The Story of Summerland

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. From this vantage point, she saw him typing away inside the veranda. He was working late, again. ‘This ghostwriter ... would not get an ounce of sleep,’ she thought.

****

It was finally beginning to cool down inside the veranda of the mayor’s house. Christopher sat inside, at the back of the country house surrounded by an orchard, and he could hear (but not see) the crickets around him through the protective screen that kept the bugs out. A single light bulb that originated near the back door shone over the work on the computer. He could hardly see anywhere beyond the mesh screen, for it was quite late. A row of flower pots dangled from a cable that ran along the adjacent side of the screen; but he could barely see these now, too. Seldom had he witnessed such a depth of darkness; and certainly not within the parameters of the inner city.

He was, indeed, in the country; but it was here where he had accomplished most of his work, in the quiet of the night, and over the long summer days. It was here, too, where he had often thought over the years that he’d probably have been better off if he hadn't started — but rather, pursued some other vocation.

The leaves from the trees in the orchard would rustle behind him, and occasionally a ripe apple would fall to the ground with a ‘thump’, as it was the season for picking. It was like the Garden of Eden beyond the veranda; complete with crickets, deer mice, and even garden snakes too. And the house sat in the middle of this orchard, within a valley of vineyards, and enclosed by a fortress of mountains — about a stone’s throw from Giant's Head — where one could reach the lake down a windy road that wrapped around a mountainside. And just like a pocket in a billiard table, this road would eventually pass through the mountain range and down to a park named in the late mayor's honour.

'Tomorrow, he would drive down to the beach after a full day’s work,' he thought. For it was, thankfully, forecasted to be a warm August-long weekend. But tonight — tonight he would be busy typing away, late into the night. There was not much time left. He knew he needed to get some semblance of rest before he got up for work. But this — this matter of rest — was but a small obstacle at present; for he hoped to write a story that would break mountains and build roads between them. He had been inspired to plant a nation's pillars, right here, in this orchard. He had envisioned Hercules, himself, taking notice of his impossible pursuit; and, having fulfilled the twelve labours for king Eurystheus, promptly reverted to come and shake his hand, in mutual commendation. In the end, he settled on establishing a new Greenwich Meridian, right here where he sat; such was the nature of his persistent delusions, which would often grip him fiercely at these dark hours of the night. These were, indeed, the aspirations of a writer, but not those of a man of action, such as this late mayor.

It was much cooler within the veranda, and he preferred it. Up in his bedroom, the heat was insufferable — even with the fan whirling and the window slightly open. And over his shoulder, beyond the screen mesh, he could see the last window of his bedroom. He could see it, because, he’d left the dang light on, once again. And the flies and gnats were buzzing in the yellow glow that was emanating from it and penetrating the impenetrable darkness. Just the same, the window into the kitchen was directly below and adjacent to the veranda, and he could easily see through it too, for a dim light shone from some lamp below a cabinet, next to the stovetop.

Even with this trinity of lights before him, everywhere else was absolute darkness. Yet, the darkness wasn’t even his main concern; it was the heat. ‘Air Conditioning would’ve made all the difference,’ he thought, as his sweaty back clung against the padding of the chair.

The house cat was out here too, brushing up against the furthest mesh screen, and gazing off into the darkness. The eyes of the cat would dart to and fro, and its ears would shift with every sigh and whisper. It would also, periodically, put a paw up to the mesh, grate it, and attempt to escape. And it did manage to escape, once or twice: it happened to pry its way between the meshing and the wooden support post (where it was currently sat), a few days into the relentless summer heat.

A triumphant escape — though luckily, it didn’t wander too far off, and it did come back the very next day, just like in that old song published around Christmas time — published in a year that was just about as old as the house he was sat in. And when the cat did come back (early the next morning), you can bet it had the look of OJ Simpson on its face. Still, one could say it was therapy for him — for it made him laugh like he hadn’t laughed in years. Indeed, the cat came right back to the veranda, where Christopher sat at the wooden table, and stared at him. Then it put a paw out — just one paw, that brushed his forearm — and lay still, as he typed away, for the greater part of the rest of that day.

The summer heat in the valley was nearly at its peak now. He leaned back in his chair at the wooden table and stretched his aching back. He imagined, with all the work he’d been doing lately, that his posture would soon be failing him. And his eyes were closing, from fatigue, but he strained to keep them open. And, that’s about the time when he heard the sound of breaking glass, originating from inside the kitchen, as though something had been knocked clean off the counter.

He jolted in his seat, naturally, and immediately peered through the kitchen window to locate the source of the commotion. But nothing moved. Molly was home — she would often play the piano at this hour. But no sounds erupted from familiar keystrokes. ‘Surely, she must be upstairs on the opposite side of the house,’ he thought. ‘More likely than not, she was burning her incense candles,’ he imagined. However, a chill crept its way down his back after he realized, that, no whimper, cry, nor movement whatsoever followed the sound of the breaking glass.

He looked over at the empty beer bottle next to his laptop. And he picked up the neck of the bottle and weighed it in his hand as he considered using it as a weapon, whilst he searched the kitchen. But, he set it back down again, with prudence, and to avoid making the mistake of striking an intruder who may be some acquaintance. And he shuffled over to the door of the veranda.

The kitchen was just over to the left, a couple of meters, at most, and the door to the kitchen was (in fact), often left ajar. His mind, however, would not shake the possibility of seeing an apparition in the dark. Despite this, he cocked his head over the threshold of the door and peered over in the direction of the kitchen. Still nothing. He crept forward, to investigate further — until he was standing directly over the broken glass (which he’d discovered next to the counter, just as he had suspected). The shards were from an empty candle. ‘It must’ve been another mouse darting across the counter,’ he whispered to himself. He looked around, in all directions, but there was no sign of any movement. So, he picked up the shards, swiftly, with some paper towel from the holder (taking extra care to gather the tiniest pieces and deposit them in the trash), before returning to his chair.

The house was in disrepair, and now the mice had found a way in. But, it had been a quaint country house in an earlier existence. It had once been the home of an esteemed and notable figure. A man who had great depth and foresight, and who had worked with endless resolve at the development of his town and community. The man was, in essence, the very Fountainhead of this town — he was a man with brains and vision that few could've matched. When he sat down again the chair creaked on the wooden floor beneath his feet; and, for some minor entertainment, he pushed himself back from the table to balance on the rear legs of the chair, whilst he went over the details of what he'd punched down in his computer.

When he was satisfied and was nearly through with his work for the night, he turned the power off and pulled at the plug from the socket in the wall. The light in the veranda flickered and went out. Indeed, it became so completely and utterly dark, that he suddenly found himself in a bit of a dilemma: he was, essentially, blind; until of course, he was able to locate the light switch. But, even as he struggled to find the switch in the dark, another realization soon struck him: that the light which had been emanating from his bedroom was now extinguished, too.

The chills came in a series of waves once he’d located the switch, and, to his dismay, the light did not turn back on. 'A breaker. Damn,' he thought. He called to Molly through the open door, “Are you still home — Hello? Molly!?” No response. Before he was able to call out a second time, the lights suddenly switched back on, and a distant voice shouted from the furthest bedroom, “I hit the breaker!”; at which point, he breathed a sigh of relief. 'She was home after all,' he muttered.

After quickly gathering his laptop and cable he sauntered on his way up the wide U-shaped stairs to check in on her. But upon reaching the landing, he changed his mind and peeled off to his bedroom, on his right, where the glowing yellow light came through the cracks around the door frame. He walked through the threshold and found that the fan had shut off with the power outage, and, was no longer oscillating on the stand. And he set his belongings down and went straight over to adjust it, to make it whirl again, for the heat inside his bedroom was still unbearable.

To his left was the last window, at the far end. A double-hung window, with a lower portion that opened about halfway upwards. The curtains around the window began to flutter with the draft from the open door to his room. But, it was too dark to see out the window, and the light from within the room reflected the contents of the room directly back at him.

Next to the window was a cupboard with a wooden finish and a small brass handle, from where he had extracted a book, earlier in the week. It was a hardback that had been written at least a hundred or more years prior. He had chosen this particular book, from within the cupboard — out of sheer curiosity — and left the book on the wooden sill to remind him to get around to reading it later. And tonight, he thought, maybe he’d skim the first couple of pages before he lay down for the night.

It would mean, of course, that he would only get around three or four hours of sleep, before having to rise, but, the book was now speaking to him as if Erebus himself had whispered from out of the darkness. And he reached his hand out for it. And, upon lifting the book, he felt as though an electrocution had shot through him, like the very thunderbolts from Zeus had struck him; and a series of visions — visions from the distant future, and the forgotten past — were sent through him, and made him stumble and gasp.

But these visions passed, just as quickly as they had come, when — shocked abruptly out of his fatigue — he let the book slip from his fingers and fall back onto the windowsill. ‘What is this?’ He rasped. And he thought: whatever had happened to him just now, it was far too soon for delirium to have set in. He looked down at the book, and then at his reflection in the darkened window again.

Bewildered, he motioned to pick up the book, once again. It was a classic novel, from roughly the 1800s. He looked at the cover with incredulity and drew his forefinger over the title. ‘It's just a popular children’s novel,’ he thought. But this time, when he looked up from the title and out the window again — directly in front of him — the darkness was immediately superseded by (piercingly bright) daylight, and he jumped back from the window in astonishment.

The cobbled wall that curved alongside the gravel road and disappeared behind the veranda lacked the lush green overgrowth that had formed through the years following its construction. In fact, it was as though a massive flood had passed through the orchard and washed it out... and it had since been reconstructed altogether. And, all the lush green of the past had reverted to a barren, scorched desert. And his car was missing from underneath the great big oak tree. He would normally park it next to the cobbled wall, directly underneath the tree. And there was another abrupt flash. And the very orchard, itself, was now only in the earliest stages of growth and development.

Beyond the cobble wall, he could see workers with shovels. The drip lines for the irrigation system were laid down, row by row, within reach of the fruit trees, which were planted at intervals. The workers were toiling in the hot sun, with large-brimmed hats which served as protection; some were even mounted on horseback, with large sacs of water slung against the sides of the horses. A draught had befallen the valley, and the ditchmen — who worked with shovels in hand — became like detectives: searching and scouring the endless hills and mountaintops for a watercourse. For, the fruit was perishing and the apples were shrivelling on the branches outside the window before him.

Then, he saw a great big reservoir being dug up, for the primary water source, and several other sources of water were being devised as tributaries for the collection of water. And the ditchmen were patrolling up and down the water flumes and were maintaining them like sentinels. And later, years later, he saw a dam being constructed, concrete being poured out, and an outlet pipe installed so that the water flowed down several thousand feet, to reach the valley, via a creek. And over many years that followed, he saw that the flow of water into the town was made dependable, due in large part to the keen foresight of one man. Through the last window, he saw the whole invisible system of ditches and flukes and dams amalgamate into a modern and efficient system that would become the envy of the entire valley. He saw the many men throughout the history of the valley, responsible for such a system, which no soul alone could’ve conceived at the time, save for the great vision of a man.

****

Molly was shaking him. His head was throbbing. “There you go, it’s all right. Here, drink this,” she said. He was on his back on the floor, next to the fan, and she was supporting his head. She had a glass of water in her hand and a cold compress which she was pressing to his forehead. “Oh, gosh. Can you even hear me? —" She said. But he said nothing back “— Better you don’t try to talk, just yet. Just sit up a little more; here, like this. And drink this cold water. Here. There you go. Oh, you had me worried, you know — you simply can’t go on like this. Just look at yourself, you’re driving yourself positively into the ground. The fan ... it must've zapped you."

And when he came to, he recalled what he had seen. It was still vivid in his memory; as if he was still grasping the classic book in his hand. He recalled the mayor, who came before him; the mayor who had truly broken mountains, and built the roads between them; and was, indeed, the water-bearer for this townsfolk. And he was a simple messenger, with an unmatched resolution. A ghostwriter no doubt, conveying an urgent message, like Hermes sent at the bidding of the gods: For he had observed a crack developing in the arch-dam. And whatever had happened to him, he was sure of one thing: that he'd witnessed the breach and the chaos that would unfold in the immediate future. He saw this very house in disrepair, washed out, and the whole town flooded.

“Molly, listen — he choked out, after having gulped down some of the water forced down his throat. Molly, listen to me!” he coughed once more. “Listen — it’s important! I saw the breach, with my own eyes, Molly. I saw a crack in the dam. I saw it spouting water with the force of ten firehoses, or more, and then — well, I saw your piano float down the mountainside, as far as the lake! And the whole damn town flooded! Molly! You must notify the proper authorities!”