The Narrow & Song is on of my current works-in-progress. It is a collection of horror and dark fantasy short stories that I have been writing over the course of this year. Although the collection is anthological, all of the stories are set within the same world, and all of them are told by a peculiar shopkeep within the walls of a strange antique store called The Narrow & Song.
I do not currently have a release date, but I will be posting updates here and via my Newsletter as they come. In the meantime, please enjoy this excerpt from the beginning of the book. I am pleased to welcome you, officially, into The Narrow & Song.
Stories to tell, inquire within
Knock the old wood door and begin
to search and see
The Narrow & Song
At the door of The Narrow & Song, alongside the rain-soaked cobblestone of Spyglass Way, where creature and character of all manner walked with their dirty faces hung low and their coats pulled over their heads to block out the last bit of the sun, a young boy stood. He lifted his eyes, blinking against the misty rain, and read the wooden sign above his head.
“The Narrow and Song,” it read, and he shuddered. A strong wind swept his tattered shirt and pushed the oak door open a hair. From inside, he could smell the must and the ancient air collected in the history; the strange odor that can only be found in things with stories to tell, like books and old maps, and the clothes and skin of people who have lived a very long time. He took a deep breath and pushed the door open all at once, sending the bell ringing. His shoes thumped onto the old wooden floor, and the door closed again behind him.
All around him were things, all of them different and none of them distinct – blended together in the tiny little shop like pastels beneath an artist’s finger. Clocks of all shapes and sizes hung from the wall or sat on shelves. Books were stacked, both neatly and roughly, in aisles throughout, winding like a maze of words. Models of boats and animals and other things hung from the ceiling next to torn kites that used to be full of bright colors but now were tattered and pale. Nick-knacks of every kind filled every spot in the room.
The boy tried to look at everything at least once as he made his way deeper into the shop, but he found that, before long, his eyes began to hurt from doing so much looking. He stopped walking for a moment and shut them, thinking that would help, but he could still see all the strange shapes on the back of his eyelids, like they had leapt up from the floor and walls and shelves and jumped right into his mind, where they now lived.
When he opened his eyes again, they fell on a painted horse, no larger than a shoe, but detailed beyond measure. The boy examined each stroke of the artists brush, the way the colors moved along with the wood grain. They danced like a waltz, or maybe a ballet, because the boy did not know the different kinds of dances, and it didn’t matter anyway because it was only a painted horse.
“Good one, that,” said a voice. The boy looked around, searching for the source, but his eyes could not separate any one thing from any other thing. It wasn’t until they spoke again that he finally saw the movement of the lips and chin, the darkness of the mouth, the yellow teeth.
“The horse,” they said. “Good one. Fine piece. Maple, I’d guess.”
They moved again, and this time the boy could see their whole person – tufts of coarse gray hair bunched and knotted, skin spotted from years of sun and smoke, dark eyes wild beneath bushy brows that rolled and twisted with every word. Their clothes were a myriad of hues and shapes, as though they had stitched the shop itself into the fabric. They were as much a part of the shop as any of the clocks or books or models. When they walked, so did the shop, and when they move their lips, the shop spoke.
They walked to the boy – seeming more to float over the oddities, like they knew where everything was in the same way that the boy knew where his own ears were – and plucked up the little painted horse with crooked fingers and held it close to their eyes. From their clothes – or perhaps out of the thin air – they pulled a small, silver glass, placing it and the horse in front of the boy.
“Take a closer look,” they said. The boy obeyed.
To be continued…
(Thanks for reading! – JNP)
J. Newman Pritchard 