashooters, little gargoyles and dead leaves. Then, like an aged cat stumbling on a mouse, he seized a small, rolled-up scroll, and handed it to the girl. “Here y’go, lassie,” said the Earl. “All in here. And I suppose we’d better drop you off where you need to go.”
“You’ll drop us off?” asked Richard. “In a train?”
The Earl looked around for the source of the sound, focused on Richard, and smiled enormously. “Oh, think nothing of it,” he boomed. “Anything for Portico’s daughter.” Door clutched the scroll tightly, triumphantly.
Richard could feel the train beginning to slow, and he, and Door, and Hunter were led out of the stone room, and back into the carriage. Richard peered out at the platform, as they slowed down.
“Excuse me. What station is this?” he asked. The train had stopped, facing one of the station signs: BRITISH MUSEUM, it said. Somehow, this was an oddity too many. He could accept the Mind the Gap Thing, and the Earl’s Court, and even the strange library. But damn it, like all Londoners, he knew his Tube map, and this was going too far. “There isn’t a British Museum station,” said Richard, firmly.
“There isn’t?” boomed the Earl. “Then, mm, then you must be very careful as you get off the train.” And he guffawed, delightedly, and tapped his jester on the shoulder. “Hear that, Tooley? I am as funny as you are.”
The jester smiled as bleak a smile as ever was seen. “My sides are splitting, my ribs are cracking, and my mirth is positively uncontainable, Your Grace,” he said.
The doors hissed open. Door smiled up at the Earl. “Thank you,” she said.
“Off, off,” said the vast old man, shooing Door and Richard and Hunter out of the warm, smoky carriage onto the empty platform. And then the doors closed, and the train moved away, and Richard found himself staring at a sign which, no matter how many times he blinked—nor even if he looked away from it and looked back suddenly to take it by surprise—still obstinately persisted in saying:
BRITISH MUSEUM
The Daughter of Owls
1996
From The Remaines of Gentilisme & Judaisme by John Aubrey, R.S.S. (1686–87), (pp 262–263)
I HAD THIS STORY from my friend Edmund Wyld Esq. who had it from Mr Farringdon, who said it was old in his time. In the Town of Dymton a newly-born girl was left one night on the steps of the Church, where the Sexton found her there the next morning, and she had hold of a curious thing, viz.:—ye pellet of an Owle, which when crumbled showed the usual composition of an Hoot-owles’s pellet, thus: skin and teeth and small bones.
The old wyves of the Town sayed as follows: that the girl was the daughter of Owls, and that she should be burnt to death, for she was not borne of woeman. Notwithstanding, wiser Heads and Greybeards prevayled, and the babe was taken to the Convent (for this was shortly after the Papish times, and the Convent had been left empty, for the Townefolke thought it was a place of Dyvills and such, and Hoot-owles and Screach-owles and many bats did make theyr homes in the tower) and there she was left, and one of the wyves of the Towne each day went to the Convent and fed the babe &c.
It was prognostickated that ye babe would dye, wch she did not doe: instead she grew year onn and about until she was a mayd of xiiii summers. She was the prittiest thing you ever did see, a fine young lass, who spent her dais and nights behind high stone walls with no-one never to see, but a Towne wyfe who came every morn. One market daie the good-wife talked too loudly of the girl’s prittyness, & also that she could not speak, for she had never learned the manner of it.
The men of Dymton, the grey-beards and the young men, spoke to-gether, saying: if wee were to visit her, who would know? (Meaning by visit, that they did intend to ravish her.)
It was putt about thus: that ye menfolk would go a-hunting all in a company, when the Moon would be fulle: wch it beeing, they crep’t one by one from theyr houses and mett outside the Convent, & the Reeve of Dymton unlocked the gate & one by one they went in. They found her hiding in the cellar, being startled by ye noyse.
The Maid was more pritty even than they had heard: her hair was red wch was uncommon, & she wore but a white shift, & when she saw them she was much afrayd for she had never seen no Men before, save only the woemen who brought her vittles: & she stared at them with huge eyes & she uttered small cries, as if she were imploring them nott to hurte her.
The Townefolk merely laughed for they meant mischiefe & were wicked cruel men: & they came at her in the moon’s light.
Then the girl began a-screaching & a-wayling, but that did not stay them from theyr purpos. & the grate window went dark & the light of the moon was blockt: & there was the sound of mighty wings; but the men did not see it as they were intent on theyr ravishment.
The folk of Dymton in theyr beds that night dreamed of hoots & screaches and howells: & of grate birds: & they dreamed that they were become littel mice & ratts.
On the morrow, when the sun was high, the goodwives of the Town went through Dymton a-hunting High & Low for theyr Husbands & theyr Sonnes; wch, coming to the Convent, they fownd, on the Cellar stones, ye pellets of owles: & in the pellets they discovered hair & buckles & coins, & small bones: & also a quantity of straw upon the floor.
And the men of Dymton was none of them seen agane. However, for some years therafter, some said they saw ye Maid in high Places, like the highest Oke trees & steeples &c; this being always in the dusk, and at night, & no-one could rightly sware, if it were her or no.
(She was a white figure:—but Mr E. Wyld could not remember him rightly whether folk said that she wore cl
oathes or was naked.)
The truth of it I know not, but it is a merrye tale & one wch I write down here.
The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories
1996
IT WAS RAINING when I arrived in L.A., and I felt myself surrounded by a hundred old movies.
There was a limo driver in a black uniform waiting for me at the airport, holding a white sheet of cardboard with my name misspelled neatly upon it.
“I’m taking you straight to your hotel, sir,” said the driver. He seemed vaguely disappointed that I didn’t have any real luggage for him to carry, just a battered overnight bag stuffed with T-shirts, underwear, and socks.
“Is it far?”
He shook his head. “Maybe twenty-five, thirty minutes. You ever been to L.A. before?”
“No.”
“Well, what I always say, L.A. is a thirty-minute town. Wherever you want to go, it’s thirty minutes away. No more.”
He hauled my bag into the boot of the car, which he called the trunk, and opened the door for me to climb into the back.
“So where you from?” he asked, as we headed out of the airport into the slick wet neon-spattered streets.
“England.”
“England, eh?”
“Yes. Have you ever been there?”
“Nosir. I’ve seen movies. You an actor?”
“I’m a writer.”
He lost interest. Occasionally he would swear at other drivers, under his breath.
He swerved suddenly, changing lanes. We passed a four-car pileup in the lane we had been in.
“You get a little rain in this city, all of a sudden everybody forgets how to drive,” he told me. I burrowed further into the cushions in the back. “You get rain in England, I hear.” It was a statement, not a question.
“A little.”
“More than a little. Rains every day in England.” He laughed. “And thick fog. Real thick, thick fog.”
“Not really.”
“Whaddaya mean, no?” he asked, puzzled, defensive. “I’ve seen movies.”
We sat in silence then, driving through the Hollywood rain; but after a while he said: “Ask them for the room Belushi died in.”
“Pardon?”
“Belushi. John Belushi. It was your hotel he died in. Drugs. You heard about that?”
“Oh. Yes.”
“They made a movie about his death. Some fat guy, didn’t look nothing like him. But nobody tells the real truth about his death. Y’see, he wasn’t alone. There were two other guys with him. Studios didn’t want any shit. But you’re a limo driver, you hear things.”
“Really?”
“Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. They were there with him. All of them going doo-doo on the happy dust.”
The hotel building was a white mock-gothic chateau. I said good-bye to the chauffeur and checked in; I did not ask about the room in which Belushi had died.
I walked out to my chalet through the rain, my overnight bag in my hand, clutching the set of keys that would, the desk clerk told me, get me through the various doors and gates. The air smelled of wet dust and, curiously enough, cough mixture. It was dusk, almost dark.
Water splashed everywhere. It ran in rills and rivulets across the courtyard. It ran into a small fishpond that jutted out from the side of a wall in the courtyard.
I walked up the stairs into a dank little room. It seemed a poor kind of a place for a star to die.
The bed seemed slightly damp, and the rain drummed a maddening beat on the air-conditioning system.
I watched a little television—the rerun wasteland: Cheers segued imperceptibly into Taxi, which flickered into black and white and became I Love Lucy—then stumbled into sleep.
I dreamed of drummers intermittently drumming, only thirty minutes away.
The phone woke me. “Hey-hey-hey-hey. You made it okay then?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Jacob at the studio. Are we still on for breakfast, hey-hey?”
“Breakfast . . . ? ”
“No problem. I’ll pick you up at your hotel in thirty minutes. Reservations are already made. No problems. You got my messages?”
“I . . .”
“Faxed ’em through last night. See you.”
The rain had stopped. The sunshine was warm and bright: proper Hollywood light. I walked up to the main building, walking on a carpet of crushed eucalyptus leaves—the cough medicine smell from the night before.
They handed me an envelope with a fax in it—my schedule for the next few days, with messages of encouragement and faxed handwritten doodles in the margin, saying things like “This is Gonna be a Blockbuster!” and “Is this Going to be a Great Movie or What!” The fax was signed by Jacob Klein, obviously the voice on the phone. I had never before had any dealings with a Jacob Klein.
A small red sports car drew up outside the hotel. The driver got out and waved at me. I walked over. He had a trim, pepper-and-salt beard, a smile that was almost bankable, and a gold chain around his neck. He showed me a copy of Sons of Man.
He was Jacob. We shook hands.
“Is David around? David Gambol?”
David Gambol was the man I’d spoken to earlier on the phone when arranging the trip. He wasn’t the producer. I wasn’t certain quite what he was. He described himself as “attached to the project.”
“David’s not with the studio anymore. I’m kind of running the project now, and I want you to know I’m really psyched. Hey-hey.”
“That’s good?”
We got in the car. “Where’s the meeting?” I asked.
He shook his head. “It’s not a meeting,” he said. “It’s a breakfast.” I looked puzzled. He took pity on me. “A kind of premeeting meeting,” he explained.
We drove from the hotel to a mall somewhere half an hour away while Jacob told me how much he enjoyed my book and how delighted he was that he’d become attached to the project. He said it was his idea to have me put up in the hotel—“Give you the kind of Hollywood experience you’d never get at the Four Seasons or Ma Maison, right?”—and asked me if I was staying in the chalet in which John Belushi had died. I told him I didn’t know, but that I rather doubted it.
“You know who he was with, when he died? They covered it up, the studios.”
“No. Who?”
“Meryl and Dustin.”
“This is Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman we’re talking about?”
“Sure.”
“How do you know this?”
“People talk. It’s Hollywood. You know?”
I nodded as if I did know, but I didn’t.
PEOPLE TALK ABOUT books that write themselves, and it’s a lie. Books don’t write themselves. It takes thought and research and backache and notes and more time and more work than you’d believe.
Except for Sons of Man, and that one pretty much wrote itself.
The irritating question they ask us—us being writers—is:
“Where do you get your ideas?”
And the answer is: Confluence. Things come together. The right ingredients and suddenly: Abracadabra!
It began with a documentary on Charles Manson I was watching more or less by accident (it was on a videotape a friend lent me after a couple of things I did want to watch): there was footage of Manson, back when he was first arrested, when people thought he was innocent and that it was the government picking on the hippies. And up on the screen was Manson—a charismatic, good-looking, messianic orator. Someone you’d crawl barefoot into Hell for. Someone you could kill for.
The trial started; and, a few weeks into it, the orator was gone, replaced by a shambling, apelike gibberer, with a cross carved into its forehead. Whatever the genius was was no longer there. It was gone. But it had been there.
The documentary continued: a hard-eyed ex-con who had been in prison with Manson, explaining, “Charlie Manson? Listen, Charlie was a joke. He was a nothing. We laughed at him. You know? He was a nothing!”
; And I nodded. There was a time before Manson was the charisma king, then. I thought of a benediction, something given, that was taken away.
I watched the rest of the documentary obsessively. Then, over a black-and-white still, the narrator said something. I rewound, and he said it again.
I had an idea. I had a book that wrote itself.
The thing the narrator had said was this: that the infant children Manson had fathered on the women of The Family were sent to a variety of children’s homes for adoption, with court-given surnames that were certainly not Manson.
And I thought of a dozen twenty-five-year-old Mansons. Thought of the charisma-thing descending on all of them at the same time. Twelve young Mansons, in their glory, gradually being pulled toward L.A. from all over the world. And a Manson daughter trying desperately to stop them from coming together and, as the back cover blurb told us, “realizing their terrifying destiny.”
I wrote Sons of Man at white heat: it was finished in a month, and I sent it to my agent, who was surprised by it (“Well, it’s not like your other stuff, dear,” she said helpfully), and she sold it after an auction—my first—for more money than I had thought possible. (My other books, three collections of elegant, allusive and elusive ghost stories, had scarcely paid for the computer on which they were written.)
