get out. As the fire swiftly spread, some had to leap out of the upper stories into the ordure of Squeakstep Alley. It was only due to the mercy of Zoria, I believe, and of Honnos who watches over travelers, that more were not killed inside the tavern.
But many others did die as the fire spread to some of the nearby roofs, and to the tenement houses on Tin Street where hundreds of people lived in each single three- or four-story house. All told, something more than two dozen folk were killed in the terrible Quiller’s Mint fire and hundreds more lost their homes. The conflagration would have burned far more of the city had not two sides been blocked from spreading by Skimmer’s Lagoon, and one side by the city wall itself.
There was not much strange in the events of that evening, as I said, but there was much that was strange that happened afterward.
Arvald, the owner of the tavern, disappeared within a few days after the fire. Some said that was because there was nothing except an expensive and pointless salvage to detain him in Southmarch any longer and so he had gone back to the Vuttish islands, others suggested it was because his conscience was something less than clean. Why he should have set a fire in his own tavern, though, has not yet been convincingly explained even by those who suggest his guilt.
When Thom Regin’s body was brought out of the ashes, it was naught but black bones and charred meat, and thus nothing I said would have made any difference, so I told no one of how I had found him. I was young and not keen for the eye of authority to fall on me in such an unflattering situation. I might have spoken up if John Sommerle had remained, but he too had vanished, never seen again after Arvald shoved him out of the Quiller’s Mint front door. The Jellonian woman Doras was little help in answering questions. She could never speak of the evening without bursting into tears, and the pox took her within a year or two in any case.
Was it simply by chance that the Mint burned down? It matters little, I suppose, because a new tavern was soon built on the ashes of the old, and because the oldest parts of the place are in any case below ground or in the city walls and thus went unscathed.
It still seems odd that the fire should have started on the opposite side of the room from the fireplace, on a damp night, and that I should find Thom Regin’s corpse on the ground near the place where it had caught. But if John Sommerle came back to murder Regin and set the fire to cover his deed, why did he not simply drag the poet’s corpse out through one of the side doors and leave it in an alley instead? Regin would have been thought only the most recent in a long line of Quiller’s Mint patrons who never made it back to their homes through the Lagoon District’s sometimes inhospitable streets.
There are even wilder speculations, most based around the reputed presence of the man who would someday be our King Olin, but I have never heard one of these tales yet that did not sound to me like the ravings of a madman. The idea that a king who has always shown kindness even to his lowest and poorest subjects would instruct his guards to set a deadly fire simply to hide the fact that he was visiting a tavern… well, there is just no sense to it.
So there it is, the tale of the conflagration that destroyed the old Quiller’s Mint. In fact, I am told that even this terrible deed or accident was merely a reenactment of a larger historical tradition — that the Mint which burned was at least the fourth or fifth building of that name on that spot in Squeakstep Alley between Fitters and Tin. It is that most unsatisfying of tales, a true one. What it means, if it means anything at all, must be up to you, kind reader, to decide.
— Finn Teodoros, by his hand, on the ninth day of the eleventh month of the year 1314
Black Sunshine
FADE IN: EXT. — PIERSON HOUSE, 1976 — NIGHT
From blackness to shadowy trees — a tangled orchard in moonlight. We move through them toward a three story turn-of-the-century house with lights in the windows. As we track in, we hear Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” playing distantly on a stereo.
CUT TO: ERIC’S DREAM POV — Micro close-up on a carpet — it’s ALIVE, squirming with intricate patterms. “Iron Man” is ear-splitting now. YOUNG JANICE
Eric! Eric, talk to me!
YOUNG ERIC’S POV swivels up from the carpet — things are dreamlike, compressed, distorted — it’s an acid trip. YOUNG JANICE is so close that her face is distorted. We dimly see she is fifteen, maybe sixteen, wearing 70s clothes.
YOUNG JANICE
Eric, I want to get out of here…!
YOUNG BRENT, lurches into view, looming above JANICE. He’s chunky, teenage, clutching his hands against his stomach, panicky but trying to stay calm. YOUNG BRENT
Shit, it’s bad — Topher’s freaking out for real up there.
YOUNG JANICE
What’s going on, Brent? Where’s Kimmy?
YOUNG BRENT
I don’t know! I can’t find her. I think… I think something bad happened! I tried to help Topher, and I…
Just now realizing, BRENT lifts his hands away from his body and stares at them. They are smeared with blood. His eyes bug out.
YOUNG JANICE
Oh my God!
Something is THUMPING on the ceiling above — something heavy thrashing around upstairs. As the POV looks upward, the ceiling suddenly becomes TRANSPARENT, a spreading puddle of translucency as though the ceiling were turning to smeared glass. A dark human shape (YOUNG TOPHER) is lying on the floor of the room above, face pressed against the transparent ceiling as though it were a picture window, looking down on them. All we can make out of him is a huddled shape, distorted face, and a single staring eye.
YOUNG TOPHER
Hey, Pierson — I seeeeee you…! Y
OUNG JANICE (screaming)
Eric!
FADE with JANICE’s cry still echoing as we CUT TO:
INT. — ERIC’S MOTEL — NIGHT
ADULT ERIC as he sits bolt upright in a motel bed, sweating.
YOUNG JANICE (very faint now)
Eric!
ERIC PIERSON is sweaty, trembling. He’s in his early 40s, nice-looking, slender, but at this moment he could be twenty years older. He fumbles for a cigarette and sits smoking in the dark as we:
ROLL CREDITS
EXT. — THE PIERSON HOUSE, NOW — MORNING
ADULT ERIC drives down a long, dirt driveway. From atop a rise we see the house — the same house, but now sitting in a wide, empty DIRT FIELD several acres across: the orchard has been cut down. The house looks grim — peeling paint, screen door hanging halfway off. Hesitantly, he moves up the front steps and through the front door.
INT. — HOUSE
There’s nothing Gothic or creepy about the place, it’s just stripped and empty — carpets removed, no furniture, wallpaper peeling. ERIC hesitates again, then moves toward the dark stairwell. He flicks the switch — no light. He looks up the stairs, but a noise outside distracts him. A car with “Red Letter Realty” has pulled up beside his and someone is getting out.
EXT. — HOUSE ERIC has returned to the dry front lawn, and stands with his back to the drive, looking up at
