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Earlier this week, I had a dream that somebody was remaking a cult-classic supernatural comedy about a haunted antique shop that starred Dudley Moore (as the ghost); and upon awakening was disappointed to remember that the mid-1980s original film didn’t actually exist. Disappointed enough that I began trying to write the novelization that would have been released along with it if it had existed. Which involves building a whole plot and characters out of the very few details the dream gave me.
I really ought to be working on my most recent fanfic, which stalled out last month—but then trying to send one story away doesn’t bring the other one back, it just leaves me with an empty head.
The antique shop’s owner insists on appearing in my waking mind as Christopher Plummer doing a vaguely Mittel-European accent; the rest of the cast now includes a couple of artists sharing the third floor of the antique shop’s haunted premises; I think at some point we’ll meet a waitress from the bar down the street; and the block is probably under threat from a real-estate developer because no 1980s NYC-set movie would be complete without a villain based on Donald Trump.
I've named the ghost Dennis, but I'm still not sure what his backstory is. I don't know why he's an Englishman in New York. I don't think he's been a ghost all that long-- his clothes aren't noticeably from a different era from everyone else's.
This may all be because the week before I made a jokey post on Tumblr about having a tv that showed movies from alternate universes but forty percent of them are different versions of The Canterville Ghost.
Aargh. I want to do this and I don't want to do this. OK, right now it's threatening rain, I have a headache, and I'm at work, so I don't want to do anything.
(p.30):
“Can I change the channel?” Ellen asked.
“Naturally, darling,” said Luce, frowning at the green squiggle he’d just added to his current work-in-progress. “Wait, what are you talking about?”
“You put the radio on, didn’t you? I can hear music.”
Luce listened intently for a while:
“I can’t.”
Ellen prowled the studio space, cocking her head and trying to home in on the music that still played on the edge of her hearing. Luce followed her, still holding his paintbrush.
“It’s stronger here,” Ellen said in a corner where some of the building’s old hot-water pipes were exposed. On a hunch, she placed her ear against one of the larger ones:
“Yeah, the pipes are conducting the sound from another floor.”
Luce tried to imitate her, but only shook his head again, spiky hair bouncing.
“All I can hear are some gurgles, and the furnace humming, and even I wouldn’t call that music— mind you, if you added a backbeat…” He tried drumming on one of the pipes with his brush.
“Luce, shut up. I swear someone’s playing piano downstairs.”
“Nobody lives downstairs.”
“Well, in Mr. Finster’s shop on the ground floor, then. There might be a piano in there somewhere, with the antiques.”
“Might be? You work there, shouldn’t you know these things?”
“It’s a really cluttered space.”
“Anyway, doesn’t Finster close up and go home when you do?” Luce sighed and leant against the wall with his arms folded. “What kind of piano music is it? Beethoven? Boogie-woogie?”
Ellen pressed her ear to the pipe, and the faint tinkling sound resolved itself into an old-fashioned tune. She tried to hum it for Luce:
“And there’s someone singing, I think— but I can’t make out the words.” She decided not to tell Luce that from the few words she could make out, it seemed to be a cheeky ditty about a barn door.
(p.50):
Heaving a ghostly sigh, Dennis parked himself in a despondent attitude on a Hepplewhite dining chair. Ellen took the opportunity to ask a question that had been bothering her since she’d met the antique shop’s spectral assistant:
“How come you walk through walls but you can sit on furniture?”
Reply came in the form of a startled yelp, a thud, and the annoyed face of Dennis glaring up at her through the chair frame:
“Oh, now you’ve gone and done it!” he groused, looking like a head laying on the chair’s needlepoint-tapestry seat. “You made me think about it, and I lost my concentration.” He scrambled to his feet and dusted himself off— quite unnecessarily, in Ellen’s opinion, but she bit her tongue. It was clear to her now that asking Dennis to apply the normal laws of reality to his condition would just lead to disaster. Probably the only thing that kept him from fading or drifting away was force of habit.
OK back to printing invoices or whatever-it-is I'm actually supposed to be doing around here.
I really ought to be working on my most recent fanfic, which stalled out last month—but then trying to send one story away doesn’t bring the other one back, it just leaves me with an empty head.
The antique shop’s owner insists on appearing in my waking mind as Christopher Plummer doing a vaguely Mittel-European accent; the rest of the cast now includes a couple of artists sharing the third floor of the antique shop’s haunted premises; I think at some point we’ll meet a waitress from the bar down the street; and the block is probably under threat from a real-estate developer because no 1980s NYC-set movie would be complete without a villain based on Donald Trump.
I've named the ghost Dennis, but I'm still not sure what his backstory is. I don't know why he's an Englishman in New York. I don't think he's been a ghost all that long-- his clothes aren't noticeably from a different era from everyone else's.
This may all be because the week before I made a jokey post on Tumblr about having a tv that showed movies from alternate universes but forty percent of them are different versions of The Canterville Ghost.
Aargh. I want to do this and I don't want to do this. OK, right now it's threatening rain, I have a headache, and I'm at work, so I don't want to do anything.
Spooked!... In Soho
A novel by Sarah Ennals
Based on a screenplay by Carl Leary
Copyright 1986
A novel by Sarah Ennals
Based on a screenplay by Carl Leary
Copyright 1986
(p.30):
“Can I change the channel?” Ellen asked.
“Naturally, darling,” said Luce, frowning at the green squiggle he’d just added to his current work-in-progress. “Wait, what are you talking about?”
“You put the radio on, didn’t you? I can hear music.”
Luce listened intently for a while:
“I can’t.”
Ellen prowled the studio space, cocking her head and trying to home in on the music that still played on the edge of her hearing. Luce followed her, still holding his paintbrush.
“It’s stronger here,” Ellen said in a corner where some of the building’s old hot-water pipes were exposed. On a hunch, she placed her ear against one of the larger ones:
“Yeah, the pipes are conducting the sound from another floor.”
Luce tried to imitate her, but only shook his head again, spiky hair bouncing.
“All I can hear are some gurgles, and the furnace humming, and even I wouldn’t call that music— mind you, if you added a backbeat…” He tried drumming on one of the pipes with his brush.
“Luce, shut up. I swear someone’s playing piano downstairs.”
“Nobody lives downstairs.”
“Well, in Mr. Finster’s shop on the ground floor, then. There might be a piano in there somewhere, with the antiques.”
“Might be? You work there, shouldn’t you know these things?”
“It’s a really cluttered space.”
“Anyway, doesn’t Finster close up and go home when you do?” Luce sighed and leant against the wall with his arms folded. “What kind of piano music is it? Beethoven? Boogie-woogie?”
Ellen pressed her ear to the pipe, and the faint tinkling sound resolved itself into an old-fashioned tune. She tried to hum it for Luce:
“And there’s someone singing, I think— but I can’t make out the words.” She decided not to tell Luce that from the few words she could make out, it seemed to be a cheeky ditty about a barn door.
(p.50):
Heaving a ghostly sigh, Dennis parked himself in a despondent attitude on a Hepplewhite dining chair. Ellen took the opportunity to ask a question that had been bothering her since she’d met the antique shop’s spectral assistant:
“How come you walk through walls but you can sit on furniture?”
Reply came in the form of a startled yelp, a thud, and the annoyed face of Dennis glaring up at her through the chair frame:
“Oh, now you’ve gone and done it!” he groused, looking like a head laying on the chair’s needlepoint-tapestry seat. “You made me think about it, and I lost my concentration.” He scrambled to his feet and dusted himself off— quite unnecessarily, in Ellen’s opinion, but she bit her tongue. It was clear to her now that asking Dennis to apply the normal laws of reality to his condition would just lead to disaster. Probably the only thing that kept him from fading or drifting away was force of habit.
OK back to printing invoices or whatever-it-is I'm actually supposed to be doing around here.
