Devil House

by John Darnielle

But few things, at any rate, are more powerful than expectations. Blunt force, maybe. Firepower, certainly. Sword and steel. But even those have their limits. The imagination has none.

Reporters are like the police. It’s in their interest to tell you whatever you need to hear as long as it makes you cooperate. The same is true, too, of writers with bigger plans, greater ambitions.

It was a raw deal: stay invisible until somebody wants to spotlight your defects. Small communities whose murder cases are just lurid enough to attract the attention of outsiders learn and relearn this again and again; it’s one of the unignorable facts of crime. The less you have to lose, the more it will end up taking from you.

One thing seldom asked of those on whom disaster has laid its hand is what their future plans were before the flood.

I wondered how much of the story I’d come to tell was something I’d brought with me, more outline awaiting shades than a blank page seeking figures who lived in three dimensions.