THE FIELD Revisited

. . .Back at the beginning of July, I posted a blog that included among other things, mention of the first novel I ever completed writing.  This is what I wrote:   "The first novel I ever finished writing was a horror novel.  I finished it sometime back in the very early seventies, when I was still a 20 something.  I wasn't successful in writing a horror novel,  but I was successful in writing a horrible novel.  I was really influenced by and envious of the early success of Stephen King, then, and publishers were releasing horror novels by the dozens.  My horrible novel was called "The Field."  It took place in Colorado.  That was a mistake.  I had driven through Colorado, once, and as I wrote, I didn't do any flora or fauna research or anything.  It was like Colorado was in Lakeport or something.  Secondly, the basic premise depended on the fact that there was a place (in Colorado and not too far from a major highway) where no human being had set foot in hundreds of years. Or perhaps, ever!  Because there were these altars of the dead, there.  Altars built by ghosts, if I remember correctly.  And they got annoyed when some people decided to build a house there.  I shudder trying to figure what I was thinking about.  The novel was chockful of eerie evening happenings, priests getting bitten by snakes, little kids getting sucked down into the earth, and a sort of virginal girl falling immediately into the arms of a handsome guy who happens to ride by on, (get this) his white horse.  I can't believe I am admitting this to anyone on the web (without spiders) who might chose to read it."

Several people wanted to read some of this opus, but I didn't think it any longer existed.  Then I found it in a box in the basement.  I remember more about my motivation or writing now, too.  I was trying to imitate one of my horror heroes, the long deceased writer Algernon Blackwood.  Did you ever hear of a better name for a horror writer than that?  The first truly scary story I ever read was "The Wendigo" by Blackwood.  I didn't get all of it, but it scared the crap out of me.  Still does when I think about it.  There's this part where the main character wakes up and the guy next to him in the tent is being slowly pulled out from under his blankets by some awful thing. . .  Well, anyway, Blackwood posited in that story that there were probably thousands of square miles of forest in northern Canada where no man had ever set foot.  And if no man has been there, who can say what might live there, kiddies?  So my take on it back in the early 70's was: why couldn't there be places like that closer to where people live?  Using that idea, I wrote THE FIELD.  Here's the first chapter, short and sweet, over-written just like Algernon Blackwood used to write, and designed to pull the reader into the tale.  See what you think.

The Field, Late May:

The field could not be seen from the road for it was hidden behind a drumlin topped with scattered pines.  Automobiles roared by only 100 yards away, but the field remained undisturbed, unwatched. 

Gently sloping down to the Cabot River, the field was 30 acres of rampant grass, briars, and Queen Anne’s Lace.  Spotted with daisies an sumac, it everpossessed a cool breeze blowing from the west down the river.

From atop its slope, one could see twenty miles or more to the foothills of the Panther Range and the forests of the State Park.  Rangers in the fire tower would sweep the field with their binoculars as they monitored their timber stand.  For years they were the only ones to look on it, save for the few who passed in boats on the river, but they never realized the field was anything special.

It was a comforting sort of field to look upon, well landscaped, free and clean, dressed with wildflowers.  The only things that seemed out of place were the scattered piles of stones.

Someone in the town of Cabot River had owned the field and the and forest that surrounded it for a long time.  But the owner possessed much land and had never inspected this field until the day he sold it.

The field’s closest human neighbors were in the town, which was 15 miles away. At night from the top of the slope, the lights of Cabor River could be seen.  But no one had ever looked from there.  No one had ever been in the field at night since Cabot River became a town.

It was in that part of the countryside that is beyond the advertising line.  As the road by the field went nowhere important in the tourist and hamburger world, the land was free of signs.

In the depths of the world’s great forests there are certainly places where no human foot has ever stepped.  Ther are also places closer to civilization.  Places that by nature’s kind chance have avoided the human sphere of control.  The field was one such place.  No human beings had ever been there.  Not even the men who had built the road had climbed the drumlin and sidled throught the firs to tramp the land.

But people were there now.  People with bulldozers and with trucks pouring cement into a wooden frame.  Men in jeans with saws and hammers were building a house on the field.  A road now wound over the drumlin and through the trees, and a truck had come and scattered gravel over it.

There was a great deal of noise in the field now, something long missing.  There had not been the scratch of grasshoppers or the thumping of rabbits or the stir of butterflies for more than 100 years.  Those things stayed away, not wanting to be part of the company of the field.  And there were no rats on the bank where the meadow touched the Cabot River.  The only sound that haunted the field was that of snakes bending their ways through the high grass, and that sound is close to silence.

The men were now roofing the new house, and they were being watched by a large rattlesnake who was sunning himself atop one of the piles of rocks.  These incongruous rock piles dotted the field and several had been knocked over during the course of construction.  But more than a hundred still stood.  Piles of rock, 4 or 5 feet high, shaped like crescents, the inside of the curves toward the river.  They would have made handy cover for a soldier to fight behind, but no battle had yet been fought in the field.  Children would have loved the rock piles for they would make good hide and seek spots.  Something could feel secure behind the rock piles.  Something could use them as a last refuge.