Sunfall Manor Read online

  Advance Praise for Sunfall Manor

  “Sunfall Manor is a gem of a story that reminds me of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio...vignettes of lives lived and lost with touches of sadness, regret, and vengeance. A tale sure to send more than a few shivers up your spine...and your soul.”

  Rick Hautala, author of Indian Summer and Little Brothers

  “Any horror fan who’s properly awake has been following the crazily productive visionary exactitude of Peter Giglio. He slings plainsong toughness pressurized by pop-eyed mania. Sunfall Manor’s not his debut, though it’s his debut masterpiece: A cold-trance-inducing, five-click merry-go-round about a rundown dwelling in the flatlands that feels more like a schizoid colony in outer space. This thing should be a major film, though we’ll have to wake up Kubrick to do it right. A work of art that you’ll be judged for missing.”

  Eric Shapiro, author of The Devoted and It’s Only Temporary

  “A lesser thinker might have been content with a haunted house story. A lesser storyteller might have been content with a tale of discovery, or perhaps of ghostly revenge. But Peter Giglio has more up his sleeve than ghosts and creepy old houses. He’s even got more than mere philosophy.”

  Bram Stoker Award-winning author Joe McKinney,

  from his introduction

  “Let Peter Giglio’s odd protagonist, Edgar, take you on a surreal tour of the mysterious Sunfall Manor with its intriguing but flawed residents. Giglio’s prose is highly accessible and very engaging, his story line equally compelling. This is Giglio playing at the top of his game, shooting and making all 3s. Highly recommended.”

  Gene O’Neill, author of The Burden of Indigo and

  Operation Rhinoceros Hornbill

  “Peter Giglio’s Sunfall Manor is a gripping ghost story that will possess your mind like a crazed poltergeist. Psychological horror at its best.”

  Jeremy C. Shipp, Bram Stoker nominated author of Vacation and Cursed

  “A powerful, moving, intimate look into private lives we would rather deny, but all have lived, in one way or another. Giglio’s writing is clear, insightful, and fueled with a potent and intoxicating intimacy. To read Sunfall Manor is to take a poetic journey through truths, falsehoods, hopes, dreams and failures that comprise the human condition. And it’s truly haunting.”

  Trent Zelazny, author of Butterfly Potion

  “Haunting and unforgettable, Sunfall Manor is Mr. Giglio’s finest work to date. Period! This vivid and revealing shocker begs to be made into a movie and further cements him as the rising star that he is.”

  David Bernstein, author of Amongst the Dead and

  Tears of No Return

  “Sunfall Manor is as much a character study of lost and damaged souls as it is a horror story. Giglio is an excellent writer who is not afraid to show the bleak human condition at its ugliest. Well done!”

  Tracy L. Carbone, co-chair of New England Horror Writers, author of The Soul Collector,

  and Bram Stoker nominated editor of Epitaphs.

  “In Sunfall Manor, Peter Giglio reinvents the ghost story. Life and afterlife are examined through the eyes of a dead man, and it’s like looking through a dust-filled kaleidoscope. Raw human emotion and exploration of the human condition in the rural midwest are Giglio’s specialty. This story will stay with you long after you close the book. Very highly recommended.”

  S. S. Michaels, author of Revival House and Idols & Cons

  Sunfall

  Manor

  Peter Giglio

  Sunfall Manor

  Copyright © 2012 by Peter Giglio

  This edition of Sunfall Manor

  Copyright © 2012 by Nightscape Press, LLP

  Cover illustration and design by William Cook

  Cover lettering by Peter Giglio

  Interior artwork by William Cook and Robert S. Wilson

  Interior formatting and design by Robert S. Wilson

  Edited by Robert S. Wilson

  All rights reserved.

  First Ebook Edition

  Nightscape Press, LLP

  http://www.nightscapepress.com

  Existence, Essence and the Existentialism of Ghosts

  By Joe McKinney

  John D. MacDonald, one of the literary gods I worship, once wrote: “You send books out into the world and it is very hard to shuck them out of the spirit. They are tangled children, trying to make their way in the world in spite of the handicaps you have imposed upon them.”

  Being both a father and a writer, I can promise you that truer words were never spoken.

  Here’s the issue: Books are living things. They possess a life of their own, one the writer can’t control, no matter how adept he or she may be at marketing and salesmanship and all the other things that come with the business side of writing. You send the book out into the world, and like a child leaving home, it takes the raw stuff it’s made of and becomes something the writer—or, if you will, the parent—never intended.

  You see, like it or not, once you publish a book, it no longer belongs to you. You own the rights, but that’s different. What you don’t own, and what ultimately defines a book, is the experience the reader has while curled up with your book in the small hours of the night, or while sipping their morning coffee, or while daydreaming about the story when they should be running a board meeting or cleaning windows or whatever the hell people do all day. You can never own that moment, because that’s private. In fact, I’d say the interaction between reader and text is about as close to intimacy as people can achieve outside of sex.

  And, of course, being human, we can’t help but share such an intensely intimate moment with anyone who will listen.

  This is how books join the larger community of readers, how they take on a global meaning beyond the intimate experience of reader and text.

  Books, in other words, are like people making their way in the world, building a reputation. Some do it well, some languish in obscurity, and some stumble blindly from point to point, constantly struggling for identity and meaning.

  Sound like anyone you know?

  I’m willing to guess more than one.

  But just on the offhand chance that you’ve never met someone like that, someone stumbling blindly through an absurd universe, looking for answers that will perhaps never materialize, Peter Giglio is about to introduce you to one in the character of Edgar.

  Edgar, you see, is a ghost: a ghost who is whiling away eternity in an existentialist nightmare; a ghost who is trapped in an endless cycle of addiction, self-loathing, lust, narcissism and benevolent buffoonery. All of these things make up the facticity of Edgar’s existence. Or at least the limitations of Edgar’s facticity, for they cannot, and do not, ultimately, define him in his totality.

  Why not?

  Well, you see, Edgar has made a set of values for himself. A code, if you will. Edgar lives by this code. He witnesses the parade of human depravity all around him, and for a long time, has stayed above it, apart from it, all the while wondering what possible purpose he is meant to serve. He’s trying to understand who he is—or, rather, was—and yes, he’s fully capable of the empathy necessary to evaluate and understand the Others with whom he shares his hellish existence, but unlike the Others, Edgar is capable of so much more.

  For you see, in true Existentialist fashion, Edgar is a trailblazer. He is in the process of remaking himself, of self-making, if you will, because he has no one else to help him on that voyage. And he’s capable of making that voyage because, to him, there is a future, and he is a part of it. He sees beyond the limitations of his ghostly existence. He’s not questioning the external possibilities of a spiritual otherworld, he’s questioning his own ability to become something other than what he currently is. You see, Edg
ar’s voyage is through an interior landscape. There is no light to go in to. There is only a sense that one is responsible for one’s actions, one’s values.

  Edgar makes mistakes. He makes ghastly mistakes.

  People die because of his mistakes.

  And yet, through it all, Edgar searches for a meaning, for a purpose. Spiritual redemption is not part of the equation that needs balancing. What does need balancing is Edgar’s sense of justice. He has an internal value system that has been offended by events beyond his control, and to a degree which offends on the most atavistic level imaginable, and when Edgar finally finds the traction he needs to pursue that offense, his story changes from one of Existential self-examination to abject horror.

  The subtlety of that shift is perhaps the most delightful display of Peter Giglio’s genius in Sunfall Manor. A lesser thinker might have been content with a haunted house story. A lesser story teller might have been content with a tale of discovery, or perhaps one of ghostly revenge.

  But Peter Giglio has more up his sleeve than ghosts and creepy old houses.

  He’s even got more than mere philosophy.

  What he’s got, and what I loved about his tale, and what I suspect you’ll love about his tale, is his sense of story.

  In these pages, you see, story is king.

  If you don’t have story, you don’t have anything worth reading.

  And Peter Giglio’s Sunfall Manor is worth reading.

  In fact, I’m sorry you spent so much time on these pages, because while you were reading about my thoughts on Existentialism, and how Edgar is a stand-in, an Everyman, for the interior journey through the absurd that every thinking person (and every published book) must make on their own, you could have spent that time reading Peter Giglio’s tale.

  I envy those of you about to encounter this story for the first time, because you’ve got a lot of thinking ahead of you.

  You’ve got worlds to discover.

  Joe McKinney

  San Antonio, Texas

  June 27, 2012

  To Scott Bradley,

  the best writing partner and friend in the world.

  – I –

  Edgar

  When he first arrived at Sunfall Manor, a lopsided farmhouse divided into five apartments, he didn’t know he was a ghost. His entire identity was a mystery to him, yet he wasn’t devoid of knowledge. And ghosts, as far as he was concerned, couldn’t move things easily in the world of the living. Although he didn’t know the origin of that notion—or the origin of anything he knew or thought he knew—he clung to it, unwilling to diagnose his malady if the symptoms weren’t just right. He touched a drapery, and it fluttered. Not a ghost, simple as that.

  He searched his mind for a name. All things deserve a name, he told himself; even diseases have names. But he came up blank… until, while trying unsuccessfully to piss, desperate to uncover traits of the human condition within himself, he was struck by a name that carried understated dignity: Edgar. Everything else askew, that name rang right. Not the most flattering title, of course, but monikers like Thor and Apollo and Hercules were way too godly for someone so completely lost. Edgar was an admirable name, respectable, one, he sensed, he could grow into.

  The first thing he really grabbed, not just moved, was a fat glass of gin. Tried to drink it, too, certain he needed such tonics—he needed something—but the liquid fell though his throat and splashed onto the floor. This gave Art Stillwater, the jigger’s owner, one hell of a scare, but his terror didn’t last. A few moments of wide eyes and blanched flesh—Art stammering like a child who’d been caught doing wrong, something for which he couldn’t construct a proper excuse—came to a halt when Art blinked several times, shook his head, and poured a fresh drink.

  “The mind’s a monkey,” Art said, as if that explained anything. Then he slammed the drink down in one gulp, poured another.

  Art, Edgar would come to learn, was like that. Powerful moments that should have meant something, should have at least brought a degree of dawning awareness, washed away quickly in the haze of his one true obsession; that and copious booze.

  Edgar talked at Art for hours, even said he was sorry, though he really wasn’t. But Art paid Edgar less mind than the spilled alcohol on the cracked linoleum, a mess that evaporated over time with no bodily intervention, human or ethereal.

  A few nights later—Art sitting at his desk with his head in his hands—Edgar found himself staring at the living room’s south wall, inspecting the piss-poor paint job. He traced the outline of burn marks with a gentle touch. Gray slashes spread toward the ceiling, terminating in an upside-down V. When his finger, applying mild pressure to the highest point of the poorly disguised damage, painlessly seeped through the plaster, he knew more. Walking through the wall, he knew what he was. No denying his situation now. Still, the mystery of who he was remained unsolved. He didn’t know whether to be comforted or terrified by that.

  He spent several nights trying to breach the walls that bordered the outside world, but those barriers, clearly the fortifications of his cell, proved impassable. So he just trudged through five different worlds, each of them painful and pitiful and terrifying.

  Check your clocks. The time is now…

  And Edgar still spends his nights roaming, hoping to learn. But, like trying to solve a puzzle with pieces from different boxes, nothing fits.

  Instead he answers easier questions, like the odd title of his bleak home. “Sunfall” is easy—the town’s name, a rural burg with a population of less than five hundred. He knows this from the many newspapers he reads. But the “Manor” part is just a bunch of pretentious bullshit, near as he can tell, an effort to give this shit-hole a modicum of dignity.

  Like Edgar, he thinks, and laughs at himself mirthlessly.

  There is little peace here. Daylight hours, when this tomb’s misbegotten denizens sleep, would provide Edgar ample opportunity to make sense of his internment. Such is not his lot in death, for the day grants him no sentience.

  Where he goes when dawn peeks over the flat Nebraska horizon, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. That is a time when forgetting becomes complete, no longer a waking nightmare, nothing replacing something. He wishes he could go there forever.

  Although he doesn’t know his real name, his family—if he had one—or what he did in life, he remembers wars, books, TV shows and movies. He remembers the scandals and silly algebraic equations. He remembers what a woman tastes like. These things, however, grant nothing. He’s not sure they ever did anyone any good.

  All that he really owns now are the dreary nights at Sunfall Manor.

  – II –

  Art

  Art’s in rare form tonight, sitting in front of the television and eating pizza. And he’s smiling. He smiles less frequently than he eats, which is almost never.

  This place is where Edgar always starts, in the unit with clear burn marks beneath the paint. He suspects that has something to do with why his rounds commence here. Not that suspicion grants insight. If that were the case, the residents of Sunfall Manor would be bona fide sages, and Art would be their leader.

  Art breaks into wild laughter. And Edgar regards this curiously. He’s never heard Art laugh. Then Art takes a big bite, laughs again with his mouth full. Edgar wants him to stop, Art’s high-pitched braying is putting him on edge. Besides, the shit that’s happening on the tube isn’t even worthy of a chortle, just some lame-brain sitcom about a couple of girls who are trying to make a bunch of cash, reasons unclear.

  “My cold streak’s over,” Art says. And Edgar, immediately knowing what he’s talking about, walks over to Art’s computer, where a file titled Autumn’s Child is still open. Bet the asshole didn’t even save his work, thinks Edgar. Then he considers deleting the file.

  “That’s why I’m probably here,” Edgar says, not that it does him any good to speak aloud, “to torment these poor fuckers.”

  He reads what’s on the screen. The only two words th
at really fit together are “Chapter” and “One.” The rest is pure crap, and Edgar knows that deleting the file would be an act of mercy. At least Art would think he’d produced something great. When Art reads this, Edgar muses, he’s going to plunge deeper into the abyss. But Edgar can’t bring himself to grant Art mercy anymore than he can intentionally inflict harm. Just like the dumb girls on Art’s new favorite show, his reasons are unclear. Damning his code, now he wants to laugh.

  Art picks up the phone and punches buttons. “Hey, Lisa,” he says.

  “Why do you do this to yourself?” Edgar asks. “Isn’t it bad enough that her photographs are all over the place?”

  “No, no,” Art says, though not to Edgar, “this is big. I-I got some writing done today.”

  Art goes quiet, and a voice like a catfight screeches from the receiver. He holds the phone away from his ear, cringes, and takes a swig of beer.

  “Of course it’s good,” Art says. “It’s the beginning of Autumn’s Child, the book I always said I’d write for you. This one’s more yours than mine. I cracked the opening, now I’m unstoppable.”

  Her feral cadence returns, and Edgar thinks about heading over to the Simmons place, the second haunt on his nightly rounds. No, he warns himself. Too early.

  “Yeah, I’ll read you what I’ve got so far,” Art says. And Edgar has to stay for this. He takes no pleasure in Art’s pain, nor does he relish any of the tiny emotional earthquakes at Sunfall Manor. But this is all he has, and it feels wrong to miss the money shots. He likens it to the reality TV these people watch, or the inability to look away from an accident. You don’t really want to see what’s coming next, you just have to.