The Storyteller

He knew not the day nor the hour when the voices would return. He only knew they would. Like his visions, they’d been with him since he was young. Sometimes they would speak to him, in the day or in the dark of the night. Sometimes to each other. Memories were cast upon him, fragmented into moments he could see and feel as he experienced lives that weren’t his. They haunted him and always had. He’d come to fear they always would, too.

Martin fell asleep looking up at the stars through the gaps in the treetops that canopied his backyard. He lay upon the wooden deck attached to his house, a half-empty glass of whiskey set beside him. There came a tapping at the wood beneath his head and he jolted awake. He looked down into the black space between the weathered planks, and two eyes stared back at him. Calmly, he leaned over and took a sip from the glass, set it down, and rolled onto his back again. He gazed back up at the night sky.

A voice muttered in his ears or perhaps inside his mind. Uninterpretable, like some language foreign to him, and when he closed his eyes, it quieted. A moment passed. Then came the pounding at the plank beneath his head. An uncertain emotion exploding against the wood as though it tried to reach beyond to all that it could touch.

He leapt up with the whiskey in hand and went into the house with the hairs of his arm standing firmly upright. A shiver came over him, and he felt like some arachnophobe who’d seen a spider skitter down the wall. He shot back the remainder of whiskey and turned on the television, watching late-night comedy until he fell asleep again.

***

The next morning, Martin woke bitterly for work. He got dressed and brushed his hair and his teeth and tied his shoes. He drove himself to the office. It was a slower day than usual, which meant to him that the voices were bountiful and the visions no different from them. He thought little of it, as they were harmless, mostly. Some put him in worse moods than others. He had learned from his therapist not to acknowledge them and this was his charge, day in and day out. Leave them to the farthest corners of his mind, that they might some day fade away. After all, they weren’t real, he told himself. They weren’t spirits nor were they demons, but instead, the products of disorders of the mind.

***

Martin punched out and left the office at the end of his shift and waded through the five o’clock traffic. He had an appointment to make and he refused to miss it. His therapist had been seeing him for months, and in the weeks prior, Martin had begun to feel a glimmer of progress. He parked his car in the pouring rain and he ran inside the building and trotted up the stairs. The receptionist nodded warmly at him and he nodded back. “Hey, Joyce,” he said.

“Marty, you’re soaked.”

“It’s just a little rain. I’ll be okay.”

“Don’t you have an umbrella?”

“No ma’am.”

“We have a spare there by the door. You can take it with you when you leave.”

“I will, thank you.”

“You’re always welcome. Now go on in if you’re ready.”

Martin pushed open the door and went inside. The therapist was pacing back and forth, clicking the top of his pen anxiously and looking about the room. “Did you lose something?” asked Martin.

“You came.” Dr. James answered. “I saw you were running late. Glad you could still make it.”

There was a roll of thunder outside. Martin glanced about the room. It had been stripped of its decor and office supplies, and cardboard boxes lay stacked in towers and piles in every corner. “I seem to have lost my pen,” said the doctor.

Martin laughed. “I think it’s in your hand.”

Dr. James stared in disbelief at the pen in his hand and smiled sheepishly. “Well, that’s mildly embarrassing.”

“You okay, doc?”

The doctor nodded. “This move is driving me insane.”

“You do look a little stressed.”

There was a crack of thunder, and lightning flashed against the rainsoaked window. The doctor flinched uncomfortably and continued. “More than a little,” he said.

“If you need a therapist, I know a guy.”

The doctor laughed. “Actually, that’s what I wanted to discuss with you. It’s going to be a little while before I can get things in order at my new office. In the meantime, I can recommend you to an old friend of mine if you’d like.”

Martin frowned. “Should we just wait?” he asked. “I only just started seeing you and we’ve covered a lot of ground already.”

“We have and we can certainly cover more, but based on what we’ve gone over so far, I think he can offer some valuable perspective.”

Martin glared at the floor, a look of uncertainty on his face, and the doctor placed a hand on his shoulder reassuringly. “Listen,” he said, “you don’t have to decide right this second. Just consider it. I can have Joyce provide his information to you before you leave and then you can reach out to him any time you want. If you’d prefer someone else during our hiatus you’re more than welcome to see other therapists as well.”

Martin nodded reluctantly. “I guess it can’t hurt to have his number,” he said.
“Fantastic. Now have a seat and we’ll talk and then I’ll see you again after a couple of months.”

***

He left the therapist’s office and stopped at a quiet coffee shop nestled discreetly into a sleepy corner of downtown. He ordered a coffee and while he waited on his drink, he stared at the information Joyce had given him. The cream-colored card looked elegant in its antiquated serif font and upon the card it read:

Prof. Victor Hopkins (MFA)
Moonsong Bookshop
Office located in rear hall, first door on left.

Martin flipped over the card curiously and found that it was missing a phone number. He searched the listings to find one and still turned up nothing. He found it odd to have a business card and no contact information, but there was little else he could do until the morning. He took his coffee and went out into the rain and drove home.

***

At the house, he cooked himself dinner and poured a glass of wine. He sat eating while he scribbled nothings on a half-used notepad. There was a burning desire to write some word at the edge of his thoughts, or perhaps many, he couldn’t be sure. He only knew that something burned inside him. A fire that once blazed wildly and had since withered down to a smoldering ash, the embers still hot to the touch yet fading beneath the dusty gray that choked them. He didn’t understand and might not ever. It was uncomfortable, like an addiction to a thing that wasn’t there, and he could think of nothing else.

He felt at the same time as though he was being watched. By whom he couldn’t say, or if there was one or one hundred eyes that bore into him and they stared not from within his house or even some far reach of the universe, but outward, from inside his core, and there they waited as though he was destined to perform an act unknown to him upon which the fate of his soul rested.

He closed his eyes and a vision flashed before him. A woman stood weeping at the top of a great height. She looked over the edge, tearfully. Shaking. Her bare feet were filthy and cut. A great wave of sadness came over him, and the woman moved closer to the edge. As Martin opened his eyes, she disappeared. He crumpled the paper before him and tossed it in the trash, and his unfinished meal with it too. He downed his wine and went to bed.

***

The next day, Martin called the office of Dr. James to inquire about the number missing from the business card they’d given him. He heard three beeps before an automated voice announced that the line was no longer in service. He hung up the phone and sat back in his chair and thought for a moment before going back to his tasks. At the end of his shift he drove down to the Moonsong Bookshop to see what he could learn about the man on the card.

In the evening he arrived at the store and went inside. He asked an employee where he could find the professor and they pointed toward the back of the store. Down a narrow hallway, Martin approached the second door on the left, just as the business card had stated. He knocked on the door where there hung a sign with the professor’s name but no one answered. A second knock was met with silence. He turned to leave and stopped at the sound of the door creaking open. “Can I help you?” asked a voice from a narrow space between the door and its frame.

“Are you Professor Hopkins?” asked Martin.

“I am. Are you a student?”

“No, nothing like that,” Martin answered. He hesitated briefly. “My therapist told me to come see you.”

“Dr. James. Yes, of course.”

The professor peeked further from the cracked door and Martin continued. “Sorry not to call ahead. I couldn’t find a number.”

“I prefer to keep it private these days. Too much distraction and anyone who truly needs me knows to look for me here.”

“I can always come back another time if that’s better for you.”

“Now is a perfect time. Come in.”

The professor opened fully the door and ushered Martin inside. He pointed to a leather couch in the middle of the room, the once saddle-brown material darkly patinaed from years of wear but carefully cared for and maintained. Across from it was a matching armchair. “Please,” said the professor. “Have a seat wherever you like. Can I offer you some coffee?”

“Sure.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have any sugar.”

“That’s okay.”

“Or milk.”

“Whatever you have is fine.”

The professor measured coffee into a small glass pitcher and poured into it the hot water and let it set. A few minutes later he tamped down the grinds with a press and poured the black coffee into a crafted mug and handed it to Martin. “Thank you,” he said.

“You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?”

“It’s your office.”

“This is true. But you don’t mind?”

Martin shook his head. The professor took up a cigarette between two fingers and put it to his mouth and lit the end with a match and waved out the flame. He drew a breath in and exhaled it as he sat across from Martin, studying him inquisitively as he crossed one leg over the other and leaned to the side of the chair. And with his elbow set upon the armrest, he settled with one temple resting flatly against his fist. “Dr. James mentioned you might drop by,” he said, looking over the top of his glasses.

“Did he?”

“Yes.”

“I’m actually somewhat confused about that.”

“How so?”

Martin hesitated, searching for the words. “Not to be rude,” he continued, “but I thought I’d be seeing another therapist.”

“And I’m not a therapist.”

“No.”

“I’m an English and Literature professor who teaches at the university.”

“Yes.”

The professor smiled. “And you’re wondering why in God’s name a therapist would send you to some academic, holed up in a little office at the back of a bookstore, to discuss your concerns of schizophrenia.”

Martin relaxed slightly. “Yes, exactly.”

The professor inhaled from his cigarette and blew to one side a thin cloud of smoke. “Understandable,” he said. “I could see why you’d be confused.”

“Do you know why he sent me here?”

The professor nodded. “Because you’re not a schizophrenic.”

There was a calm tension that hung in the room. Martin stared at the professor, waiting for him to elaborate but he did no such thing. He sat there observing Martin the way a cat watches the world unfold, its interest and disinterest undiscernible from one another.

“What do you mean?”

“The voices in your head are not the kind of voices you hear as one who experiences schizophrenia. It’s something else entirely.”

“Like what?”

“Your creative mind at work.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Manifestations.”

“Manifestations?”

“Yes, the voices and hallucinations, or visions, as you call them.”

Martin leaned forward, the frustration growing clearer in his voice. “He said it’s all just my imagination? Then why not just tell me that? Why send me to—”

The professor removed his glasses and glared coyly at Martin. “An English professor?” he asked.

Martin nodded as the professor put back his glasses and relaxed again. “It’s Dr. James’s belief,” he continued, “that you have an intensely creative energy for which you have no outlet. Perhaps a need you’ve shoved aside for many years.”

“I’m not creative.”

“Who’s to say?”

“I’m saying.”

“Do you ever wish to be creative?”

“Sometimes.”

“And when you feel creative or inspired, what do you do with that feeling?”

“I don’t know.”

The professor rolled his eyes and waved his cigarette dismissively. “Please, humor me,” he pressed. “What do you do?”

Martin leaned back and crossed his arms. He glared at the professor, searching for a rebuttal but came up with only the truth. “Nothing,” he answered.

The professor raised his hands. “Exactly the doctor’s point.”

“What point? Life’s busy and I’m tired often. I still don’t see where this is going.”

“When you were a child, did you like making up stories?”

“Sure.”

“And did you ever at any point try writing them down?”

“Here and there.”

“But not as an adult?”

“No,” Martin said, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers and squeezing shut his eyes. “I grew up! I don’t color, or draw, or play the guitar, and I don’t tell dumb stories anymore. I work a nine-to-five in an office and come home and try to forget working a nine-to-five in an office. I make myself dinner and have a drink. Maybe watch some stimulation-free television until it puts me to sleep. Then I wake up the next morning and do it all over again.”

The professor lifted his brow and shook his head. “No wonder you’re depressed.”

“Ouch,” Martin scoffed. “And my therapist sent me here?”

“Therapy doesn’t mean ignoring your truth, it means getting to the bottom of it.”

“Maybe try getting to it more gently.”

“That wasn’t gentle?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry, would you like me to hug you the next time I say something you don’t wish to hear?”

“Of course not.”

“Wonderful,” the professor said, taking a drag from his cigarette and releasing the smoke from both nostrils. “I was afraid you’d say yes.”

“I feel so much better now.”

“See? We’re already making progress. Shall we continue?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Life is nothing more or less than choices.”

“I’m confused, are you an English or Philosophy professor?”

“That depends.”

“On?”

“Your philosophy.”

Martin sat there unblinkingly. “I think I might hate you,” he said.

“All my students think that at some point.”

“Speaking of points, are we getting to one?”

The professor sat up straight and dabbed out his cigarette and took a sip of his coffee. He set back the mug and continued. “Dr. James thinks it would help for you to write again,” he answered.

“To cure the voices and hallucinations.”

“What can it hurt to try?”

“Wasting everyone’s time.”

“Dr. James sees many patients with actual schizophrenia. He wouldn’t have taken this approach had he not believed it would help you. Would you not at least entertain the idea until he’s back?”

Martin thought quietly for a moment. “What do you have in mind?” he asked.

“Of all these visions, which is the most prominent? Which seems to be most on your mind?”

“I often see a man during the day,” Martin explained, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He sank further into the couch as he bounced his leg and a slight vibration rattled the end table beside him. The professor waved his hand encouragingly. “Go on,” he said.

“And I see a woman at night.”

“Very good,” he replied. “What is the man doing?”

“Searching frantically along the road.”

“And the woman?”

“Lurking beneath my back deck.”

The professor leaned again to one side and placed again his head against his closed hand. There was a curious look on his face. “What is she doing there?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Does she move or attempt to communicate?”

“She stares at me through the cracks and knocks on the underside of the deck.”

“She knocks?”

“Yes. Sometimes she pounds on it.”

“Perhaps to get your attention.”

“Maybe.”

“Is it possible this deck represents something to her?”

“Like what?”

“It’s not for me to say.”

“How are you going to ask all those questions and then pump the brakes?”

“Because I can’t be the one driving. It needs to be you.”

The professor thought for a moment, stroking his beard. “I’m going to give you your first assignment,” he continued. “Are you ready?”

“You’re giving me homework?”

“Yes.”

“This is worse than the ghost lady under my deck.”

“The ghost lady under your deck is the homework.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Go and be in her presence. If all she does is stare, let her. Let her eyes speak to your heart and your heart will explain to your mind what she wishes to tell you.”

Martin shook his head disbelievingly. “You’re a crazy person,” he said.

The professor laughed. “‘We’re all mad here,’ are we not?”

“What?”

“Lewis Carroll, ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.’”

“Never read it.”

The Professor gestured with a finger for Martin to wait and he stood and walked over to a set of tall bookshelves. He reached up and pulled from a shelf a well-worn book and handed it to Martin. “Consider this part of your assignment,” he said. “I’ll give you another when you finish that one.”

Martin turned over the book in his hands, inspecting it carefully. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Now what?”

“Now you go home and come back when there’s more to talk about.”

***

Martin unlocked the door to his house and went inside. He made himself dinner and sat there in the warm glow of the dining light, eating, and reading from the book the professor had given him. When he finished, he cleaned his plate into the trash and set a glass upon the counter and poured himself two fingers of whiskey and shot back the contents and set the empty glass back down again. He took a deep breath, slid open the rear door, and went outside.

He stood on the deck and stared at the cracks between the wood planks. There were knots in the wood that looked like eyes and he wondered if that’s what he’d seen all along. He breathed in the cool night air and shut his eyes. He waited patiently, but there wasn’t a sound in the quiet of the night save for the rustling of the autumn leaves overhead. His eyes opened and he shook his head. You’re losing your mind, he thought.

Martin turned to leave, and a voice spoke softly from below. “No, I’m not,” said a woman.

He looked down and saw faintly in the darkness beneath the deck the whites of two eyes, wet and glistening from a slight beam of light cast from inside the house through the sliding glass doors. He bent to where he could see her more clearly and she rose up from a low crouch to meet him there. He could see cuts on her arms and face, her hair filthy, fragments of leaves entangled and interwoven in knots. Her eye shadow was streaked down her face like the edge of some long-broken fountain, black-stained and dried with a coarse grit that crumbled finely against her cheekbones. “What did you say?” asked Martin.

“I’m not crazy.”

“What are you?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I meant who are you.”

The woman hesitated and then continued. “Jillian,” she answered.

“What are you doing down there, Jillian?”

“I’m trapped here.”

“What do you mean you’re trapped there?”

“I was on my way to meet someone and then everything went dark. Sometimes things still go dark.”

“And how’d you get under my deck?”

“Your deck?”

“Yes.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean how did you get down there?”

“I don’t know. I keep waking up here and I can’t get out.”

“You can’t just crawl out through one of the openings?”

“What openings?”

“You don’t see any openings?”

Jillian looked about and then shook her head. “No.”

“Big, wide openings,” Martin gestured, “all along the sides down there.”

“There’s nothing like that. Everything’s boarded up.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Nothing should be boarded up.”

“Please, can you help me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will you try?”

He felt something tug at him he couldn’t put a finger on. A calling. A need he couldn’t explain. He looked down at Jillian and nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll try.”

***

Martin drove somberly to work the following morning. He came to a red light and sat waiting for it to turn. Across the intersection was a man pacing frantically along the sidewalk. He tugged at jackets and shirtsleeves and pulled from his pocket a photo he showed to anyone who would stop to hear him. Though the car window was closed, he listened as the man tapped with one finger the photograph he held in his trembling hand. “Have you seen her?” he asked urgently.

With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Martin continued on his way. He arrived at work and sat in the parking lot for several minutes. He called his boss from the car and told him he needed a personal day and backed out of the space and left. He drove to the Moonsong Bookshop and knocked impatiently on the professor’s door. He stood there, waiting for him to answer. “Hold your horses,” the professor cried out from inside his office. “I’ll be right there.”

“It’s Martin.”

“I had a feeling. Did you read the whole book in one night?”

“She spoke to me.”

“The girl beneath the floorboards?”

“Under my deck.”

Martin looked down the hall and noticed a store employee watching curiously. She raised her brow and slipped out of sight.

“Can we please talk about this in your office? People are going to think I’m burying bodies in my backyard.”

“I already told you.”

“I know, I know. ‘We’re all mad here.’”

The professor opened the office door. “You’re quoting literature already. Wonderful.”

Martin stepped inside and the professor handed him a cup of coffee. “Sit,” he said. “Tell me what happened.”

“I did what you said. I talked to her.”

“Oh?”

“Well, I guess she spoke to me first.”

The professor sat and lit a cigarette and gestured for Martin to continue. “Go on,” he urged.

“She said she’s trapped there and can’t get out.”

“And how did she get there?”

“She doesn’t know.”

“She doesn’t know or you don’t know?”

“Neither of us do.”

“Did she say anything else?”

“Only that she was supposed to meet someone before she found herself trapped there.”

“Who was she supposed to meet?”

“Do you remember me saying I see a guy sometimes?”

“Searching for something.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“What about him?”

“Well, today when I saw him he was searching for someone.”

“Not something.”

“Right. And when I was a kid I had an idea for a story about a man and woman on their way to reunite after a long separation due to the war.”

The professor raised his brow. “And you feel this is the same man and the same woman?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know what you must do.”

“Tell their story?”

The professor smiled.

“Where do I start?”

“I can’t answer that for you. What I can say, however, is that you won’t be alone if you continue to open yourself up to what these characters are revealing to you.”

“I don’t even know how to write.”

“Can you write words?”

“Of course.”

“Then you can write a story.”

Martin leaned forward as if to speak then sat back again. “What if it isn’t any good?” he questioned anxiously.

The professor inhaled of his cigarette and blew the smoke to one side. “Then keep working at it until it is.”

“That could take forever.”

“There are worse fates than writing forever. Besides, practice makes perfect.”

The professor reached for a stack of books sitting atop his desk and handed them to Martin. “Here, take these. Read them when you can. When you’re unsure what to do next, they’ll inspire you. They’ll teach you the craft if you want them to.”

Martin took the books and looked back at the professor. “What now?” he asked.

The professor put his hand on Martin’s shoulder and smiled gently. “You write.”

***

Martin sat silently at the wooden desk tucked into the corner of his bedroom. There were pages of notes strewn across the desk, brown rings pressed into them where his mug had sat steaming, since drained and refilled, time and time again. He typed furiously on his keyboard, formulating sentences and reducing them to single words. Sometimes he whittled the sentences down carefully like a master carpenter perfecting his work. At other times he tore at them feverishly, the way a madman might peel paper from the asylum walls.

He did this for several nights, reading when he could write no longer. Resting when he could no longer read. Months passed before his drafts were complete and more were spent editing them. When the moment came at last for him to stop, tears welled in his weary eyes.

He’d come to learn a truth, long buried by the pressures and expectations of life and locked away behind a hidden door of the heart. Where he’d once communed with the creations of his childhood, beings imagined not from intent but by some unconscious and strange conjuring he might never understand, he’d grown to believe such things were trivial and meaningless. Yet they were not, for they were alive. If not in our world, then perhaps one that exists alongside it, where inhabitants reached out like ghosts seeking one who might bear witness to their best moments and the worst of them. They haunted him, taking hold at times like some possession until he exercised them through words he set upon the page, their tales finally told. For they knew not of whom could do this for them other than a storyteller.

***

It was a perfect spring Saturday when Martin packed up his manuscript and set out for the Moonsong Bookshop. He had stopped seeing the girl in the dark beneath his deck. He no longer spotted the man who frantically searched for her. As their story came to an end, they moved on from him and him from them all the same. He knocked on the professor’s door and the professor greeted him, welcoming him inside as he always did. As they sat, Martin flipped open the top flap of his satchel and removed from it the manuscript. He placed it on the coffee table and leaned back slowly. There was a melancholic look strewn across his face.

The professor picked up the stack of pages and began to flip through them as his cigarette hung from his lips. Minutes passed like hours. When the professor was finished, he looked up at Martin over the top of his glasses. “You’ve much improved since we last saw each other,” he said.

“Is it any good?”

“You’re asking the wrong question.”

“What question should I be asking?”

The professor squinted inquisitively and dabbed out his cigarette. “Do you feel you did them justice?” he asked.

Martin shook his head. “I don’t know. Not every character had a happy ending.”

“Oh?”

“I thought they would when I started, but things changed.”

“How so?”

“As I wrote, things were revealed to me that I never saw coming. As if these things have always been and I’m just discovering them for the first time. Like the people and places I wrote about were leaving clues for me to find until eventually I’d told a story different from what I’d sought to tell.”

The professor nodded. “A complex thing to try to put into words,” he said with understanding in his voice.

“Yes.”

The professor smiled.

“You asked if your manuscript is good. I would argue you’re asking me if you’re a good writer. But it’s not always about how good you are, it’s about these things that live inside you that you wish to set free into the world. You can work on being a better writer, but to not write at all would be a failing of self.”

“You believe a writer who doesn’t write will be haunted forever by what he doesn’t write?”

“A writer will always be haunted. He’s a house of ghosts that beg for life. But I believe a writer who embraces his calling will find there’s warmth in the fire of his soul, and so gathers around that fire those ghosts he comes to know throughout his life. Some may only be travelers, there for a time. Others may stay longer and become as old friends.”

Martin looked up at the sun beaming through the window and thought for a moment. He smiled. “You might be right,” he replied.

The professor leaned back in his chair. “What will you do now?” he asked.

“I think I’ll do some reading.”

“Until?”

“It’s time to write again.”

***

Martin sat with the professor and talked until sundown. When he arrived home he hung up his jacket and slouched back on the couch with a book in one hand and a coffee in the other and read deep into the night until he fell asleep. In the morning he woke and made himself breakfast and after he cleaned he went for a walk. An hour later he’d wandered downtown. He meandered there, up and down Main Street, taking in his surroundings, until his legs had grown tired. He saw a neighbor leaving a store. The neighbor offered to give him a lift and he hitched a ride home again.

He went into the house where he made himself coffee and sat down at his desk and stared blankly at the wall. Several minutes passed by. He barely blinked, let alone moved. He shut his eyes and took a deep breath and when he opened them again he sipped his coffee and set down the mug. The room was filled with the sound of typing.

Copyright © 2026 by Mark Gulino