I asked fellow Midnight Garden anthology contributors to share some things about themselves prior to publication and those generous enough to do so will be appearing here for the next week or so.
Each entry gives a taste of their contribution, a little about them, how to contact them, how their story came about, and definitely a link to Midnight Garden (which you should purchase because it would make each and every one of us happy.
you do want to make us happy, don’t you?
i mean, considering what we wrote, you want us to know you’re a good person, right?).
And now, Ell Rodman’s The Drummer:
Four hundred years ago, settlers left the complicated histories of Europe behind for what appeared to be a vast, unblemished frontier. What they found, of course, was far from empty. Colonists settled a land with history as old as the one they’d left behind. Rivers, lakes, and mountains that already had names received new ones. Cull County residents didn’t know who first named the three-headed rock formation Satan’s Rock. By 1988, that’s just what people called it. It was an unnatural sight; a towering jumble of black rock jutting out of the forest floor, covered in mossy vines, topped with a handful of old trees. Two lovers, the legend went, fell from its peak. Or a runaway slave that vowed revenge. Or a witch hung by the neck. No, an Iroquois shaman cursed the land. The story changed every few decades, but one feeling remained:
Something about Satan’s Rock was just plain wrong.
How the story came about:
I grew up in a secluded area. Not the middle of nowhere, but not close enough to walk to anyone’s house. My dad used to call me ‘the hermit’. My parents worked long hours, so even if I had kids to spend time with transportation was a challenge. One of my best childhood memories was a rare exception to that, when I was invited to a birthday party. We set up tents in the backyard, ate microwave hot dogs, and played flashlight tag for hours. In the daylight the woods that surrounded this house were exciting. They were something to explore. This was true at night, too, but they took on an extra quality. There was something eerie there.
Technically, we had nothing to fear. There were no bears, wolves or other predators. Yet we still sat right on the edge of fear without the ability to identify why.
I hid in a rotting treehouse. I got tagged ‘it’ after noticing hundreds of termites crawling over my shoes and sprinting out screaming. It was more fun than my own birthdays. Despite that, I was still the odd one out. Everyone had their friends; I really only knew the kid whose party it was. Most of my time was spent on the edge of the social circle. The setting of The Drummer comes from that experience. You’re having fun, you’re included, you’re happy to be there, but you’re still oddly alone.
Also as a kid, my bedroom window faced the woods. There was a house nearby with orange porchlights barely visible through trees and brush. The type that fixed into the outer wall and looked like something the colonists carried around. In that dim, faraway light, I often thought I saw a man holding a lamp, peering into the woods. When the wind blew, it looked like he faced my window beckoning me outside. I remember staying home from school with a fever of something like 103. I slept all day eating nothing but Ritz Bitz peanut butter crackers, then couldn’t get a wink of sleep that night. Whenever I turned towards the window and looked at that house, my fever vision made the man look much larger, and the branches looked like they were coming out of him.
Years later, I remembered the birthday party and wondered what would happen if we did meet something in the woods. Something like my fever vision. That’s where The Drummer comes from.
About Ell Rodman:
Ell Rodman is a D.C. area writer of horror, Sci-Fi, and poetry as seen in Andromeda Magazine. Ell is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, a watcher of bad 80’s movies, and a fosterer of dogs.
See all Midnight Garden stories here.
And for our finale, a Hallowe’en-themed teaser to the anthology:
“The Drummer” is definitely scary! The story has all of the excellent elements of a classic horror: a legend, a mysterious object, clash or innocence vs evil, a dark woods and cave, elements that cause mental anguish and physical harm, and lastly – most importantly, the unknown!